Content Marketing Today

3 Colossal Content Marketing Mistakes in Guerilla Marketing eNewsletter

Astonishingly, Jay Conrad Levinson, of guerrilla marketing fame, seems to have forgotten everything he learned about the importance of content based on the latest eNewsletter I received from him.

I was particularly disappointed in the grizzled guerrilla marketer because I had recently attended a seminar he gave locally.  In that seminar he acknowledged the importance of content as a core component in any marketing strategy. That was gratifying to hear because we have been working very hard to promote the content marketing concept over the past year. 

Who stole the content?

So it came as quite a surprise that he left out most of the content in his eNewsletter.  Here are the three ways in which he really goofed up:

1. He has a terrible e-mail header in an eNewsletter about great e-mail headers. Even if the eNewsletter had been loaded with great, compelling, and essential content, his eNewsletter header gave no clue as to what would follow in the body of the missive.  Here is his dynamic gotta read it header, “3-3-08 Guerrilla Marketing Weekly Intelligence Tip.”  Now I will admit that the guerrilla marketing brand might predispose a person to read what follows.  But the generic header does show a bit of arrogance, particularly once you get into the wafer thin gruel that follows.  He does offer an internal headline, “Trigger their curiosity,” but that’s way too late if you blew past the generic e-mail header. 
2. Although there is little of substance to his content, his eNewsletter completely ignores what substance there is.  With unintended irony, the topic of the newsletter is how to get somebody to open an eNewsletter.  Not only does the author offer very little compelling content, but he ignores his own advice.  Since his header does nothing to inspire curiosity, one might have expected one or two examples of curiosity generating headers.  But no.  We just get some plain vanilla content with none of the spunk and spirit we expect from the guru of guerrilla marketing.  This is the sum total of what Levinson had to say:
   Most people don’t like advertising. And most people won’t make the effort to open their email solicitation if they think they are getting an advertising message-unless they are sincerely interested in buying something that the advertisement offers. The key, therefore, is to get a person to want to open your message by putting something into the subject area of your email that does not appear to be an advertising message-one that would compel them to take the next step. And the best trigger to use for this is the trigger of curiosity. To know these triggers is the key to more effective communication and most importantly, the avoidance of costly errors that waste time and money.
3. Customer centricity has gone right out the window.  Levinson’s eNewsletter is more about him and the two female relatives who apparently constitute his senior staff than it is about the reader. Pictures of the three with their names and titles take up as much space as all of the content he offers.  Clearly, ego ran right over his content marketing efforts. Just as bad, the eNewsletter leads off with a boastful commercial followed by an appeal to go to his website.  All those commercials come before we have any idea what he wants to talk to us about.

Now that I’ve been the victim of his three colossal content marketing mistakes, I am disinclined to open the next eNewsletter I get from Mr. Levinson.  I walked away with the impression that all he really wanted was an excuse to get into my inbox and to get me to click on a link back to his website. 

Content marketing lesson number one: it’s about your customers.  It’s not about you.  Unfortunately, that’s a lesson the old guerrilla marketer is going to have to relearn.