Get Content. Get Customers. Featured on Publishing 2020 Blog
Publishing executive opens his readers to the importance of content marketing
Whether you are an author, a book publisher or just an avid reader, you should be reading Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 blog to get a sense of the future of publishing in every imaginable form. In fact, he subtitles his blog: “A Book Publisher’s Future Visions of Print, Online, Video and All Media Formats Not Yet Invented.
Joe is Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John R. Wiley & Sons, Inc., a publicly traded company with $1.4 billion in annual revenues. Wiley is doing some great work that extends well beyond print publishing. It’s obvious that they understand the need to be online and to be interactive as well.
So, I was especially pleased to be asked by Joe to do an online interview about our new book, Get Content. Get Customers. His first question was intriguing because it suggests that “content marketing” is still not an obvious concept. Here’s the first question and answer:
JW: What’s the best way to summarize the phrase “content marketing”? Some readers might feel it sounds like an oxymoron and I’d like to get your view of it.
NB: Actually, content marketing is the best antidote to what Seth Godin calls “interruption marketing.” Content marketing is the art of understanding exactly what buyers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way. By delivering intrinsically valuable content to your customers, you become a trusted source, first of information, and then of products and services.
The accelerating importance of content marketing has everything to do with fundamental changes in buyer behavior over the last decade. Buyers are busy on the internet becoming more knowledgeable about everything they want to buy. They aren’t wandering around aimlessly hoping to be influenced by marketing messages that arrive out of the blue. In short, buyers don’t want to be sold.
This is actually great news if you take an enlightened approach to these newly empowered buyers. The even better news is that companies are empowered, too–thanks to seamless and integrated technology that enables them to talk with consumers in more and different ways than ever before.
The best analogy to help understand content marketing is that marketers need to think of themselves as the new publishers.
Here’s what I mean: When creating a magazine, a publisher first defines a group of readers with a shared set of common interests and concerns. He then develops a magazine that contains editorial—or content—that matches what is most important to those readers. In this way, a publication becomes a trusted source of information to people who are in a position to buy products and services from advertisers. In the world of content marketing, businesses are bypassing media companies to become the new publishers.
To check out the rest of the Q&A session and to explore the terrific stuff on Joe’s blog, click here: Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog.
Joe has another great blog that focuses on the new Amazon.com electronic reader, Kindle. You should certainly give that a look as well by clicking here: Kindelville.com.
Trackbacks [0]
There are no trackbacks.
Post Comment
Fields marked with * are required.
Comments [1]
Newt:
In my experience, what your describe as content marketing is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Customers have never wanted to be “sold”. They always have wanted to be understood and informed. When that combination occurs, with the information presenting the benefits of a given product or service to those for whom the benefits are applicable, a sale takes place.
The interruption marketing to which Seth Godin refers, in my understanding, was a communication environment in which many advertisers/marketers felt it was necessary to get attention first and communicate second, assuming anyone was sticking around along enough to learn about the benefits and apply them to their life needs.
Those who chose shouting to get attention generally were the least successful and least efficient marketers. They interrupted without respect or grace.
Those who chose to be clever or insightful usually scored better.
They interrupted with respect for the customer and reward for the audience whether or not it were in the market for the product or service.
The New Marketing Order exists because customers can initiate the contact, via the web, based on what they want. It is up to the marketer to offer information (eg “content”) concerning those wants in a way that customers can find it easily and measure it for appropriateness versus comparative offerings.
That is content marketing.