Content Marketing Today

How to Give Away a Ton of Information to Sell a Ton of Products

Content Marketing Pioneer, Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software Tells You How to Build Your Business Before He Charges You a Nickel

In 1994, I read the first edition of Tim Berry’s wonderful book, Hurdle: The Book on Business Planning without realizing that it was a perfect example of content marketing.

Of course, back then, nobody was calling what he did content marketing. Essentially, Tim’s book gave away all of the information you needed to build your own successful business plan. This might seem odd since his real business then and now is selling software that automates the process of building business plans and marketing plans.

Why would we want to buy his software after we’ve read his book? I believe there are two reasons:

• The information his book provided was so well done and so effective at showcasing his expertise that we have absolute confidence that he will deliver great software products, too.
• Writing a good business plan is hard work. Therefore we will happily gravitate to a great product that makes it a no brainer. Since we now trust Tim, it’s logical for us to take the next step in buying software that will enable us to build an effective business plan quickly and easily.

Compared to what is possible today, 1994 was the stone ages of content marketing. So, let’s fast-forward to see what Tim is doing online for his future customers. Although he has great info on his company website, PaloAltoSoftware.com, he really delivers sensational stuff on two companion sites which are all about providing great free information: bplans.com for business plans and mplans.com.

On his bplan.com site, Tim offers a wealth of relevant content that includes:

• lots of articles about creating effective business plans
• weekly business plan building videos
• recorded webinars
• the timely blog about business issues
• more than 500 sample business plans

Tim’s content marketing turns his Web visitors into software buyers. You can do exactly the same within your target market.

Thanks to all of his awesome content we know that Tim is the man when it comes to helping us succeed at writing terrific business and marketing plans. Could we do our own marketing plan without his software thanks to all of this fabulous content? Certainly some Web visitors do exactly that. But most of us are going to take the next step and buy his software because we know we need somebody to take us by the hand.  We want an expert to lead us automatically through the arduous process.

You may not have all of Tim Berry’s and Palo Alto software’s resources. But, If you are good at what you do, you have a body of knowledge that you should share in a very similar way.

For example, when I wrote about wedding professionals in Southwest Florida, I discovered a number of blogs that provided comprehensive information about everything any bride would need to know about planning a wedding.  Armed with that information, any bride could theoretically organize her own nuptials. But since weddings are an order of magnitude more complex than business plans, the best wedding professional bloggers will garner a ton of business by giving away a ton of information.

So too with your product or service. When you provide a wealth of vital content that will help your customers do a better job of running their business or improving their lives–even if that might enable them to proceed without your services, you will generate a lot of new customers. Why? Because most people will find it to challenging to do the work on their own and are only too happy to turn it over to trusted experts. And, that’s where you ride to the rescue just like Tim Berry and his business and marketing planning software.