Content Marketing Today

New website stalls out completely and provokes unfortunate puns!

Microsoft just launched what might technically be called a website but is more properly a lame product promotion page with a gimmick that is far from unique.  You have the chance to win 5000 gallons of gas.  Wow!  Nobody ever thought of that before. The new site, bumptheslump.com, targets small business owners with the nominal mission of helping them get through the current economic slowdown. Actually, calling it a website is giving it too much credit.  It's really a webpage with links to five different Microsoft products.  Although these links are disguised as business tips, their disguises would not have fooled little red riding hood.  Don't try this with your content marketing campaigns. Read More

The venerable San Jose Mercury News is about to launch an e-Edition as I learned from a recent e-mail from their marketing folks.  It seems to me that this is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to salvage their brand and their business.

As the Silicon Valley grew with the explosion of PCs and the Internet, this newspaper grew along with it... until recently.  Clearly, it is now suffering from the same malaise as the vast majority of newspapers around the country. 

All over the US advertising and circulation revenues are falling significantly.  With very few exceptions--the Wall Street Journal being the most successful--online versions of daily newspapers have been giving away their content.  They have tried to support their online versions with advertising revenues alone.  This has been problematic because the amount that newspapers can charge for online advertising is a fraction of what they have gotten for print in years past.  Moreover, circulation revenues typically would cover the cost of newspaper production.  This meant that a much higher percentage of advertising revenues could go to the bottom line.

So I understand why The Mercury News is attempting to charge for subscriptions.  But their rationale for changing their model seems to be all about them and not at all about me.

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Here's a quick three question quiz.

Give the home page of this website a 10 second review (no cheating--you can't look at any interior pages). Then answer the following questions:

1. Who are their target customers?
2. What product or service are they selling?
3. How can those products or services solve customer problems?

Here's the best I could do:

1. Somebody in public transit
2. Some kind of technology relating to transit operations management
3. I have no idea.

Actually, I was probably cheating because I spent more time looking at the site before I decided to write this post.  So I might not have picked up both one and two in a quick look at the site. 

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The problem: A great Southwest Florida company with a mediocre website.

The solution: Use a content marketing approach that pulls visitors in and offers them solutions to their insurance challenges.

Many of us rant and rave about big insurance companies, their irritating bureaucracies, their frustrating approach to claims payment, and their frequent unwillingness to insure us when we really need insurance.  But, I'm willing to bet that however we feel about the insurance giants, most of us also count on our local insurance agents to give us reliable advice and assistance whenever we need it.

GulfShore Insurance is one such reliable company.  This Naples-based firm has an excellent reputation and has grown steadily over the past 38 years.  Gulfshore could be even more effective by making some basic but important changes to its website. 

Here is a list of opportunities for significant content marketing improvement:

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Bring your most compelling content front and center and make it easy to search in order to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise at solving customer problems.

Jet Advisors provides a set of essential services for a carefully targeted group of wealthy customers: buyers of private jets.  I learned about the company from an old friend and colleague who, believe it or not, has actually bought two private jets.  This same colleague has shared that Jet Advisors is an excellent organization.

Their website, JetAdvisors.com, does a very good job of describing exactly what they do.  It is clean, well organized, and easy to navigate.  According to CEO, Kevin O'Leary, the website has also become an important source of new clients. They also do a monthly eNewsletter which reaches thousands of current and prospective clients.

Unlike the vast majority of business websites, JetAdvisors.com, provides a rich set of articles (originally in their eNewsletter) designed to help visitors and prospective customers to make intelligent decisions about purchasing private jets--and a whole host of related issues.

The two simple changes that would create a dramatic content marketing difference

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HK construction, LLC. Is a Fort Myers Florida based construction company with a website that could be dramatically better with a modest level of investment in money, time, thinking, and design.

The site provides some good basic information about the company that is combined with visuals that appear to represent the kind of construction work it does.

This is a very basic site with just six main pages. Making meaningful content improvements would be simple, fast, and inexpensive.  If they were my client, this is what I would tell them to do:

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You have certainly heard about Starbucks' recent challenges.  This former cultural darling and Wall Street highflyer has been selling a lot less latte of late. 

I do frequent Starbucks, although less frequently than before.  This probably has more to do with the price of almost two dollars for a medium coffee than it does with the quality of the Starbucks' experience.

Apart from the occasional distracting tattoo or disconcerting metal piercing, our local Starbucks' stores provide excellent coffee and excellent service.  None of that has changed over the past 10 years.  Nonetheless, founder, Howard Schultz became very concerned that this high-end coffee icon was not living up to its original ideals.

As smart as Howard Shultz is,you should pay attention to what they're doing--and then vow never to do the same.  Here's why:

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Third Eye Management and Marketing must be blind to Internet realities.

Let's be visual. This week we critique a marketing company that has completely misunderstood online visitor behavior. It's all about misunderstanding the use of visuals. 

I can understand why an old-line manufacturing company might fall for some smooth talking Web design Company's advice. "We've got to show them some eye candy. This flash graphic is so compelling that your visitors will be willing to wait for as long as the 30 second Budweiser commercial to see what you've got cookin' on your site."  I can just hear 76 trombones playing in the background.

But this is a marketing company were talking about.  Surely they cannot afford to be this clueless.

Here's what goes wrong:

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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:

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Richmond Public Relations may not be self absorbed in person.  But they are completely self-absorbed online.

If ever there were a profession where it should be all about the client and not about your company it would be public relations. While looking for great public relations sites, I fell upon yet another bad example of a self-absorbed company with an awful website.

I was amazed that a company that makes its living by providing relevant information for a variety of news outlets makes it so hard to get the same kind of information on its website.

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