Content Marketing Today

Let's hope they didn't pay a lot of money for this disaster.

After waiting 15 seconds on a high-speed connection, this is the meaningless page that stares out at us. If you didn't already know what Universal McCann did, you would still be clueless after staring at this page. And, if you were in a hurry, you would have moved right on by. The good news is that this advertising giant proves once again that big budgets and big egos don't add up to an effective web presence. In fact, you can and should do a lot better even as very small company. Money doesn't generate customer-centric content marketing. Thoughtful concern for your customers and their problems are the key to successful marketing strategies. That concern, expressed creatively as compelling content will achieve measurable results. For that, you may need big ideas, but you don't need a big budget. The net effect of Universal McCann's website is to imply to prospective clients that your messaging should be hard to find, take a long time to display, contain huge segments of unbroken, cliche-ridden text, and be all about the client rather than their customers. In fact, it's so bad, that you almost think it was done as a parody of really, really bad websites. Sadly, we know that's not true. Yikes! Here's where they went very wrong and how you can avoid the same traps. Read More

Here are the most popular posts since the launch of Content Marketing Today in August 2007. See what you may have missed--and what thousands of marketers have learned over the past 5 months. You'll find everything from great newsletters to bad websites... great custom magazines for reluctant buyers... the 7 deadliest content marketing sins... 6 lessons to learn from a shopping mall...using content marketing to speed sales growth curve. Read on for a great refresher course in content marketing. Read More

Even though the growth of online shopping is outpacing brick-and-mortar shopping, we can still learn a lot from in person retail environments. Mall owners and retail store operators are very good at what they do--which is to get lots and lots of people to come to the mall and to buy a lot of stuff. They have perfected an environment which prompts visitors to spend a lot of time walking around window shopping and then spending time in individual stores whose products match their interests,whose display captures their attention,and who make buying an easy and pleasurable experience. Whether we are selling to other businesses or to consumers, here are the 6 most important things we can learn from best and worst retail practices. Read More

Perfectly Targeted Content for its Readers

If you've ever written a book or thought seriously about writing a book,you may have some idea of how daunting the process can be. Of course,the writing itself is difficult enough---as my co-author Joe Pulizzi and I have come to learn. One really complicated part, however, is figuring out how to get your book produced and marketed. That's where BookSurge, an Amazon.com service, enters the picture. Here's why it's newsletter is so terrific. Read More

Educate, Entertain, and Inspire to Strengthen Relationships

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Comcast exists in a competitive and changeable world. They have lots of new, but complex product offerings. They also want to deepen their relationship with customers. Comcast decided to partner with DCP, a local custom publisher to create a quarterly magazine that would improve customer retention. Early results suggest their efforts have been very well-received. Read More

Connecting with Customers is Now Their Top Priority

This New York Times article on Nike's new marketing investments into their consumer base should be a wake-up call for those companies not investing in content marketing. Nike, along with other huge brands such as P&G, Johnson & Johnson, and General Motors are all moving away from the basic advertising and sponsorship strategies that helped make them the well-known brands they are today (The article discusses Nike investments such as their Nike Running blog site that create original content for customers). Read More

What you do when your buyers just don't want to be sold? That's the dilemma that Southwest Florida community developer, Bonita Bay Group faced recently. Their target demographic wants to make up their own mind about where they live and what they buy. The developer's solution was to develop print and online content so compelling that future residents would sell themselves. Read More

Blogging has become a critical component in content marketing strategies for companies of all sizes--from solopreneurs to IBM and General Motors. Your blog will give you potential exposure to millions of prospects. Because you're on a very big stage with a very big audience, don't screw up! Be sure to avoid these 5 blogging bloopers so that you and your organization will be read, respected, and referred to. Read More

Give your prospects a free education that will solve a problem. That's the way to turn a cold call into a warm call--and accelerate your sales curve. We may think of it as content marketing rather than 'educational' marketing by the intent is the same: To become a trusted advisor to your clients by delivering content that provides benefit to them first--and to your company only later. Read More

You don't have to be a techie to appreciate Sun Microsystems blogging strategy. In fact, you'll be amazed at the wonderful blog post by their CEO, Jonathan Schwartz that lures us smoothly into an understanding of a critical design decision that minimizes energy waste--for the benefit of their customers. Read More