Content Marketing Today

Proving again that our readers like to dig into a variety of topics under the broad content marketing umbrella.

While you’re enjoying the beach or a barbecue this 4th of July weekend, take a few minutes to ponder how effective content marketing can make you independent of the old-fashioned way of doing things.

Here’s the tasty topics menu from which to choose:

• how to create effective elevator speech to drive your content marketing
• using content marketing to survive the recession
• low cost research as killer weapon
• making an eBook a core component of your content marketing strategy
• become your customers’ online content concierge
• why your blog is your most important social media tool

Read on to see the 6 most popular articles that your fellow content marketers voted for with their visits.

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When your customers have an important need, they need to know the kind of company you are and why they can trust you

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a combined group of wedding planners from Southwest Florida, the Wedding and Party Planners of Naples and the local National Association of Wedding Planners chapter. 

As I was preparing for the talk, the importance of content marketing in general--and of blogging in particular--really hit home.

Because a wedding is so important in so many ways to women of every age and circumstance, each bride needs to feel absolutely confident that it will come off as perfectly as humanly possible.

The current Sprint commercial that imagines a world in which weddings are run by movie crews captures this feeling beautifully.

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Thanks to my co-author, Joe Pulizzi, and some helpful contributors for making your search for the right implements a lot easier.

If you are starting from scratch, it's almost impossible to figure out what social media and other related online tools will be genuinely useful for marketing your business.  Fortunately, Joe has taken the time to assemble and comment on 42 of the most worthy in his blog.

You'll find that a common thread among many of the 42 is that they involve both inbound and/or outbound communication. In other words, they will help you send a message to your target buyers or listen to what those buyers are saying about you.

My five favorites of the less well known among the 42 that Joe highlights are:

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A Company That Gets It on so Many Levels Minimizes Traditional Marketing Expenditures.

I was surprised, but not too surprised, to learn from a friend and colleague, David Drickhamer, that the famous maker of ergonomic chairs spent almost no money on traditional advertising.

Herman Miller tends to be well ahead of the curve on almost every business front.  After all, this is a company that was into sustainability before it was cool--and before Al Gore was invented global warming (or was that the Internet?). Back in 1984, they stopped using Rosewood when they determined it was an endangered hardwood.

When they introduced their new, high end and incredibly comfortable chair, the Embody, they relied heavily on the blogosphere to spread the word.  Although the traditional press would have been essential to the success of a new product a decade ago, it's the blogosphere that is overwhelmingly influential today. 

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Corporate giants are losing power to communities of consumers--and your company can benefit.

When it comes to the evolution of the Web and of social media, keeping up seems like an impossible task for most business executives.  Nonetheless, keeping up is critically important in order to remain relevant.  The good news that I take away from a recent study by Forrester Research, is that the evolution of the "social Web" will help level the marketing playing field between large and small organizations.  The report was written by a Forrester senior analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, who, not so coincidentally, has a terrific blog, Web Strategy. In the past, large companies had all the cards.  They had lots of money, lots of people and lots of intrusive but effective messaging.  In the old era of in-your-face marketing, corporate giants could control results in many cases by simply outspending smaller rivals. Times have changed.  Consumers are now a surging control via a wisdom of the crowds phenomenon.  That is, buyers now find it easy to aggregate around common interests thanks to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. This fundamental power shift increases the impact of word-of-mouth marketing by orders of magnitude.  Shared consumer experiences are no longer limited to neighborhoods or local communities.  Rather, they have gone global.  This is good news for companies who provide great products and great customer experiences.  And, it is especially good news for small marketers can take advantage of what Forrester Research calls the new "social Web”. Read More

When You Deliver Great Content and Control a Critical Buyer Database You Drive Sales

Although they are in the advertising business, small publishing companies have never done much advertising for their magazines. The reasons were simple, but not necessarily obvious: They didn’t have to—and it wouldn’t work if they tried it.

By emulating the best practices of small publishing companies, you can minimize traditional marketing costs, too. Believe it or not, it all comes back to content marketing. 

Why publishers can market effectively without advertising

Here is how publishers increase the likelihood that influential buyers will purchase advertising from them.  It couldn’t be simpler. Simply create an outstanding magazine filled with world-class content that provides thought leadership for their publication within their carefully targeted market.  Not only will  their subscribers value what they do, but their potential advertisers will value them just as much. 

Unfortunately, current business realities are bringing even the best publishers to grief.  But, that means you are even better positioned to benefit from effective content marketing.  

Here’s what to emulate:

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Build Your Brand and Your Business by Using Local Radio to Drive Prospects to Your Blog

The key to a powerful online presence is great content that targets your best buyers.  Over time, as you increase the critical mass of relevant and compelling content, you will attract increasing levels of traffic.  This is the essence of content marketing strategy.  But, you can do more without breaking the bank by extending and enhancing your online persona with carefully crafted radio commercials.

Although traditional media is facing enormous challenges, smart media companies will certainly survive. I became even more convinced of this following my recent visit to Roanoke Virginia where I spent some quality time with the Mel Wheeler, Inc. radio folks and quite a few of their customers and prospects. 

Wheeler, and especially my host, Lynda Foster, work closely with clients to help them succeed by teaching them how to do a better job of marketing.  This may not always result in immediate radio advertising dollars, but it does strengthen the local businesses and the business community. I am certain that it will ultimately bond dozens and dozens of local advertisers to Wheeler's Southwest Virginia radio stations as we work our way out of the recession.  This is great content marketing by Lynda and her colleagues.

Accelerating the impact of content marketing with smart radio strategies

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When Their Own Commercial Shows How Hard It Is to Get Urgent Answers, You Know They Have a Problem

Imagine a scenario where catastrophe looms unless an immediate solution can be found.  That’s the situation here where an aquarium worker accidentally creates a crack in the wall which quickly expands to disastrous proportions. 

Can the Yellow Pages save the day?

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No. Their ever shrinking content reduces them from ‘must read’ to ‘why bother?’

For centuries, print magazines and newspapers had a publishing information monopoly.

Even when the consumer universe began to rely more on radio and TV, the business to business media was the only route to the industrial buyer. This was true for both public relations and advertising campaigns. If you wanted to get to the folks who bought business products and services, you had to use print media to reach them.

This virtual monopoly persisted unchallenged until the late 1990s when the internet intervened in a very big way. Unfortunately, most business-to-business publishers first ignored and then mishandled the online opportunity.  Too many of them thought like the railroad companies who mistakenly defined themselves as the railroads rather than as transportation providers.  In the same way, print publishing companies, run by smart people who knew how to build powerful print properties, failed to think of themselves as being in the information business. The print mentality was tattooed on their psyche

But, while they hung back, the buying behavior of their print readers changed dramatically. Their customers were moving to the Internet in search of solutions. This change in behavior will not reverse itself no matter what the print attempt.

Eventually, even those media companies late to the game figured out that a strong Internet presence was vital to their survival. And, for while, there was still plenty of print advertising revenue to support the critical mass of print content that made business publications relevant to their readers. For a brief shining moment, they could have the best of both worlds--print and online.  In the spring of 2009 that is no longer true.

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Of course you need a website.  But, you need a lot more to succeed.

Your website is a primary location for product and service information for which your customers are searching.  Moreover, it should follow the content marketing mandate of customer centricity.  That is, your website must reflect an understanding of what's most important to your customers in the way that you present content about who you are, what you sell, and why your visitors should care. 

But, that’s still just the essential foundation. An effective website is necessary but not sufficient as an online marketing strategy.  Patsi Krakoff makes this very clear in her insightful post, Why Your Website Is Not Enough (...and never will be, sorry)

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