Content Marketing Today

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.

A consensus is rapidly evolving. It centers around the concept of peak oil which theorizes that the world has already reached its capacity for production of oil.  Over the next several decades the level of oil production will diminish and eventually slow to a relative trickle.  Combined with increasing demand in China, India and other rapidly growing countries this means that high-priced oil is here to stay. 

I believe this phenomenon has increased the value of content marketing and will continue to do so.

Why?  Traditional sales and marketing has involved a lot of in person connection with customers.  That in person connection has become and will become even more expensive for both buyers and sellers. Here's where content marketing steps in. 

I'm asking because I may be too old-fashioned for this Modernista! online approach.

Boston-based advertising agency, Modernista!, has launched a very bizarre new website.  It strikes me as appallingly self-conscious and self-centered.  It's hard to describe, but you can see it in red in the image to the right.  It lives like a fungus on top of other websites.  In this case the Adfreak.com site where I discovered it.  Thus,ignore the main website and just look at the red stuff to understand what their website is all about.

As they put it, "The menu on the left is our home page.  Everything behind it is beyond our control." Clearly they are trying to make a statement about the unfathomable depths of their creative force.  But, to me it's just goofy.

Transform In-Person Content Marketing into Online Content Marketing

If you are selling complex products and services, text and images may not take your visitors where you want them to go.  That's why so many companies are providing video presentations on their websites.  These tools do a great job of walking your prospective customers through lots of information in a logical and compelling way.

Adding videos can be very effective, but they may be time-consuming and often expensive to produce professionally.  This is especially true if your organization is very small.

There is a great free alterative approach.  Be visual without video. Simply repurpose a great sales presentation that you would normally give in person into a self-guide online sales tool. You can make this happen with a combination of Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Docs.  And, if you don't have PowerPoint, you can use the Google Docs Presentation software.  There is almost no learning curve for you--and none at all for your visitors.

Cool company uses videos to explain complicated concepts for its customers.

Common Craft is a very small company with a very big idea.  And, it is one that you can emulate easily and inexpensively.

To understand what they do, think for a moment about the current generation of UPS television commercials. These uniquely simple UPS commercials use drawings to explain complex supply-chain concepts. 

UPS is big enough and wealthy enough to afford unbelievably expensive television advertising.  They could have gone with a cast of thousands, elaborate outdoor shots, and expensive spokespeople.  Instead, they offer commercials that are content rich.  They understood that their customers almost certainly did not understand many of the concepts and practices behind their ability to get packages exactly where they needed to be, when they needed to be there, anywhere in the world.  To make the complex simple they use animated drawings that perfectly illustrate a variety of supply chain and logistics concepts.  This content is powerful because it makes customers believe that UPS understands its business so well that it can explain even the most complicated process in a very simple way.

You may not be a fan of Bob Barr or of the Libertarian political persuasion.  Nonetheless, there is a lot to like about his WordPress driven website,BobBarr2008.com.  There is also a lot to learn about his effective use of an online content marketing strategy to spread the word and to raise money.

Barr's site illustrates how flexible WordPress can be as a tool for building out a full-fledged website. It also illustrates how an effective online content marketing strategy might be able to take a candidate from relative obscurity and little funding to someone who might be taken seriously on the national stage.

Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, recently announced that he is running for president of the United States as a libertarian.  In pre-Internet days, such a candidacy would have gained no traction whatsoever.  Raising campaign funds would have been a prohibitively expensive proposition. Moreover, telling his story to a nationwide audience would have been virtually impossible.

That is either terrific news or horrendous news for your company.

It really depends on your approach to online marketing.  I was alerted to this somewhat counterintuitive idea by a great eNewsletter from Stephanie Miller.  While she writes about e-mail marketing, the implications apply across the board in terms of how you connect with your customers online.

She quotes a study from Sirius Decisions: "Selling now takes more time and resources than ever before.  The sales cycle has become 22% longer as buyers are taking longer to consider their decisions.  Plus, buying is being managed more professionally."

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. 

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:

A typical professional services website will explain what services the professional provides, offer a brief bio of the principal or principals, provide basic contact information, and perhaps show a list of clients.  That information is necessary but sadly insufficient.

By adding two simple but powerful content marketing elements, any professional can stand out from his or her peers. 

1. Provide a basic primer on the subject area in which the professional is an expert.  For example, an accountant could do basic articles on the importance of cash flow, how to minimize tax exposure, and what to look for in a business loan.
2. Provide regular news about topics that would be important to clients.  For our hypothetical accountant this might be the impact of new tax laws, health insurance changes or new withholding requirements.

Check out a live PR website prototype to see what's not just possible--but easy