Content Marketing Today

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:

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

It's all about asking the right kinds of questions of your ideal target buyers

Most of us don't trust our doctors because they have a lot of diplomas on the wall.  Of course, we sure hope they graduated from medical school, did an internship, and completed a residency.  All  that is necessary not sufficient.

We really trust them because they care enough to ask us just the right kinds of diagnostic questions that will help them uncover what ails us.

We also know that the best questions to really tough medical problems are most likely to come from those doctors who specialize in the specific area of medicine that relates to our current malady.

Our job as marketers is very much the same.

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)

It’s much more powerful than those young whippersnappers--Twitter and Facebook

We often talk about the need to develop a content marketing mindset. This requires companies to think like publishers.  And that sounds an awful lot like social media as Wikipedia defines it:

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Your blog is your secret social media weapon

Thanks to free or inexpensive blogging tools, any individual can be on the same technological footing as the New York Times or Business Week.  That may seem relatively obvious to many of you.  What I think is less obvious is that your blog is every bit as much a social media tool as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.  In fact, I believe that a blog is the most important social media weapon in your arsenal.

Their first effort tried to play the cute, sympathy card with an actual card. Now they imply its my fault that I bailed on them and trash the company they wrongly assume got my business. 

I wrote recently that Embarq could have saved a lot of marketing moola by providing great customer service in the first place: The Huge Marketing Reality That EMBARQ Forgot. I, along with a likely heard of horses had already left the Embarq barn so it was too late to whistle us back.  But, did they give up? No, now they are starting to sound irritatingly desperate.

Just Like Toyota’s Famous 5 Whys, Here’s a Way to Drill Down to Pay Dirt

It's not enough just to ask questions.  We need to ask questions that will get us to the root of a problem or that will deliver an in-depth understanding of the soul of our product.  In a wonderful recent article by Philly Wordsmith, we are treated to a unique approach to understanding the essence of our customers’ concerns and of how our products should meet them.

It boils down to asking the same question, "And then what?," iteratively until we get to that fundamental understanding.

Marketing experts shared invaluable insights about how to market in turbulent times through the effective use of content online, in print, and in person.

Custom publishing has gone from being an ancillary, add on component of marketing strategies to becoming a vital ingredient.  Why?  Because content marketing is so important to an increasing number of marketers and companies of all sizes.  Therefore, creating custom content is no longer a nice to-do, if you have the money.  Rather, it has become an absolute must-do as part of an integrated content marketing strategy.

The strategic importance of content marketing, and of its first cousin, social media, was front and center at this year's Custom Content Conference. 

Here are 8 great takeaways that I brought home with me from the conference:

Great New Book from David Meerman Scott Delivers All the Tools You’ll Need

David is a content marketing pioneer who realized early on how important it was to create relevant and compelling content for your customers.  And, in his earlier book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, he explained clearly why both marketing and public relations professionals needed to change the way they operate based on new Internet realities.

His newest book, World Wide Rave, as the subtitle explains, is all about, "creating triggers that get millions of people to spread your ideas and share your stories." Although you may have a stack of books waiting for you to pick them up, I recommend that you get this one and start reading it immediately.

Yes. Absolutely, yes!

I was reminded of the importance of small business branding when I read a recent post on Duct Tape Marketing which asked the question in preparation for a March 18 webinar. (Click here to get the archived webinar)

Your brand is a vital part of your business even if you are a one-person shop. Your brand is the sum total of what you and your company represent to the world.  Thus, when we hear Coca Cola or see the NIKE swoosh, all of our experience with those brands flood into our brains.  So, it is with you and your company.

You need a brand. To build your brand, you must understand the most important problems you can solve for your customers—and how to position your company as the ideal solution provider.  You can’t do everything to help your customers, but you can do one thing—or a few things—brilliantly. That’s the essence of your brand promise: “What problems can our customers expect to solve by working with our company?”