Content Marketing Today

Phillywordsmith, Emily Sheetz, puts Google Docs to work with a simple, but engaging online slide show for her small business.

There’s plenty that I love about the web. Discovering new people from whom I can learn is one of the most rewarding.

Recently, I lucked onto the PhillyWordsmith blog and wrote about her powerful conceptual construct for drilling down to your brand’s core promise: And Then What? The Question to Ask, Ask, and Ask Again to Get to Your Product’s Soul

Now, I found something else that’s pretty cool on her site. Emily shares representative samples of her creative stuff with a simple slide show built with the basic Google Docs application.  She doesn’t even bother with the Google presentation application.  The link sits right up top on her blog so you don’t have to hunt for it.  Here's why it's so effective for a microbusiness like Emily’s.

Lessons for small business marketers from a very creative insurance website

You might not think of renter's insurance as an especially lucrative product.  Although it may be very profitable, it's certainly not expensive. Even so, there are plenty of renters who don't bother to buy it because they just don't see the value.  And, going after prospects for this inexpensive coverage on the phone or in-person would probably not be worth the effort.

That's where imaginative content marketing plays a key role: It sells this important insurance product to folks who need it, but don't yet know they need it.

Liberty Mutual does a fantastic job online with its YouCovered.com site that targets what seems to be an ideal buyer persona: relatively affluent young people who have a fair amount of stuff that is worth a lot to replace. You can apply the best of what they do even with a small online marketing budget.

6 Lessons to Learn from a Young Mom Who Has Built a Successful Clothing Brand While Learning Business the Hard Way

Heather Nolte is a self-described 5' 1" Texas firecracker who launched her fun and fashionable  clothing company with tons of energy, but not a shred of entrepreneurial experience.

She targets moms and their very young kids who are desperate for clothing options that are not the same old same old "mommy and me" choices. Her tagline tells the story: "From the crib to the catwalk."

Although Heather was able to get her company up and running on just $2000, she has always had big dreams. Those dreams and her business naivety led her to make some expensive and damaging marketing mistakes very early on.

Instead of conceding defeat, she immediately set out to learn absolutely everything about building a successful business with a combination of creativity and frugality.  What she learned about marketing has made all the difference.

You Don’t Have to be the Ritz to Deliver Superb In Person Content Marketing

My recent stay at the Ritz-Carlton Sarasota reminded me of all that's wonderful about every one of their hotels. In fact, this Sarasota gem just won the 2008 Florida Governor's Sterling Award for quality.

On the rare occasion when I have the opportunity to enjoy a stay at a Ritz Carlton, I grab it. Why? Although the quality of their facilities is suberb, it's the  quality of their legendary  service that creates such a talkable experience for me and for their fortunate guests. That makes for great in-person content marketing. It's the final element that makes all the rest of your content marketing completely authentic. That's what your customers will share with the world.  In fact, here I am talking about that very experience with you.

The Ritz-Carlton folks have determined that its sumptuous facilities are necessary but not sufficient to make their hotels so highly rated. Rather, it is the lofty level of customer service that makes the difference.

If you emulate their approach to hiring and looking after the right people and to developing a quality customer process, you can become the customer service Ritz-Carlton of your industry.

She is listening to her customers and she is passionate about her products. So we believe Progressive is, too. And, through Flo, the company makes it a no-brainer to understand why we should buy from them and how we can do it.

I think we would all like to run into a sales clerk who cares as much about her customers as Flo does in the long running series of Progressive Insurance commercials that encourage viewers to visit their website, Progressive.com.  She is probably now just as much of an insurance advertising icon as the Geico gecko. 

Actually, the two advertising campaigns have something in common: they are amusing and memorable, but they make very clear points about why you will benefit from buying their products.  Creativity never gets in the way of their goal to persuade you to buy stuff.

Conditioned Air shows how internal content marketing enables internal communications that bind, motivate, and strengthen its team.

You can learn an awful lot about a company during your first few minutes inside their office. Is everything spic and span? Do you get a warm welcome? Do you see energized, friendly staffers. Do you get offers of help?

If the answer to these kinds of questions is an unequivocal Yes, you have just met a company that understands the vital role of internal communications. In fact, it's probably a company that believes at the gut level that the company is a team with every member playing a vital role in its success.

I think Naples-based Conditioned Air is one such company. It also turns out that they understand the importance of content marketing inside the business.

On a recent visit, company CEO, Theo Etzel, and I were discussing content marketing when the subject of internal communications arose. He showed me the most recent edition of their company newsletter. After reading it, I can say that this company walks the walk on internal communications.

eNewsletter expert, Michael Katz, puts it all in perspective for professional service providers.

Thanks to Patsi Krakoff of  Writing on the Web for leading me to Michael. He gets right to the heart of a major marketing challenge. How do we describe what we do in a way that will attract customers when they have a pressing need? 

For those of us who provide professional services, we often suffer from knowing a lot about a lot. Even worse, we want to share as much as we can about our skill set with prospective clients. Then we hope they can determine how that passel of capabilities might match what they need right now.

Basically, we're asking our prospects to work too hard to understand how we can help when all they want is a precise solution to an urgent problem.

Smart marketers are changing the way they connect with their customers. It's all about content marketing. And, it's the subject of our book, Get Content Get Customers.

Be sure to spend some quality online time with us on February 11 at 3pm EST so you can what content marketing is, how it works, and how to do it successfully.

If you missed the first call with my co-author, Joe Pulizzi and me, you missed a practical, put-it-to-work discussion about how to reach customers by designing and deploying a powerful marketing plan that delivers the goods.  Consider this your make up session.

Even if you did listen to our first session, you'll get even more value from our new teleseminar partners Rohit Bhargava, best-selling author of Personality Not Included, and Brian Clark, veteran blogger and founder of Copyblogger.com, for a powerful discussion on why content marketing is critical to your biz and how you can effectively implement this strategy.

A creative mindset enhances what are certainly limited marketing dollars in a tough economic climate.

The Bell Tower Shops is a relatively small but charming shopping center in South Fort Myers, Florida. 

It is anchored by a Saks Fifth Avenue on the north and a Fresh Market on the South. Shoppers can stroll in the shade as they traverse the nice blend of stores and restaurants.

Social media-powered grassroots marketing is vital to drive changes required to build strong regional economies.

The social media outreach that worked so well for Barack Obama must be put to work for businesses individually and collectively. That lesson came home to me at the January 15, 2009 meeting of Project innovation which is designed to develop a strategy to diversify and strengthen our local economy.

Our speaker was an articulate South Carolinian, Jim Fields, Executive Director of the Palmetto Institute.  He and his colleagues have been working hard to make their state a magnet for the kind of people, jobs, and companies that will ensure long-term prosperity. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that his organization is talking to the same folks that helped Barack Obama devise his social media version of community organizing, Blue State Digital.