Content Marketing Today

They provide too much of what readers can get anywhere and too little of what readers really want.

Local newspapers and business-to-business publications face similar challenges as drastic drops in ad revenue drive equally drastic drops in relevant and compelling content.  But for newspapers, ad revenue declines are exacerbated because the highly profitable classified advertising sections have almost disappeared as readers flock to the Internet.  Moreover, business-to-business magazines that are well positioned still offer uniquely valuable niche content that helps readers succeed. Their readers still count on them. That’s not so true for our local dailies.

I believe that the potential nail in the coffin for local newspapers is the ease with which readers can access national and international content thanks to the Internet.  Conversely, I believe that the potential salvation for local newspapers is to become resoundingly local.

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How They Use Secret Shoppers to Catch Their Team Members Doing the Right Thing.

If you are looking for great basic meat and potatoes cooking in a casual atmosphere, you can't do much better than Five Guys Burgers and Fries. While working on a client project, I had the opportunity to learn about the way they operate their restaurants--and how they think about their customers and their employees. 

The company launched with a single restaurant in the Washington, DC area in the 1980s and expanded conservatively through the use of 100% company owned outlets until very recently.  The family that owns Five Guys were concerned that they could not maintain a high level of customer experience if they were to expand too far or to move into franchising.  Ultimately, they did make the move but have worked very hard to ensure excellence in every one of their restaurants whether company owned or franchised.

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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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AC Transit's Dedicated Site, ACTForMe.org, Paints a Brilliant and Loving Portrait of the Benefits of Public Transit

AC Transit operates a very sophisticated bus transportation system in the San Francisco Bay area, handling more than 65 million passengers annually in an area covering 364 square miles.  That's pretty impressive. 

But what really impressed me is the fact that they also make excellent use of the web to tell a story that turns taking the bus into the obvious transportation choice.

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How To Put the Brakes on Their Five Major Marketing Mistakes

[Please note that I have made a few changes to the initial post based on constructive feedback, particularly to clarify that this is a dealer enewsletter,not a BMW corporate effort ] If you were to imagine an eNewsletter from your local BMW dealer, you would probably expect it to lead off with a picture something like the one to the right. As a BMW owner, you tend to be a certain kind of person.  The folks at BMW have understood your persona well over decades in the United States.  That's why I'm mystified at the June 2009 eNewsletter from Germain BMW of Naples. I love my BMW.  I think Germain BMW is a terrific dealership. But, I hate their eNewsletter. Why? Because it has almost nothing to do with the BMW brand promise: BMW—The Ultimate Driving Machine. Call me crazy but when I get an eNewsletter that has something to do with BMW, I expect that it would deliver on that ‘ultimate driving machine’ brand promise.  Instead here's what the eNewsletter delivers by way of core content after stripping away the header and some dealer specific webpage links: Read More

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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When you make it obvious to your customers how you can help them, you will grow your revenues.

Some of the smartest people I know run very small companies in the business-to-business market.  They are dedicated to helping their customers succeed.  In one-on-one discussions with customers and prospects, they make it clear how they can help.  That's terrific.  And it generates sales.  But it's just a start.

I am convinced that white papers--and their first cousins, e-books-- can extend that in-person knowledge sharing and trust building to the entire world.  A great example is a compelling white paper from The Result Source, called, Cold-Calling 2.0: The Next Generation of Prospecting.

The Result Source, is a small company based in Toronto, Canada that works closely with businesses who need to generate leads which will translate directly into revenue.  Its owner, Marguerite McLeod-Fleming, is a veteran of IBM and other large sophisticated organizations.  She is able to apply her understanding of the importance of process to lead generation for small organizations.

What Cold-Calling 2.0 does so well is to explode the myth that cold calling doesn't work anymore while demonstrating a repeatable process that will generate sales cost effectively.

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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