by tradesmeninsights | Jun 25, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Content marketing is not a new phenomena. It used to be called “information” that helped set you apart from your competitors. The name might have changed, but we all know great content can make or break you in the B-to-B world.
Unless you have a product/service that no one else has, you’re going to have to differentiate it from the hoards of competitors who are vying for the same sale. So what do you have to do to set yourself apart? According to Robert Rose in a recent post in the Content Marketing Institute, your content must be remarkable!
According to Robert, there is no “try,” you either evolve or fail. That’s a scary statement at the onset, but let’s consider how we go to market. For those of you who’ve been around for a while (no matter what business you’re in), I bet none of you would say you’re doing business the same way you did 10 years ago. I’d bet most would say the same statement holds true for five years ago.
So we are evolving both in what we sell and how we sell it and that’s why it’s so important to have a differentiating story to tell your prospects. This point of difference needs to be communicated across all channels of communication to your targets.
So what’s your point of view?
Robert states that “only the combination of advancing questions, meaningful insight and applied creativity will drive value from data both big and small.”
Here are three basic questions he says you need to ask yourself:
- Why is content important to your customers?
- What value will they derive from it?
- How will it differentiate us?
Lots for us to think about. How would you answer the questions?
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 21, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
The job of marketing today isn’t to create new customers but to create passionate subscribers to our brand. Your community will take charge and social networking will continue to facilitate the power shift towards the consumer. Our challenges are to make a person stop, read, think and behave differently.
Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and known as the Godfather of Content Marketing, describes it “as a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable actions.” Does that sound like something we should be doing?
Roper Public Affairs says that 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. advertisements. 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% say company content helps them make better product decisions.
So how do we manage this thing called content management? I found a good book by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi called Managing Content Marketing that might be a helpful tool for your marketing team to read. They outline and focus on 5 areas:
- Understand YOU – What makes you different? You need to define this before writing content to support it.
- Understand THEM – Who and where are the communities you’re serving?
- What content can you provide to help build loyalty?
- Subscribers need to be fed, nurtured and unsubscribed when it’s time.
- Measure success.
Content marketing is a different way to get the same information in front of customers, and we all need help and tools to manage it better.
We did a webcast with Joe Pulizzi on content marketing that might be of interest to you. You can watch it here.
