It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most effective way to market online is to embrace content marketing.
First, a definition:
Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action. via Wikipedia
Yawn. Content marketing is to continually publish material beyond direct product marketing information in order to attract a wider audience of potential buyers.
I’m surprised that it has taken this long for organizations to figure this out. It’s ALWAYS been about content. What do you think that commercial TV and radio has been about? What has magazine and newspaper publishing been about? It’s the very basics of marketing: you attract consumers by giving them really great things to watch, read, and listen to AND THEN you earn the right to try and sell them something.
TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers have pretty much always used professionals to create their content. That’s not a surprise to anyone. So why is it a shock to businesses that they need these same professionals to create content for them to publish on their web sites?
Here’s what I think: most businesses don’t understand that their products and services are boring.
That’s not a bad thing. The best products do one thing and one thing well. Once you know that, there’s nothing much else to say about the product or service. Boring can be a sign of focused excellence. But far too many web sites are designed to just market products or services and end up bing informational brochures. They are useful, but only to the point where you learn what something is, what it does, and what value it provides. Then it no longer holds value.
And you have to be looking for that product type before you can find it. That makes for terrible marketing. If you only write about your product or service then you’ll end up with yawns.
Great content goes far beyond your product. For business products, content marketing offers a broad way to provide industry information, to highlight opportunities and risks, and to develop useful and interesting voices with important things to say, but not just nice things to say about what you have to sell.
For consumer products, the net can and should be wider and potentially more entertaining, perhaps having very little to do with your product. Consumer products need to find a way to attract an audience before they know they need or want your product.
And that brings us to the most difficult part of building a successful product marketing strategy: it can’t just be about your product or service. Great content marketing is bigger than your company. Great content creates a very wide funnel that addresses the problems and issues that face your potential customers. Great product marketing creates interest, but not necessarily in your product, not yet.
Which brings us to why you need professional help: you, as the manager and operator of a business or unit have far too much to do just focusing on your product. If you widen your focus you lose your hold on the crucial activities of operating your business. Professional writers can let their horizons and imaginations run wide and help you to search for and create that wider range of content that will bring you a bigger audience and more prospects.
Great content marketing informs, entertains, and engages people in ways that far exceed the narrow solution of your specific offering.
And that’s why it’s hard. That’s why you’ll need professionals to help you create a wide funnel that attracts interest and gradually narrows it to your specific product or service needs.
Great content marketing means continually new content. Do you or your team have the time, the interest, or the skills to do this?
You may not, but there are professionals who do. And that’s the hidden secret of content marketing: you don’t have to create your own content—you only have to sponsor it (pay for it).
That one realization is the key to becoming successful in content marketing. You’ll need others to create content for you.
It’s not inexpensive. Experienced writers and marketing professionals don’t come cheap. But what they can do is produce results, and in the long run that’s much more valuable than low-priced work that doesn’t engage an audience.
It’s really very simple: in all things that exceed your direct expertise, seek professional help. If you’re not a professional writer, find one.
Of course, if you’re reading this, you’ve already done that, haven’t you?
The Content Marketing: Why You Need Professional Help by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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