One of the biggest errors that companies make in content marketing is believing that content marketing needs to be laser-focused on their products and services.
That’s incredibly ineffective and boring.
Here’s a big reason why: other organizations simply aren’t going to link to more product noise from you BUT they will link to industry information and ideas.
To successfully market and sell using a web site you need a two-pronged approach: your general web site that delivers clear information about who you are and about what you sell AND a separate, constantly evolving and refreshed section that delivers fresh, interesting, and intriguing information on a regular basis that will attract the interests of people who might potentially become customers, as well as industry publications and sites (which will bring you more prospects and better rankings).
Your content marketing plan doesn’t need to be about what you sell. You have your basic site where they can read your brochures. Your content marketing plan needs to be bigger than your widgets. It needs to be about the problems and challenges that people who might buy from you need to solve. Big, wide, and yes, sometimes, on tangential issues.
Laser focus is boring. And it’s ineffective in the long term. Can’t you hear readers who are bouncing out of your site? “OK, yes, we’ve got it. Your doohickey does X. I’ve read the product sheet and the list of testimonials. I get it. I don’t need to read any more about that.”
What you want is readers who dive deep, reading more and more.
“Hey, you also seem to understand the wider implications of our industry and this problems I’m facing. Tell me more. Publish more stuff on that and I’ll be back every day. And when I need a doohickey that does X, guess who I’m going to buy it from?”
Here’s a simple rule for content marketers: when you’re boring yourself by publishing endless pieces on the same topic, you’re probably boring your prospects, too.
Don’t stop content marketing, just stop boring people.
Successful Content Marketing: Stop Talking About Your Products, Services, & Company by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.