Relevant and Valued

Sign Up for the Custom Content Conference

Content marketers Stateside will head for New Orleans, 9-11 March 2008 for the first ever Custom Content Conference, organized by the Custom Publishing Council.

Focusing on branded content and content marketing strategies for marketers and publishers, the conference is positioned as a showcase for best practice, new ideas and as a  fantastic networking opportunity. 

Joe Pulizzi, a board member of the Council, writes  on his blog at Junta42:

'Organizations have the power to create great content through multiple formats that truly make a difference in their customers' lives. That's what this conference is all about. If you are at all interested in learning how to create more valuable content for your customers, and learn how to market it through the most effective formats - attend this conference.'

The aims of the Custom Publishing Council are closely aligned to the objectives promoted by Relevant and Valued. Its mission statement encapsulates the key central ideas expressed at this blog: 1) content that meets the informational needs of a closely understood group of customers is a great marketing tool and 2) a call to action that meets the customer's needs profitably should be the targeted result of any credible content marketing strategy.

"Custom publishing marries the marketing ambitions of a company with the information needs of its target audience. This occurs through the delivery of editorial content – via print, Internet, and other media – so intrinsically valuable that it moves the recipient’s behavior in a desired direction."

Sign up now at https://www.custompublishingcouncil.com/industry-conference-2008-registration.asp?affiliate=1

Be relevant, be valued and get your customers to act.

www.relevantandvalued.com

Killer web content drives value for your business

Great website content drives profitable consumer behaviour at all stages of the customer journey, as discussed in Content marketing tactics and when to use them.  And Gerry McGovern's Killer Web Content is a must-read for marketers serious about delivering this in practice.

The premise of McGovern's simple, effective book is that there is value to be exploited for marketers who understand that 'the Web runs on content' and that it's a small percentage of this content that makes the biggest difference to achieving business goals.  McGovern's mission is to convince us that time spent on developing quality, impactful content is a worthwhile investment. The analogy he uses is that we should treat content on the Web as 'a hidden asset, its gold', not as 'coal - a low-grade, low-cost commodity best published in bulk.'  Put simply: Killer not Filler!

As with most successful how-to marketing books, Killer Web Content is packed with infectious, memorable maxims, practical ideas and lessons that you'll commit to memory and find yourself quoting and applying frequently to day-to-day business challenges. For example:

• Readers scan for carewords, not keywords.  'When we see these words, we click, we act. And that is what the Web is all about: tasks and actions'. Lesson: understand what your readers care about, create your content by focusing on these carewords and reap the benefits.
• 'Focus on how people search, not on how search engines work.' Lesson: Search Engine Marketing can be an expensive mistake unless it is focused purely on the customers' informational needs and understanding how they search.
• On the web, people are 'relentlessly task-focused'. Lesson: relevance and clear calls to action, optimized for what customers are actually looking for will move your business with them forward.
• 'Web marketing is the difference between getting attention and giving attention'.  Lesson: great content marketers don't scream at you from the sidewalk like a Las Vegas hustler - they design content that pulls people (or pushes it out only if it is targeted, anticipated and permission-driven).
• 'More = Filler; Less = Killer'. Lesson: valued content that helps your customers reach their goals is significantly better than a proliferation of me-too website content that gets in their way.
• Testing is essential. Customer behaviour on the web is easily measurable and so, therefore, is the value of your content. Lesson: creating and supporting a test and learn environment will help you achieve a culture of continuous development and help you to enhance value.
• Content is not king! The reader and the customer is and 'your reader needs to stand beside you as you write.'  Ban the word 'users' which is dehumanizing and won't help you put yourself in the customer's shoes. Lesson: content is only  worth sourcing, creating and publishing if it's relevant, valued and acted upon by real people.
• Focus on a single idea.  Lesson: niche and targeted is worth much more than trying to meet everyone's needs but delivering on no-ones.

One of the most important ideas on the book is the process of creating personas: building representations of real customers to help frame your website content marketing strategy. For any given business there may be several customer types that your content needs to appeal to - based on differences in needs, motivations, values, levels of knowledge and expertise or on differences in other parameters.  The principle behind persona-building is to identify and name representative characters that a marketer can keep in mind when developing and publishing content.  Ideally, this should be backed up by market research but a lot of the knowledge required to build personas is already known by customer-facing employees and so can be tapped into cost effectively.

Many financial services websites filter different customer types through a simple self-selection process from the outset on the basic lines of professional and private investor (or variations thereof) - see www.fidelity.co.uk for an example. But even once this initial choice has been made, the content needs to appeal to different types of private investor within the main umbrella category. What level of risk is the customer willing to bear, is he/she building a portfolio or interested in a single product to meet a specific financial goal, is this a long-term or short-term play, how much money does the customer want to invest, what level of background knowledge or sophistication does he/she have? The website needs to cater for all these customers within the same pages in order to faciliate the quickest possible path to the required goal, and in the context of very different frames of reference.

The benefit of building personas to bring these different customers and their needs alive to the marketer is clear.  The result: the development of a content marketing strategy that is focused on real customers, not on internalized preconceptions about what motivates action.

Be relevant, be valued and get your customers to act.

www.relevantandvalued.com

Content marketers: don't overlook the basics

In Relevant and Valued, I've been writing about how content marketing is a great way to 'attract, acquire, engage and enthuse a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer behaviour'.

Last week, I received 'Remote working: a complete guide' through the post to my office address from THUS:  'a UK-focused business telecommunications company with a strong belief in its people and the services it provides to customers'.

The guide is an expensively-produced brochure which discusses the merits of remote working and its value for business and provides an overview of the technologies available. It usefully defines 3 different segments of remote worker: home, mobile and field workers in order to help the reader understand the distinctions between and the considerations for each when considering the solutions and services that will benefit your business.    It takes on the issue of security and explains how a balance needs to be struck between enabling accessibility for remote workers and keeping the corporate network secure.  In short, it is a reasonably strong attempt at educating and informing prospects about the issues at stake.

However, the mailing has significant weaknesses which will limit its success.

• Why me?  I have never shown an interest in THUS or their services or in remote working as an issue. Like millions of others I already remote work and my organization has an effective policy and set of tools to facilitate it but it's not likely to be something I'm going to take a lead on in my business, nor do the ins and outs of remote working particularly interest me. To be frank, I'm not sure why THUS mailed me or thought that remote working was specifically relevant to my needs or interests.
• They have my job title incorrect. So they got my name from a mailing list and not a particularly useful one at that. This is saying 'we don't really know you'.
• Calls to action are weak. It's all a little understated.  'for further information on remote working please call...', 'if you are looking at how to mobilise your workforce, please contact us on...'  Where's the value statement?  What's making me want to get on the phone?  Give me a reason to act.
• It's all a little bland - although I would say that as I wasn't interested in the first place! If it's not relevant then it won't be valued.

The marketers at THUS would do well to consider the following:

• Pre-qualify leads by asking prospects to sign up rather than mailing them cold. This could be achieved through targeted e-marketing, advertising with a strong call to action or through search engine marketing.  Pursuing a permission-led strategy will ensure that the content reaches the people that are likely to be most interested and most likely to act.  This makes for a much more effective use for your marketing spend.
• Pull not push? - maximize search engine results for key phrases that your customers care about. THUS does appear in the first few results of a UK Google search for 'remote working', so scores reasonably well on that front.
• Communicate a clear value proposition. THUS is weak in this regard: the sales letter states that the company is 'one of the few providers that offer a wide range of hardware, services and applications, as well as the expertise needed, to create solutions that overcome these concerns as well as help you to realise the true benefits of remote working'. This doesn't pass the 'so what?' test.
• Integrate offline and online marketing messages. I can't find the THUS guide online and whilst they do have a remote working landing page on their website, the content is positioned as the 'Remote Working Solution', defined as 'a comprehensive communications package for remote employees'. The offline communication does not refer to this branding of the solution in any way. Inconsistency will confuse customers - you have to replicate online and offline messages.

All this goes to demonstrate why a well-conceived but poorly excecuted content marketing campaign will not deliver its intended objective of driving profitable customer behaviour, no matter how compelling the content is. I suspect that THUS needs to get back to direct marketing basics if the company wants to make the most of its otherwise promising content marketing strategy.

Be relevant, be valued and get your customers to act.

www.relevantandvalued.com

It's official: content is king!

Web pioneer Vint Cerf helped to build the infrastructure that drives the internet.  In this week's MediaGuardian, he and his friends (all Web luminaries) turn their attention to its remarkable future.

And the conclusion? An endorsement of the famous adage 'content is king' finally coming to fruition. Certainly user-generated content but critically content which is professionally produced. Cerf writes:

'At the same time, [as millions have created their own content] the appetite for professionally produced content... continues to grow. Audiences have more choice, not only over what to consume, but also how they consume it. Regardless of the medium, there will always be demand for high-quality content.'

In a world where David Beckham was once referenced as a Chinese goalkeeper on Wikipedia, high-quality content should certainly be seen as premium.

Elsewhere in the issue, Chris de Wolfe, co-founder of MySpace, writes of the demands of the online population for content 'where they want it, when they want it'.  Maurice Levy of Publicis Groupe talks about the shift from linear media to liquid media, 'where you can move in and out of different settings'.  Peter Norvig, Director of research at Google also supports a vision of a more fluid interaction with information. 

Marketers have an opportunity. Provide great quality content that meets consumers' informational needs in a format that's sought after and through a channel where it's being searched for. Allow it to be easily exchanged between customers.  When you supply it, make sure it's contextual (relevant) and high quality and timely (valued).  Attract prospects and give them a reason to become customers. Engage these customers, build a relationship with them and influence them to buy more from you.  That's what great content marketing is all about.

Review of RelevantandValued.com in Content Marketing Today

Newt Barrett posts a great review of Relevant and Valued in 'New British Blog Joins Content Marketing Crusade' with the line 'now we have one more reason to love England'!  Newt supports the view that content marketing can and should be used to drive profitable customer behavior.

The revolution described by Cerf and friends makes this even more possible. In a liquid, fluid, online environment: accountability is the only constant.

Be relevant, be valued and get your customers to act.

www.relevantandvalued.com