Content: the missing link between search and action

The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott is a Relevant and Valued book for marketers who want to harness the power of their content for tangible sales results.

Meerman Scott positions his book within the growing movement that heralds pull tactics rather than push tactics as the marketing currency of the digital age:

'The Web is different. Instead of one-way interruption , Web marketing is about delivering useful content just at the precise moment that a buyer needs it.'

He also argues strongly that the worlds of PR and Marketing have become blurred on the Web and that much of the PR profession is living in a rose-tinted world of traditional media focus, ignorant of the fact that marketers need to be where their customers are and the irresistible power of online marketing to reach individual customers directly and efficiently. 
Key lessons of The New Rules of Marketing and PR include:

• Web marketing is about 'understanding the keywords and phrases that our buyers are using and then deploying micro-campaigns to drive buyers to pages replete with the content they seek'.
• Niche markets can be reached profitably online.  Creating messages that appeal to niche marketers can be achieved through the generation and dissemination of effective content.
• Visitors to your website want to solve problems. You need to understand what these problems are and present content that helps them find the solutions they are seeking.
• 'The media have been disintermediated.'  Write press releases but distribute them online to have maximum impact on your customer base who will find them directly through their search activity, especially when you are selling direct to consumers: exploit the fine line between PR and direct marketing.
• Particpate in the debate!  Astute marketers engage and inform by joining conversations online, without alienating by over-selling. 
• Focus relentlessly on buyers and what they're looking for. Create personas and write for these personas.
• Measure and test everything, use results to refine content and improve its impact.

Meerman Scott is convincing and entertaining. The short chapters allow the reader to dip in and out and quickly gather ammunition to use in practice, key points illustrated by engaging and succinct case studies about real world practioners. This book comes highly recommended.

Above all the message I particularly enjoyed is that great content not only strengthens an organization's brand but calls its readers to action: 'on the Web, smart marketers understand that an effective content strategy, tightly integrated to the buying process, is critical to success.'

Or to put it another way, content is the missing link between search and action.

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

www.relevantandvalued.com

Comments

[David Meerman Scott]

Many thanks for writing about my book. I appreciate it.

FYI, I just released a free ebook called The New Rules of Viral Marketing. Download it here http://www.webinknow.com/2008/01/the-new-rules-o.html

cheers, David

[Phil Darby]

I'm tempted to buy this book even if it only adds to the twenty or so other unread business books in the pile by my bed.

However, I would just add a "Hear, Hear!" to the point about participation. We forget that brands are jointly owned by the community of organisation, investors, employees, partners, distributors investors and customers. Too often I see monologue from organisations who think they are sharing, but don't "get it". This isn't comunication at all and nowhere near the level of opportunity for customers to participate in the dicussion within the brand community that there should be.

I fought an uphill struggle with a publisher of private publications a couple of years ago to ensure that every article in the magazine that one of my clients periodically distributed to customers and prospects had a call to action, comment, feedback or contribute with a traceable link that would enable us to track customer and prospect needs, attitudes and interests and audit the sales process. They said it couldn't be done, it could, it was, it drove sales and we won a European award for the publication as well.