Relevant and Valued

The birth and rise of content marketing

Does a marketing concept without a Wikipedia entry officially exist?

Permission marketing: check. Viral marketing: check. Search engine marketing: check. All present and correct. Content marketing: not yet.

So here's my definition.

Content marketing is the technique of sourcing, creating and distributing relevant and valued content to attract, acquire, engage and enthuse a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer behaviour.

Do you agree?  Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett do. They write about content marketing at their influential website Content Marketing Today.  They also have a free eBook that you should download.  In echoes of Seth Godin, Pulizzi and Berrett position content marketing as an antidote to the 'old model' of interruption marketing which relies on the industrial era tactic of bombarding people with advertising communications in the hope that some of it sticks.

Content marketing is appropriate for all stages of the 'client path'.  From stranger to prospect to client to advocate, relevant and authoritative content is highly valued.

You need to understand your customers and your potential future customers.  A key part of this is to identify what information is needed in your market and to provide that as a priority to support and drive customer research and purchasing decisions.

Is content marketing a new concept?  Enlightened businesses have been practising it for years. But now the possibilities are more scaleable. The Web era demands that every business and organization needs to consider and implement a content marketing strategy as a core part of planning and delivering an integrated marketing strategy.

Whatever the size of your business, content marketing is critical.  David Meerman Scott proposed in a comment on my blog - What is great content marketing? - that 'the definition of marketing is the influencing of opinion through content.'

I like this a lot but propose an enhancement: 'the definition of Marketing is the influencing of opinion through content, converted to profitable action.'

Marketing has to be accountable and so marketers need to emphasize the importance of building a content marketing strategy with clear, measurable objectives.  Developing a simple dashboard to monitor and assess your content marketing impact is a very worthwhile investment of time.

As Billy Bragg once sang: 'Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman'.  Create and distribute targeted content through the channels where existing, new and future clients are looking for it, and provide it in the format they want it.

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

www.relevantandvalued.com

What is great content marketing?

It's a low-attention, low-trust world and today's consumers are faced with an unprecedented abundance of choice.

Your organization needs a content marketing strategy to cut through the white noise of today's marketplace.

In 2007 the consumer is like a Las Vegas tourist casually strolling down the Strip: senses repeatedly assaulted by hustlers, touts, pushers and pimps jostling for his time and money.

That's why compelling, targeted and well-delivered content that is relevant and valued by your customers will drive growth for your organization. 

Great content marketing is a financial services company that issues a monthly newsletter - available in print or electronic versions – full of timely and valuable advice for private investors who want to manage their own portfolios.

Great content marketing is an online wine merchant that provides comprehensive tasting notes to all its wines before you buy. It is a specialist travel company that publishes podcast interviews with real travelers from far-flung destinations. It is a digital camera manufacturer that tracks what bloggers are saying about its products and uses their positive feedback on its website.

Great content marketers start from the perspective of what their target customers are looking for and package that content according to identifiable needs in a format that’s convenient and accessible.  They distribute their content through the most appropriate channels to market and they optimize it for maximum search marketing benefit.

Great content marketers create niche and customized content based on specific insights from customers and not on generalized speculation about their values, attitudes, needs and motivations.

Why am I qualified to advise you on great content marketing?  I work in the book publishing industry and so I know a thing or two about originating, shaping, packaging and disseminating content to meet closely defined customer requirements.  As David Meerman Scott says in his excellent book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, it pays to think like a publisher.  In fact this is exactly the way you need to think and behave to build an effective content marketing strategy.

Relevant and Valued will help you to drive more interest and involvement in your products, your brand, and your business by focusing on developing a content marketing strategy that is relevant to, valued by and acted upon by your customers and stakeholders.

From audit to diagnosis to implementation, this blog will show how you can create, craft and make your content available to get results in the digital age.

In a networked world, the rules are changing.  A coherent content marketing strategy underpins the success of all your marketing activity. What you say about your own product, brand, business or organization and what others say about it is universally accessible and constantly evolving in today's Web 2.0 environment. You have to ensure that the content you generate is going to hit the mark and engage your prospects and customers: directly and authentically.

Your content is an asset - do you understand what it’s worth and how to grow its value?

Relevant and Valued will explore the best ways for you to originate, create, collate, source, assimilate, aggregate, store, distribute and remix your content to drive your bottom line.   

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

www.relevantandvalued.com