The 8 MUST DO’S of Content Marketing

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The 8 Must Do’s of Content Marketing

1. Don’t Start Before You Have a Fully Developed Content Marketing Strategy

Before you launch any content marketing program, you must have a clear understanding of why you are doing it. What are the long-term goals and objectives? Who are you targeting directly? Who are the key influencers? On what is your messaging going to be based? How are you going to enrich the lives of those who are touched by your efforts? What outcomes would you like to see? In short, don’t run off half-cocked or you will likely do more harm than good.

2. Be 100% Sure Top Management is Onboard

This often begins with education. Make sure everyone who could kill the program understands why it is being done and more importantly how the organization will benefit in the long run. Even if you do a great job your program may be terminated because someone at the top just doesn’t get it. Before you start, share your strategy document with the higher ups to make sure everyone understands what is going to happen and why the content marketing program is so important.

3. Make Sure You Are Ready to be Consistent Over the Long Haul

Content marketing is not an advertising campaign. Think of it as letting the Genie out of the bottle, once you do it can be very detrimental to your brand if you stop. Your Content Marketing program is you, helping people outside the organization, do or understand something better. When done correctly it positions you as a trusted expert. If you stop being the trusted expert to the community you have built they will feel betrayed. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul not just the next quarter.

4. Have A Team Approach

Don’t try to implement a content marketing program alone. What if you get sick or go on an extended vacation? It is critical that your program is responsive to your customers. Have a team in place and have contingencies of who will take control when things change in the organization. Make sure your program lives beyond your personal ability to manage it. If you need back up and can’t get it internally reach out to other organizations to assist.

5. Don’t Simply Follow Everyone Else’s Formula

If your competition is doing Content Marketing make sure you don’t do it their way regardless how much you like it. Why? If your message is just like your competitors, you have a problem. Make sure you are providing a unique way to help out, which will make you stand out from the crowd. Ask yourself what are you offering that is different from what customers can get elsewhere? Your content needs a higher purpose…it needs to take a stand. If you get stumped here don’t fake it. Be authentic. And get help if you need it.

6. Have a Deep Understanding of Your Customers

Know in concrete terms who your customers are and what you need to provide to help them, not everyone else. Make sure your audience is well defined. Also, understand who influences them and others and be prepared to engage with them as well.

7. Make Sure Your Communication is Customer Oriented

Again, content marketing is not advertising. It’s not even public relations. Stop talking about yourself, no one want to hear another corporate belch. Realize that your customers really don’t care about you or your organization. They don’t want another story about how great you are. They want insights into how you can make their interactions with your products or services better, more useful, and life improving.

8. Content is King – Keep Up the Quality – Don’t Let Quantity Drive Your Program

Content Marketing can do wonders to build a brand. The key is the content. It must be extraordinary. And it must cut through and show customers that you are here to help them. If you offer them poor content not only will they go away they will tell others what a bunch of self serving jerks you are. If you have trouble putting together the right content reach out and get some help. If you can do it yourself — that’s great. Just don’t fake it. Don’t hope that it is just going to work out because you may do more damage than brand building.

Want to bounce an idea off of me? Just shoot me an email at m.owens@owensharkey.com and I’ll respond ASAP.

Content Marketing: The Rules are Changing

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Today’s consumers have access to more information than ever. In fact, they are overexposed with an average of 2,000+ selling messages hitting them on a daily basis. Most marketers already know this. What a lot of them don’t always know, however, is how to break through all the clutter and get your message heard over someone else’s. The answer, in many instances is to give them more information. But it can’t simply be generic information you need to give it to them in a different way. How to go about it has recently been termed Content Marketing.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the practice of sharing information with and educating consumers instead of focusing on the quick sale. It’s the practice of teaching your customers something or solving a problem they care about. It’s a means of creating content by listening to their needs and learning what’s important to them. Instead of traditional marketing, which generally bombards them with flashy slogans or the features and benefits of products and services (that may or may not meet their needs), content marketing focuses on the consumers and their desire to have facts and figures before making a decision. When done correctly it is both believable and effective.

“Consumers have simply shut off the traditional world of marketing. They own TiVo to skip television advertising, simply ignore magazine advertising, and now have become so adept at online “surfing” that they can take in online information without a care for banners or buttons (making them irrelevant),” according to Junta42.com, an online content marketing community. “Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute, and that there has to be a better way. Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present.”

Content marketing is a big change for many marketers, because it requires a different thought process. Content marketing is not like an auto loan campaign with a goal of so many loans in a certain time frame. It’s actually a much slower process, because it focuses on building trust and relationships, which are the keys to long-term sustainable business relationships. That’s not to say you don’t have a call to action, but that call to action is much subtler. Instead of telling consumers to apply now and hurry before the offers ends, you’re directing them to another place where they can get more information or speak to a person with whom they can discuss the topic of your content in more detail.

Brands like Proctor and Gamble, Kodak and Kraft Foods have realized the importance of content marketing for years. P&G Everyday Solutions has an entire website designed to provide expert advice on every day issues for consumers and also offers coupons on the products that may help solve those problems. The site does not emphasize products, though. It emphasizes advice and value. Kodak’s website includes a project center with tips on just about everything. It has multiple blogs, multiple Facebook pages, games, iPhone apps and more – all free.

But content marketing isn’t only for websites. About five years ago, Kraft launched a free magazine, Food and Family, offering free cooking tips, coupons and lots of free recipes, which call for Kraft products. Kraft recently changed Food and Family to a subscription based magazine but still offers thousands of free recipes, cooking tips, holiday entertaining advice and more on its website. In fact, if you go to the Kraft website, you’ll find that information about its products is almost a side note.

Content Marketing Channels

The Internet is probably the most common channel for content marketing because it’s easily accessible to consumers and is updated more easily than print marketing. However, just about any marketing channel you use for traditional marketing – website, blogs, podcasts, e-mail, buyer’s guides, direct mail – can be used for content marketing. The idea is to build trust and relationships by becoming a source of reliable information for your customers. As long as you provide pertinent information to them and make it about them, you can make it work.

“Why spend time, money, and creative effort making fake, glossy, slick pieces of marketing material when something honest and informative (and ENTERTAINING!) would likely do a better job?” writes Chris Brogan, president of New Market Labs, on his blog. “What if, instead, you wrote up some really great suggestions for how one might do that certain job better, with or without your product, and then made a very simple link back to whatever your product offer might be? Which would offer more value to your prospective customer?”

At Owens Harkey & Associates we understand that there is a time and a place for traditional hard hitting promotional messages but if you are not also using subtler techniques and communication tactics you are probably alienating a significant percentage of your prospective customers. In this market environment that is something few businesses can afford to do. If you shift you’re approach from one of screaming for people to buy out of desperation to one of sincerely helping people you’ll find more customers coming out of the woodwork and choosing to do business with you.