Tag Archives: Content marketing

September 2, 2014 · 11:36 am

Mistakes You’re Making With Content

Now that the summer is over (I’ll wait while you boo), many marketing teams are getting back to work.

Collection of Marteting books

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One area that is on many of their minds is content marketing.  I’m a fan when it’s done right and unfortunately it’s increasingly rare that brands are going down that path in a way I admire.  Let me explain.

As the folks as the Content Marketing Institute say:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Putting aside how and why there is already an “institute” for something so relatively new, I like that definition because it emphasizes what’s missing in much of what’s being produced – value.  As an aside, the fact that it only implies a customer-centric view is a shortcoming but I guess that if you’re focusing on “valuable” you must focus on the recipient’s view and not your own.

That’s the first mistake many companies make.   This isn’t advertising, folks.  Yes, potential customers are after information but they are trying to make intelligent, informed decisions.  Done properly, good content marketing fills that needs and helps them to do so.  Done badly, it’s another ad they toss and ignore.

We all know people on social media who overshare.  I don’t mean that in the Too Much Information sense (no, I don’t care what you had for breakfast) but in the 100 posts a day sense.  They share or retweet damn near everything that crosses into their stream.  Bad content marketers make the same mistake.  Sure, you’re just trying to be helpful but you need to strike a balance between helpful and annoying.  When you have something useful to say, by all means say it.  When you’re just publishing to make noise, think again.

Finally, one tenet of creating any kind of content is to write what you know.  Companies who make cars shouldn’t be giving out recipes unless they’re hiring noted chefs to write them and publishing them is a way that makes sense:  here is how to use your new Model X for tailgating and here is some great recipes to help you to do so.  You can’t be all things to all people.  Be a resource in your areas of expertise and avoid all the others.  Your audience will thank you.

Oh – one last thing.  Do NOT hide an ad as a piece of research or a white paper.  I’ve written about that elsewhere so I won’t belabor the point.  Be transparent.  Be real.  Add value.  Don’t be sneaky.  Your thoughts?

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July 23, 2014 · 10:19 am

How Do You Like My Tie?

There is an old joke about an egocentric sales guy rambling on and on about his life and success.  He sees the recipient of his boastful rant glazing over and says “But enough about me.  How do you like my tie?”  I was reminded of this as I read about a study conducted by the Online Marketing Institute, who teamed up with Forrester Research and the Business Marketing Association to understand how well B2B marketers gauge their content development skills and maturity.  The headlines aren’t so wonderful:

While 51% of B2B marketing leaders rate their content marketing practices as very mature, an overwhelming 85% fail to connect content activity to business value — and, as a result, fail to retain customers or win their long-term loyalty. In fact, when asked to look back at the past 12 months and rate the effectiveness of content marketing efforts, only 14% of those surveyed gave their content practices high marks for delivering value back to the business.

One wonders sometimes who exactly is in charge at these companies.  If 86% of the executives surveyed think they’re sucking at content marketing, what are they doing about it? 71% of surveyed marketers say their content features case studies or customer stories, but only 3% admit this is a primary focus of their efforts.  Hello?  How is this any different from the sales guy in the joke?

All marketing is about adding value and solving problems.  Hopefully everything you produce does both but it must do one or the other.  Obviously, as the study concludes, B2B marketers have more work to do when it comes to using content to consistently deliver a valuable exchange of information with prospective buyers.  That starts with a mindset to do just that and part of the process is evaluating what you’re producing in that context.  This last bit is the clearest indicator of that.  The study talks about how the content these businesses are producing:

Focuses on closing the deal, not on building relationships. While more than three-quarters of respondents say they frequently communicate to their customer base, only 5% make this a priority, proving that marketers are too focused on acquisition rather than long-term loyalty.

That’s the issue.  What are they (and you!) going to do about it?

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July 15, 2014 · 11:07 am

I Need To Know

I was reading about a study done by the Nielsen folks which measured how people are influenced by different sources of information.

Tom Petty

Since it’s Tuesday and we usually turn it into TunesDay, the song that popped into my head is Tom Petty‘s “I Need To Know.” OK, maybe not my best musical connection to a business point ever, but I think you’ll see why I chose it.

The Nielsen/inPowered MediaLab study measured the impact of product reviews by users, experts and brands to understand if one form provided a higher impact with consumers than another.  You can read about the study here.  The results show that expert content— credible, third-party articles and reviews—is the most effective source of information in impacting consumers along all stages of the purchase process across product categories. Frankly, the results gave me hope.  After all, many of the marketing tactics I see suggested by some of my less scrupulous peers seem not to have the sort of impact their advocates would suggest.  Advertising disguised as content, fake reviews, or even “unbiased” product information on the company website seem to have been sussed out and dismissed by consumers if one believes the data.  I particularly liked this:

The perceived partiality of the source was especially critical in setting expert content and branded content apart. The third-party element was important to consumers: 50% indicated that they wouldn’t trust a product’s branded website for an unbiased assessment of a product, and 61% were less likely to trust product reviews paid for by the company selling the product. Expert content can provide an unbiased and honest assessment of a product, particularly important during the final stage of purchase consideration.

There are cases such as with video game reviews where user comments and reviews are perceived highly.  Obviously someone who has played the game has the low-level of expertise needed to be reliable and trustworthy.  As the report I read states:

The report concludes by noting that, overall, the research suggests that there is a higher degree of trust from consumers when they are reading content from credible, third-party experts. This trust is demonstrated by the higher lift scores with regard to product familiarity, affinity and purchase intent and its perception of being highly informative and unbiased.

So what the song says is appropriate because consumers do need to know and do a lot of research to find out:

I need to know, I need to know
Cause I don’t know how long I can hold on
If you’re making me wait, if you’re leadin’ me on
I need to know

Even if the above refers to a romantic relationship and not to a purchase.  Then again, isn’t that sort of what a product purchase is?

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