Want more B2B deals closed? Check out Autoklose, our partner company. 🚀

Exchange Leads

Grow your leads. Grow your sales. Grow your business.

Content Marketing: Fact versus Fiction - Exchange Leads

Content Marketing: Fact versus Fiction

By

Marketing’s Future: The Importance of Integrating Content Marketing into your Business

Hello, Exchange Leads readers.  As you may have noticed the subject for this blog, content marketing, was on our list of trends to watch out for in 2013 and 2014, respectively.  In this blog, we will discuss, why incorporating content marketing into your marketing strategy is so important according to industry professionals.

 

First Some Statistics

Content Marketing Statistics from Sprkd.com:

  • 63% of companies said posting content on social media has increased marketing effectiveness;
  • 6 out of 10 Twitter and Facebook users are more likely to recommend a brand they follow;
  • Companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links;
  • 67% of Twitter users buy from a brand they follow;
  • 55% of blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors
  • 70% of customers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than advertising

 

What is ‘Content Marketing’ really?

“Consumers have shut off the traditional world of marketing.  They own a DVR to skip television advertising, often 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).  Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute, and that there has to be a better way.”

This excerpt comes from the Content Marketing Institute’s (hereinafter referred to as “CMI”) article, “What is Content Marketing?”

CMI defines ‘Content Marketing’ as:

“…[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… .”  The purpose of content marketing is to “…attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior.”

Basically, one interacts with one’s customers and prospects, absent attempts to try and sell or promote products and/or services – native advertising/marketing (no interruption, no break in concentration, emphasizing fluidity and the education of the reader).  The belief is if businesses provide consumers and/or prospect buyers with informative material, useful material and transferable material, businesses will be awarded with both “business and loyalty.”  This belief continues to be proven.

As CMI writes: “Good content marketing makes a person stop…read…think … behave…differently,” all a part of the marketing technique ‘creating a personal relationship’ or CPR, which involves, as stated above, talking about everything, but why you are really at the person’s door or why you are providing the consumer with information that does not appear, at least superficially, to be related to your business and/or larger commercial responsibilities and activities (the power of suggestion).  Thus, gaining the consumer’s trust, and managing your brand’s reputation in one setting.

 

So why should I incorporate content marketing into my advertising strategy?

  • Content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy;
  • Search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content;
  • Successful PR strategies address issues readers care about, not their business;
  • For PPC to work, you need great content behind it;
  • Content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads; and,
  • Content strategy is part of most content marketing strategies.[1]

 

  • Has become the most efficient and effective way for small and large businesses to increase their online presence (businesses need more than a company website).
  • Businesses can interact with their customers and vice versa with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, utilizing blog posts, pictures, videos, surveys, infographics (my personal favourite) – businesses can promote native advertising and have open, non-committal dialogue with their customers about everything but the business’ products and services, thus providing somewhat of an objective perspective and objective experience.
  • Reputation Management and Brand Management: changing and thus controlling perceptions and behavior (brand loyalty) of your business
  • CPR: Relationships built on trust
    • Gives your company a voice
    • CRM & Customer Satisfaction: Observe, Maintain, Manage
    • Open line of communication[2]

 

  • Content Marketing Can Help with Growth
    • Drives traffic to your business’ website
    • Builds customer base
      • Those who visit your website will most likely visit your blogs and videos (supposing you have links to same on your website, directing traffic to the blogs and videos and vice versa – complete cross-referencing techniques)
      • Content (if good, and also if not so good) will most likely be shared on social media (remember our discussion about Google analytics and SEO and the advent of both hashtags being the new SEO kid on the block, as well as being able to track one’s shares on social media thus performing, improving, tracking and measuring who and where your content has reached as well as why and how, through massive developments in G-analytics.

 

  • This can also be tracked if your content goes viral: Ice Bucket Challenge, for example, has raised more than 100 million dollars, without a marketing campaign, and purely through content sharing and videos going viral: having Leo DiCaprio and Michael Jordan has not hurt though.
  • Content Marketing Helps Establish you as an Industry Thought Leader
    • I discuss this possibility in another blog I put together for another company, which you can read here.
    • Quality and informative blog posts, can afford you the opportunity to be seen as an industry professional, experts and amateurs should look to for guidance, direction and answers.
    • Can be a great way of beating out your competition (again, brand management, product management, and reputation management).
    • If you are a small company or start-up, but a small company or start-up creating beautiful content, people – customers and investors alike – will start to see you not as an SB or start-up but rather as a “somebody”…. “a contenda” (On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando – great pop culture reference there). It could be something similar to a David/Goliath moment.
  • Content Marketing Can Help you Learn More About your Industry
    • Quite useful for smaller businesses and startups, as they may be relatively new to the industry which they are trying to break into
    • Content marketing naturally involves QUITE a bit of research. Thus, as building a start-up from the ground up is a learning curve in and of itself, content marketing and its inherent research requirements will consequently give you an opportunity to learn from others and teach yourself.
    • You will naturally receive immediate feedback (the good and the bad, mind you, you can also take a lesson from the good and the bad or rather what you like and do not like from other professional content writing and apply (or avoid) the same to your own content creation, content marketing, content writing ventures).
  • Content Marketing Can Help Build a Community
    • If you are a smaller business or start-up, naturally or at the beginning you will have a smaller follower base, which is not necessarily a death knell.
      • You can nurture the small community (remember our discussion on lead generation regarding quality leads versus quantity leads) and create a niche community which you can continue to build and attempt to grow into a larger community who is brand loyal because you started off small and grew naturally (remember brand management, product management and reputation management).
    • Content Marketing can Help Build Trust for your Business
      • If you give your customer high-quality, informative content via native advertising, by extension you may have, through CPR and the Power of Suggestion, have participated in something similar to trendjacking or newsjacking – lending the credibility and perception of quality of information you provide to that of your products, your brand and your reputation.[3]

 

Content Marketing Myths:

Now, we turn everything we just said on its proverbial head.

From ConvinceandConvert.com

  • Your customers are not social
  • Social is not measurable
  • Social is for creating new customers
  • You should ignore negative feedback
  • Social will kill email
  • Company channels are your most important social assets
  • Content creates thought leadership
  • Content marketing and social media are separate initiatives
  • Your content marketing should be about your products and services
  • Too much content will give way your secrets
  • The rules are different in B2B

From ContentMarketingInstitute.com

  • Content Marketing is inexpensive
  • It’s best to outsource your content to the lowest bidder, as anyone can write
  • Content marketing is the “flavor of the month, and it won’t last.”
  • Content Marketing is an independent discipline.
  • Content Marketing is the same thing as SEO.
  • Content Marketing is the same thing as social media.
  • Content Marketing needs to be traced to a sale in order to be considered successful.
  • Content Marketing is only blog posts.
  • You can plan to create content that will “go viral.”
  • Content Marketing is about campaigns.
  • Content Marketing is a quick, easy win.
  • More content equals higher reach.
  • Content Marketing only exists in the world of print.
  • In B2B, your target is a “business” rather than a person.
  • Content Marketing is just filler.
  • Content Marketing is only about creating content.
  • Content Marketing is not different than any other marketing.
  • Content Marketing won’t help the sales team.

 

Again from ContentMarketingInstitute.com

  • “Great stuff” isn’t enough
    • You need unique and well-marketed stuff
  • Dethrone the king and put him to work
    • Content isn’t king, it’s a product.
  • Don’t let your content become a commodity
    • Try and prevent information overload.
  • Avoid premature publication
    • You don’t need a plethora of blog posts per week or per month (quantity vs. quality)
    • Proofread, spell check, grammar-check. Make sure the product is error-free and ready to be published.
  • Consistency trumps quantity
    • Aim to create quality content once a week and be consistent with your postings, rather than trying to post several (quantity) posts, where only maybe hand-full are actually good and worthy public consumption.
    • Google analytics presently rewards businesses which publish original, quality content by allowing those businesses to show up in search-engine rankings.
  • Buyers bounce around on their journey
    • Producing content based on traditional stages in the buying process are outdated, or will eventually become so.
  • Sometimes, it is about the product
    • Product promotion and product content play an enormous role in the entire content marketing strategy.
      • “[Be] careful to distinguish the difference between education / helpful content that’s used to engage with the audience and to build credibility and top-of-mind awareness, and product-based content that’s used to close the business at the bottom of the funnel.”
    • Check your production pretension
      • You don’t need to be bougie (pronounced boo’-she)
      • Often folks just want something simple and to the point
        • Thus, you need to implement KISS vs. KILL, and KISS it.
          • KISS = Keep It Short & Simple
          • KILL = Keep It Long & Lengthy
            • The more you say, the less they want. They less you say, the more they want.  People have 30 attention spans.
          • Increase your social acceptance
            • Do not underestimate the importance of social media and keep an open mind about new platforms.
          • Even epic needs the right support
            • “In content marketing, there’s nothing more painful than spending hours or even days on a piece of valuable content, just to see it fall” flat on its face. You need to market your marketing.

 

Social Media Tips to Include in Your Content Marketing Strategy

  • Share messages at optimal times;
  • A/B test on social networks to see what resonates with your audience;
  • Optimize messages to each individual social network;
  • Repurpose great content; and,
  • Gather insight from your audience for content marketing ideas.[4]

Additional Reads on Myths for Content Marketing

Read Why Insourcing is the Next Social Media and Content Marketing Trend – Tapping into and Unlocking & Managing the Knowledge of their best features: their Employees.

Additional Reads:

 

 

Blog by Deleone Downes at Exchange Leads

 

To hear more about Exchange Leads, subscribe to our newsletter on our website (exchangeleads.co), or follow us on Twitter @exchangeleads.

[1] http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/

[2] http://sprk-d.com/content-marketing-101-content-marketing-important/

[3] http://www.statementagency.com/blog/2014/08/5-reasons-why-content-marketing-is-important-for-small-businesses-and-start-ups

[4] http://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-tips-to-enhance-your-content-marketing/