Position marketing and content marketing are so closely related on a strategic level that it’s a wonder more companies don’t see the relationship. It may be that marketing executives are pressed for time or that their education and experience is rooted in tactics, but when I talk to them about positioning, their priorities tend to start with the delivery vehicle. The content they actually deliver seems secondary.

Just take print advertising, for instance. Discussions about positioning revolve too often around where to place the ads and not enough around what’s going in the ads. A lot of money might be spent to put an ad in a high-end magazine because the client wants to be perceived as a high-end brand, but then the ad itself doesn’t carry useful or relevant content.

One of my favorite magazines is Gourmet, because a lot of the advertising also includes recipes, which makes it as useful as the editorial content.  Weber Grill’s ads are a particularly good example of how content marketing is achieved through a print advertising platform. For one thing, they’re not selling ingredients, so the recipes are not designed to blatantly promote their product. Instead, they’re offering useful, relevant content that attracts my attention and causes me to perceive them as a helpful resource.

Effective position marketing requires more than proximity. Standing next to your customers isn’t enough to make you one of them. The lesson from Weber Grill is, you’ve got to speak to customers directly. Your ad must be at least as compelling as the editorial content, or its impact is lost and your money is wasted.