A brand is essentially emotional and ambiguous, what David Ogilvy called “The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.” That said, there are ways to make the intangible more concrete, and to make sure your brand identity isn’t left to chance.
Many email marketers see requests for more information as ends, but what if none of those requests converted into actual sales?
There are too many whitepapers floating around, and most of them are too broad to be effective. Niche marketing with whitepapers is more likely to produce actual sales.
The better the content on your website or in your newsletter, the more likely people will find out about your company and start to develop a relationship with it. However, that can take a long, long time, and you probably don’t want to wait forever. So don’t discount traditional marketing techniques. They may not be as effective as content marketing in the long-term, but they’re invaluable (and necessary) when you’re just starting to build an audience…unless you have a few years.
Yes, there are successful business models built around aggregated content, but Hearst and other companies aren’t counting on those models. When you think about it, they can’t.
The assumption that readers want one type of content instead of another causes content marketers to make bad strategic decisions. Once a content marketer thinks they know what an audience wants, it doesn’t matter to him whether that content is already available in other forms from other publishers or resources.
Even the smallest business can benefit from content marketing. So why don’t more businesses give it a try? What are they afraid of?
For the cost of an entry-level employee, your small business could create an effective content marketing campaign with the help of an experienced consultant. Content marketing works because prospects and customers want to be educated and entertained.
The unique thing about content marketing is that it helps you reach prospective customers that you would never reach using traditional marketing campaigns. When you produce valuable, relevant content, it will attract an audience that normally wouldn’t give you the time of day.
This post is for owners and CEOs of companies. If you think that marketing is a necessary evil, something you have to do rather than a real opportunity to grow your business, don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for you when business stagnates.
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