What Is this Content Marketing Thing?
I’ve been practicing content marketing since the late 1990s and the execution is constantly evolving. However, these longstanding rules and values have remained constant throughout the decades.
Content marketing IS:
- Both an art and a science — so don’t hire a tactician or an agency that does not specialize in content marketing to crank out less-than-stellar creative
- A significant, but worthwhile, investment. You won’t have a successful program unless you spend the money to do it right. There are three jobs in content marketing and one person can’t do it all.
- Thought leadership, but never condescending or braggadocio
- Tailored to your brand values, voice and tone, and location, not a generic plug in
- A relationship-building tool, not a quick sale — although if it doesn’t increase brand awareness, attention, and sales it’s not doing its job
- Brand storytelling — best in class work attracts and engages readers
- A fantastic strategy to form long term relationships and loyalty communications
- A long-term strategy, not a short-term one-off transaction
- Content that people actually welcome that provides them something of value: efficiency, education, entertainment, social currency
- Consumer-focused — it’s what customers want to hear, not what you want to tell them
- A lead-generation tool, but so much more than that: a loyalty tool, a customer experience tool, an introduction to your brand
- One of the best ways to establish trust with customers and create awareness for your brand
- Measurable, but it can provide a great deal of value that may not be quantifiable
- One of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings, but is much more than just optimizing your brochure for SEO
- The best way to keep your brand top of mind for current customers and ensure that they are thinking of you when they are ready to repurchase
- Cross-platform and should be executed across blogs, video, social, email, and print
- Continually changing and should be handled by an agency that specializes in the creative process rather than just SEO optimization
Content marketing IS NOT:
- All about YOU
- The only marketing tool in your toolbox
- Only written communications; it should be reflected across all media and channels
- A direct reflection of your internal structure (NEVER NEVER) — customers don’t care how your company is set up. They do care about how you can help them have a great experience.
- A collection of white papers with a gated sign up form on the front end of every single asset. It’s so much more than that. It’s essential to provide some free and valuable information to establish credibility and trust and make people learn more about you and progress down the funnel
- A trend that just started and will soon disappear — I have been running effective content marketing programs since 2000
- A mathematical equation like direct mail or demand generation
- Your primary way to generate leads or sales
- Going to yield 500% or 1,000% return on investment — that’s just a crazy expectation for any marketing program
- Hard-sell or salesy — but it must always articulate your value to your customer and solutions to their problems
- The story YOU want to tell about your company — it’s what your customers want to know and what they think is important and relevant. Not what you want to tell them.
Best in Class
Here are just a few of the best examples of content marketing in the travel industry:
Content Marketing: The Story of Content
Want to know more? Content Marketing Institute has produced a documentary about the history of content marketing with some compelling case studies. It’s 43 minutes long, but definitely worth the time, and features my former employer for the award-winning Lexus global content program. Watch the video
