I work at Rasor Marketing Communications, a Cincinnati marketing and communications firm. Content marketing presents itself in some form to us every day whether it is for a client or internally, so I’ve developed quite the relationship with it. Content marketing can be demanding, but there is a secret to it that no webinar or seminar will directly share with you. This secret can optimize your content sharing and make it a lot easier for your company to produce results.
Let’s run through a brief scenario:
Aaron comes into work happy!
Aaron sits down and begins to research industry news, trends and ways to increase online presence. Article after article, blog after blog, all Aaron keeps reading is how a company can leverage the power of “content marketing.”
Aaron gets excited about content marketing and thinks “what a great idea, I can use this idea and look like a company superhero!”
Aaron begins creating content and boosting SEO, social media following and website traffic, but Aaron is slowly running out of content. He begins to find that his social media content is turning into a giant blur of the same thing and it’s becoming harder to find quality content.
Aaron wants to create the company’s own content, but there’s limited budget. Publishing the latest consumer industry trends and the 14 best ways to optimize SEO traffic takes time, money and resources, so this content cannot be produced as frequently.
Aaron panics (only slightly) and thinks; “How the heck am I going to keep up this content sharing marathon I’ve created?”
Aaron brainstorms ways to produce content, attends content marketing webinars and seminars, but keeps hearing topline presentations about content marketing that might fit well for that particular industry, but they don’t apply to Aaron.
Aaron becomes frustrated.
Are you, or have you been, in Aaron’s shoes?
The best case studies are presented from a B2C standpoint, and B2B is often not included. Pinterest webinars share glorified case studies on how well The Home Depot utilized Pinterest and content marketing webinars share how well SparkPeople has created visual content. True, these companies are succeeding, but why? Yes, their products/services seem like a pretty easy puzzle to solve when it comes to content/visual marketing, but why?
These brands dig deeper than the product or service they provide. They dig for an idea deeper than selling fitness ideas or DIY projects.
Their content stems from a unified ideal that the brand is trying to instill and give to its consumers. Jim Stengel, P&G’s former global marketing officer wrote a book on this called “Grow” and the book’s message can easily be applied to content marketing.
Once you understand a company’s ideal, it can be relatively easy to mass produce content for the company that both wins over consumers and positions your brand as a thought leader.
So how can we apply this to a B2B industry and which companies have truly succeeded by applying this idea to their content marketing? Can you name any right now?
Stay tuned next week, when I’ll have part two of this blog for you, with three great examples.