What Great Brands Do That Good Brands Don't in Content Marketing
Okay content is easy. Killer content is hard. This nifty eBook shows you the difference, based on our real-world work with dozens of brands. A must-read!
Guest post by Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute Joe evangelizes content marketing around the world through keynotes, articles, tweets and his books, Managing Content Marketing and Get Content Get Customers. If you want to get on his good side, send him something orange.
In my second trip down to SXSW, I had the distinct pleasure of presenting with Jay Baer, my good friend, a CMI consultant, and one of the best social media minds in the game. The title of our session was, “Does Free Content Cannibalize Your Paid Consulting?,” and it focused on content marketing strategies and tactics for professional services companies.
As a good content marketing best practice, we’ve put together the highlights of the presentation below, along with the downloadable SlideShare version.
“Technology is shifting the power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are in control.” – Rupert Murdoch
In the past, there were barriers to entry for any non-media company, let alone paid consultants or professional services companies, to get traction from its content marketing. These were:
Professional services companies need to realize that they are in competition with not only other consultants in your space, but also media companies in your industry, Google, and the billboard down the street. That means we need to develop and distribute content that is as good or better than anything else in our industry to attract and retain customers.
So, we are indeed all publishers today.
There is only one thing that separates the content developed by a media company and content developed by brands like Intel, John Deere, or LEGO: How the money comes in.
For a media company, content is created in order to make money directly off the creation of content through paid content sales (direct purchase of content) or advertising sales (someone sponsors the content that is created, like we see in newspapers and magazines).
For a non-media company, content is created not to profit directly from the content, but, rather, indirectly by attracting and retaining customers.
In all other respects, the content creation activities in both types of companies are generally the same. Both needs to be authentic and credible. This is important to realize, in that non-media brands are competing with traditional media for attention and retention, just like you compete with the other businesses in your field.
In order to be found in search engines, to drive inbound leads for your organization, and to be successful with your social media strategy, you need remarkable storytelling. Simply put, your content marketing strategy must come before your social media strategy.
You would think since more professional services companies are realizing this, and that the barriers to entry are gone, that content marketing success stories for professional services companies would abound. Unfortunately (or fortunately), most paid consultants and services companies now realize that content marketing is really hard.
Recent Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs research shows us that the biggest content marketing challenge for B2B marketers is developing content that truly engages customers and prospects.
For this strategy to work, it takes patience, commitment, and excellence at the craft. Professional services companies need to shift their thinking and realize that, in order to be the leading experts in their industry and get online referrals, they need to be creating consistent, valuable, and compelling content.
Although we do offer some paid sponsorship opportunities as part of the Institute and our premier event, Content Marketing World, the majority of our online leads come in for our consulting practice, headed by Robert Rose.
In our session, Jay called this strategy a “Trojan Horse Effect,” where we look and feel like a media company, all to generate interest around the consulting practice. Jay may indeed be right.
Since launching CMI in May of 2010, we now average nearly 100,000 unique visitors a month on our sites. We have over 70 active content contributors to CMI, producing two posts per day around “how-to” content marketing as well as content marketing news. Over the past three months, we’ve received dozens of qualified inbound leads into our consulting division, six of which are Fortune 500 companies.
The best part is that these companies come to us ready to buy, and our sales cycle has dropped, in some cases, to just a few days.
But while our belief is that giving away your knowledge (as much as possible) leads to substantially more opportunities, to what extent should a professional services company or paid consultant be transparent? Let’s discuss.
Thanks again to everyone who came to the presentation. Here are the slides below to pass around at your discretion.
View more presentations from Jay Baer
Okay content is easy. Killer content is hard. This nifty eBook shows you the difference, based on our real-world work with dozens of brands. A must-read!