The tactic, the myth, the legend. Content marketing!
If you aren't using content marketing to grow your business, shame on you. No, really. It's shameful! A bit harsh? OK, I'll calm down.
Content marketing is one heck of a way to grow your business, if done correctly. Unfortunately, there are some content marketing myths that keep businesses, both B2B and B2C, from actively pursuing and executing a content marketing strategy.
I'm on a mission to BUST those myths here...
Need a more substantive busting of this myth? I understand.
While it may not have always been called content marketing, this form of authentic, educational content for the purpose of attracting and retaining customers has been around for over 100 years.
Need an example? How about 'The Furrow' magazine, published by John Deere starting in the 1800s. I won't lay out the whole history of how the publication got started, but it's a true form of content marketing.
The bottom line is that content marketing or education marketing has been around for a long time. It's not a fad and it's not going away.
In business, we have actual dollar costs and time/resource costs. At the end of the day, it's all dollar cost.
Content marketing is going to take one, the other, or both to be effective. You will need to budget in time and/or money accordingly.
When you consider the cost of content marketing versus traditional advertising (e.g., radio, TV, print, etc...) the silver lining is that you can much more effectively invest your budget because the data is real. Everything is so measureable that you can be much more nimble and see much clearer ROI.
So, what in the heck costs so much?
The knee-jerk reaction of most executives is to say, no problem, our people can handle that. That is until their people don't know where to start, how to steer the ship and how to find ROI.
This approach will either lead to high costs associated with a learning curve through failures, or complete abandonment of the strategy. It often pays to have some help and guidance, especially as you get started.
False! While content marketing certainly helps with your SEO, it's by no means SEO. Search engine optimization goes far beyond creating and sharing content, to architectural issues with your site, linking, mobile friendliness, etc...
Having great content will help with your SEO, IF AND ONLY IF you have the rest of your SEO house in order. They are not one in the same.
Content marketing usually includes blogging, but to reduce your content marketing strategy to just blogging is a mistake.
Effective content marketing goes beyond the blog into video, visual content, webinars, your emails, your proposals/quotes, your sales peoples' materials, and your social media content.
Think beyond blogging. While content marketing almost always includes a blogging effort, a blog does not equal content marketing.
If there's one content marketing myth that drives me nuts, it's when content marketing is looked at as a campaign. Calling any marketing a campaign implies that it has an end date.
Content marketing has no end date. It should have milestones and measurement/adjustment points, but it does not run for 6 months like your magazine ads. Content marketing is a 52-week/year strategy.
There are others but I think I stressed my points on these 5. Content marketing can be the juice that re-energizes your lead generation and sales, if you do it right.
To learn more about content marketing, grab this FREE ebook:
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