·
What is content marketing?
o definition
o types of content
o advantages & disadvantages
You’ve just
heard someone mention “content marketing” and you get the idea you should
already know what it is, but you’re too embarrassed to ask anyone.
Congratulations, this post is for you.
The Content
Marketing Institute, an online resource for information on all
things content marketing related, defines content marketing thusly:
„Content marketing is
a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and
consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the
objective of driving profitable customer action.“
The key
word here is “valuable.” It’s what changes this definition from one that could
describe almost any form of advertising or marketing. You can tell if a piece
of content is the sort that could be part of a content marketing campaign if
people seek it out, if people want to consume it, rather than avoiding
it.
So was VW’s 2014 “Game Day” commercial, which has
been viewed on YouTube almost 18 million times as of the writing of this post,
an ad, or content marketing? The answer is it’s both, depending on how it’s
received by each individual who is exposed to it. The same will apply to any
piece of content marketing you create, depending on whether the recipient
received value from it or not. Of course the goal is to provide as much value
from your content marketing to as much of your target audience as possible.
Five
Content Marketing Examples
There are
as many types of content marketing as there are types of content–far too many
to cover here. My intent is to give you an introduction to content marketing
and get you thinking like a content marketer so you’ll see the opportunities
all around you. Soon you’ll be coming up with 50 content marketing ideas every
day. You won’t be able to stop seeing opportunities to create content. Here are
five examples to help your mind start percolating.
Infographics. These are generally long, vertical
graphics that include statistics, charts, graphs, and other information. If you
need some examples, here are 197 infographics
on the topic of content marketing curated by Michael Schmitz, head of
Content Lab at Publicis, Munich. Infographics can be effective in that if one
is good it can be passed around social media and posted on websites for years.
You can get a professionally designed infographic by hiring a contractor on a
site like oDesk or if you want to
remove some of the risk you can go with a company like Visua.ly. A decent infographic will usually
cost you at least $1,000 to have designed, but can cost several thousand
dollars if you are hiring a contractor or agency to include strategy and
planning, research, copywriting, and design. There is also the matter of
promoting that infographic to bloggers and the media. Or you could set up a
board on Pinterest and curate infographics on a topic related to your business.
That is also a form of content marketing, and it costs nothing but your time.
Hey, it worked for Michael.
Webpages. What’s the difference between a
normal webpage and a webpage that is content marketing? Consider The Beginner’s Guide to SEO
from Moz, a provider of SEO related tools and resources. This resource, offered
for free, has been viewed millions of times, bringing in countless customers
who otherwise might never have stumbled across Moz and the services they offer.
Or take a look at a case study
from the design firm Teehan+Lax. Most case studies are boring. Their case
studies are fascinating. That’s the difference between simply putting content
on your website, and content marketing.
Podcasts. Michael Hyatt, author of the
best-selling book Platform: Get
Noticed in a Noisy World, practices what he preaches. His “This is Your Life” podcast
is downloaded 250,000 times each month. As Hyatt elaborates on his blog post 4 Reasons You
Should Consider Launching Your Own Podcast, “A podcast gives you
visibility in a completely different world—primarily iTunes. I have had scores
of new people say they had never heard of me until they stumbled onto me in
iTunes.” Hyatt gives valuable information and advice in his podcast–all for
free. But that podcast leads to more sales of his books, signups for his
courses, and requests for him as a speaker.
Videos. Gary Vaynerchuk is a master of content
marketing using online video, just take a look at his YouTube channel. He
got his start creating videos to promote his family’s wine store and through
those videos and other online marketing he eventually grew it to a $45M empire.
Videos and podcasts are a largely untapped form of content marketing because
people think it’s expensive and hard. But with the falling cost of professional
grade equipment creating high quality video and audio content is easier than
ever. Amateur video content marketing has been used to sell blenders, launch new dental products,
and market Hong Kong visa consulting services.
What video could you throw together for your company that might change your
fortunes overnight? It might be easier than you think.
Books. Like movies, people often think of
books as selling themselves, but savvy marketers don’t sell books just to sell
books, they sell books as marketing tools. Michael Port’s sales manual Book Yourself Solid is
a great read for entrepreneurs, salespeople, and marketers, and while I’m sure
Port enjoys selling his book, the book is a tool for driving customers to his
coaching and speaking services. Although with self-publishing it’s easier than
ever to publish a book, there is still the perception that it’s difficult and
that only reputable professionals can publish a business book. Publish your
own, and even if people don’t read it you can still use it as a form of content
marketing every time you’re introduced as “Author of…”
Those are
just a few examples of content marketing. I could also have mentioned white
papers, ebooks, apps, public speaking, presentations,
and blogs. Entire books have been written on using each of these in content
marketing efforts.
·
content Marketing Strategy
Content
marketing is of course, all the rage. No shortage of opinions, articles and
other assorted collateral abound as essentially the entire marketing
world looks to jump on the latest bandwagon that is content marketing.
And rightly
so when you consider the impact a well run content marketing strategy can have
on a given brand’s bottom line.
Driving
donations has always been one of the primary challenges of nonprofits, no
matter their industry or purpose. Thankfully, the proliferation of new
technology has given these organizations more freedom than ever before in
constructing effective, responsive content marketing strategies that will
actually drive new donations.
Best of
all, they have a wider available selection of payment providers, ensuring that
they will actually receive as large a portion of donated funds as possible.
Here are 5
specific strategies nonprofits can use to improve their bottom line when it
comes to donations:
1. Have
a plan – You know the old saying, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail?” Of
course you do. Perhaps most importantly of all, take some time to develop
a comprehensive content strategy and plan that spans several months, and then
really stick to it for the duration. Laying out all your potential ideas and
strategies in advance gives you plenty of time to refine and adapt them later,
and you will never be left scrambling for content at the last moment.
2. Utilize
constantly changing themes – Every week or month, depending on budgetary
concerns and the total volume of content your organization is able to create, pick
a few specific points to really focus on in your official communications.
Create content around these specific issues and then monitor the results;
eventually you will find the issues which help drive the largest volume of
donations for your organization.
3. Use
your staff – While most businesses ban their employees from spending time
on social media while at work, you can consider taking the opposite approach.
If your staff members use Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest, or other popular
social media platforms, consider asking them to tap into your business feed.
This both adds a personal touch to your organization and also potentially
exposes you to new faces at the same time.
4. Watch
the data – Consider employing Google Alerts to stay on
top of what people are saying about your organization, and every few months you
should evaluate which portions of your content strategy are meeting goals and
which need improvement. Keeping an eye on the solid data and metrics you are
able to garner is crucial to adapting your donations strategy in the medium and
long term.
5. Choose
the right payment processor – Last but not least, ensure that you have
selected the right payment processor to accept your donations. Depending on
which platforms you have outreach on, collection and receipt fees on your charitable
contributions can vary dramatically.
Example:
Take the
example of debit cards; according to Randy Hayashi – COO of PaymentDepot.com, an online payment
processing company that frequently works with nonprofits, “These days, a lot of
donations are given by debit cards, so nonprofits have to find the cheapest
option to receive them that way, because a standard processor will take about 3%
of the total amount. The reality is that debit cards should process for
0.05%. Adding a percentage on top of that just doesn’t seem right.”
Unfortunately,
it is the reality should you select the wrong processor to work with.
Keeping
these five simple strategies in mind when designing and implementing your
content strategy can do wonders for the amount and volume of donations your
nonprofit will ultimately be able to drive.
It will
prove extremely important for nonprofits, even more so than other business models,
to adapt with the times and successfully make the shift to managed and curated
content distributed over social media networks to maximize their impact.
Another content marketing strategy model:
·
How to create effective content for your audience?
o customer relationship, -engagement, -loyalty
o brand awareness
o examples for effective content marketing
If you’ve
ever slogged your way through reading a piece of marketing and only finished
reading because you had to, then you’ve experienced bad content marketing. When
I speak to companies about content marketing I tell them that content is good
if they genuinely want to read it. Content is great if they’re willing
to pay to read it. If you want to see great examples of content, just
look at what you’ve paid to read, watch, or listen to lately. If you watched
The Lego Movie this year, you saw one of the greatest examples of content
marketing to date. Oh, you thought they made that movie in order to sell movie
tickets? Think again. That was a 100 minute toy commercial, and rather than
using a DVR to skip it you paid good money to watch it. Is it any coincidence
that Lego recently
leapfrogged Mattel, the creators of Barbie, to become the largest
toy company in the world? You may not have the budget to make a feature film to
promote your company, but you can still give potential customers valuable
information.
The #1
Secret of Content Marketing
Add value.
That’s the secret. It’s not really a secret at all. We’ve already talked about
it throughout this piece. Although when you look at some of the marketing
companies engage in you wonder if they’re purposely avoiding the obvious. We
skip advertising when it provides little to no value. If you want to learn
about advertising that doesn’t get skipped, find a skateboarder and ask him if
you can watch him look through a skateboard magazine. You’ll see that he spends
as much time looking at the ads as he does looking at the articles and photos.
Or check out The Berrics website. Much
of the content is advertisements, but skaters don’t skip these videos, they
watch them just like they watch the other videos, because they’re getting the
value they want–good skating. As a skater I’d like to say skateboard companies
pioneered content marketing decades ago, but I know they were only doing what
came naturally, and selling more product was secondary to the fun of creating
videos and magazines. If you want to hire someone onto your marketing team who
understands content marketing intuitively, hiring a skateboarder might not be a
bad step.
If you’re
not sure how you can add value through content marketing, ask your existing
customers what kind of content you can produce that would be helpful to them
now, or would have been helpful to them when they were looking for your product
or service. They’ll tell you.
Sources
