Content Marketing

·      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

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/09/19/what-is-content-marketing/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/04/29/content-marketing-and-nonprofits-5-strategies-for-driving-donations/

http://singlegrain.com/blog-posts/content-marketing/content-marketing-funnel-using-different-types-content/