Trend Toward Content Based Marketing

In my Small Business Trends Radio program on Tuesdays, I do a short five-minute segment where I highlight a trend that affects the small business market, called “Today’s Trend.”

The topic of today’s segment related particularly well to B2B marketing and reaching small business owners and managers, so I am reproducing the full text of my segment here (the radio show version was abbreviated):

Today’s Trend is: The Trend Toward Content-Based Marketing.

In other words, it’s about using content to get visibility and publicity, generate leads, and extend your brand.

People — customers, prospects and the public — want to read information, not sales pitches. If you give them information they find valuable, they are more likely to listen. They will be much more receptive to hearing about your products and services,  if you engage their imagination and offer information they find helpful toward solving a problem they are encountering.  In fact, they will WANT to hear about what you are selling at that point. 

Not only can content serve as the basis for effective marketing, but it can serve as a form of public relations. By displaying your expertise in a public forum, you gain visibility for yourself and your company. And if you do it online, you also gain the benefit of search engine optimization/marketing, as well.

This trend, of course, is perfect for consultants, business service providers, professionals such as accountants and attorneys, and others who sell to small businesses. It’s also perfect for small business owners and managers wishing to stand out from the crowd and develop a higher profile. And it’s a technique often used by companies with technology products or complex services where it is important to educate and inform why the product or service is needed.

There are a number of reasons for this trend toward content-based marketing. First, people are weary of being overloaded with advertisements — content stands out from the sea of ads today.  Second, media companies are pulling back as the industry consolidates and they need low-cost sources of content. Instead of sending a journalist to interview a company executive, many are looking for company executives to write guest columns. Third, new tools allow you to quickly publish and spread your content, in a way that is cost-effective. Fourth, user-generated media is big. People hunger to read what other individuals — and not just major publications — have to say on a topic. And they trust what other business people have to say.

I’d like to cover four different techniques or vehicles that are inexpensive and can be employed as part of a content-based marketing strategy:

• White papers — Today’s white papers are more than advertorials. They are often how-tos — specific documents well worth saving and going back to. A good white paper can establish your credibility and goes a long way toward establishing you or the even the company as an expert on the topic. If you can get other sites to distribute it as a free download, you extend your reach even further. And a white paper with an excellent descriptive title can be a carrot to generate leads, if you have the reader fill out a contact form in order to receive the white paper.

• Press releases — Press releases today are written for search engines and for end customers, more so than for the press. Today’s press releases should be distributed online, and if done properly can get picked up by online news outlets such as Google News, where customers and prospects find them and read about your company, your product, your service. Indirectly, the media sees them, too, in the same online venues the rest of us frequent. So it can have benefit for generating press, but what you really are getting is online visibility. When a press release is treated like any other online content and is properly optimized with keyword-rich text and links back to a website, it brings lasting traffic value. It adds to your own personal Google number (number of citations in Google for your name) or that of your business.

• Articles in publications – Look around you. Many media companies are cutting back. People are reading more online, and they expect content to be free. What that means is that media companies are looking for articles submitted by professionals and experts in a particular topic. It’s a lower cost way for them to generate content. This translates into a great opportunity for you. Write articles and submit them to publications. You get to display your expertise and impress prospects and potential clients. It’s prestigious because you appear in a media publication.  And it helps your online branding and search engine visibility.  Insist on a byline and a short “About the Author” block at the end, with a link back to your website — most media publications readily agree. Writing articles can be used to get visibility in trade publications, business magazines, technology publications, Chamber of Commerce newsletters and various online publications.

• Self-published articles – Blogs are being talked about everywhere, and it’s for a reason. An excellent, fast and low-cost way to bring attention for your business is to publish your expertise yourself by writing on a blog. Others will find the posts and  link to them. Eventually your blog posts get picked up in the search engines, and the indexed posts may send traffic your way for years afterwards.  Also, a blog is a backdoor to media coverage. It’s well known that journalists monitor blogs for experts to interview and quote for articles. You can even repurpose blog postings for your email newsletter and reach out to a wider audience.  Finally, blogs have the advantage of RSS feeds. The search engines are indexing feeds quickly and giving them special treatment, and more and more people are signing up to get RSS updates on mainstream sites such as your personalized Google homepage or at My Yahoo. When you publish your message yourself, you can control your own destiny and not be at the mercy of the press or have to engage in an expensive advertising war.

Bottom line:  if you have any ability to write clearly and succinctly, get on board with this trend toward content-oriented marketing.  And if you don’t like to write or don’t have the time, then hire people in your organization who do.  Or hire a freelance copywriter or ghost writer to draft the occasional article for you.  It’s one of the lowest cost — and today, one of the most effective — ways to market in the B2B space.

And that concludes Today’s Trend.