Dave’s Take

I have been reading and hearing a lot about content marketing lately and how important it is for successful online advertising. Just what is content marketing? Basically, content marketing or aka, inbound marketing, is the practice of intentionally creating content that draws people to your business or service from other locations. In short, it is marketing focused on getting found by potential customers.

Content Marketing differs from traditional marketing in that with outbound marketing, businesses are trying to find customers. This is the basic strategy of channels like direct mail, print, outdoor, TV and spam. While these are what old school advertising is comprised of, they are as we all know, very wasteful and inefficient. For example, to get ten interested customers to a car lot, a dealership will advertise to thousands of people who are not in the market for a car and therefore will pay little or not attention to the campaign, regardless of how good it may be.

Besides being based upon a “shotgun approach,” outbound marketing is becoming less and less effective for many reasons, including technology. Technical innovations are advancing to the point of making old school advertising obsolete. Innovations like caller ID, TiVo, Do Not Call lists and spam blockers are slowly but surely changing the way the world markets and advertises. With consumers under more time management pressure than ever before, the idea of someone forcing them to sit through even a thirty-second ad is abhorrent. Fill their inbox with unwanted spam and not only aren’t they buying your product, they are hating your product.

With content marketing, you start with interested customers and then try to direct them to buy from you by carefully channeling them to your business through a myriad of techniques. Producing a video for YouTube that features your product is one way companies are using inbound marketing. Viewers see the video, like the video and then visit your sight where they view your product with less skepticism. If done properly, viewers will be unaware that any advertising is even taking place.

Another proven way to successfully content market is through social media. Blogs, communities, chat rooms and individual postings are a great way to use nuance and attitude to draw qualified customers. An obvious avenue of effective inbound marketing is SEO. Proper search engine optimization makes the search for your product or business that much easier, which is what content marketing is all about. Building your site with solid SEO techniques and making your inbound links as optimal as possible are sure to maximize your search engine rankings. There are dozens of techniques to enhance your inbound campaigns. They can be found, not surprisingly, on the Internet and in blogs, discussions and communities. Review them and put them to work for you as soon as possible.

Remember, content marketing has to be worthwhile on its own to be successful. Viewers shouldn’t be aware that any advertising or marketing is even taking place. If it doesn’t survive the smell test, it probably won’t deliver. But if done properly, content marketing is not only cheaper and more effective than traditional channels, but by empowering your customers, you will create a customer loyalty program that will last for years. And that is crucial to any effective marketing campaign.