Media | Cracking the Code of Internet Marketing Strategies

Why Content Marketing Can Get You More Customers

Content is critical in today’s marketing. With so much competition you have to be able to differentiate your product from your competitors by creating unique content.

As a business professional, experts, marketer or even just a blogger who’s trying to navigate the changing landscape of this digital media evolution, you must understand that the routes connecting customers, companies, products, and services are becoming more unpredictable, complex and disruptive.

If you want to survive and thrive you need to realize that every aspect of every business is increasingly carried out through the media.

This is basically a revolution in communication on a scale not seen since the invention of the printing press.

From advertising and marketing to sales and customer service, everything in business is more likely to happen on a computer or mobile device connected to the Internet. All businesses must learn to think like media companies and become trusted curators and providers of content across all new media platforms.

And with this real-time dynamic platform that’s changing how people consume media, it also brought a new level of distribution, replication, sharing and the value of content marketing.

Here are 3 keys to remember when creating your content marketing strategy.

Customers Are in Control

Everything is converging into an interlaced network of content and this means you have every opportunity and chance of making the headlines tomorrow or going viral on YouTube.

You could fall to the same threats facing the TV networks, newspapers and magazines.

What threats are we talking about here?

Think about what happens when you flip to a lousy TV show or scan across a boring ad in a magazine? The same thing that happens to an uninteresting online banner – it gets tuned out!

Your customers can post feedback on your blog, review your service vie Yelp or complaint via Twitter.

The Internet has provided your customer much more leverage and power to take control of the relationship they have with your business.

In order to be successful in growing your business, you must walk the walk and deliver whatever you promise in your marketing.

In fact, you can hire top marketers to drive traffic to your website but if you sell a crappy product or have poor customer service people can read about it instantly hurting your reputation and bottom line.

It’s not just about setting up your products or services as the answer to the challenges your prospects and customers are facing, that’s just the marketing part of it.

Your solution simply has to work.

Content is Marketing

As marketers you can use social media as a way to get you message out which allows you to position yourself or your business.

Just like newspapers and magazines, you get readers to react and respond to your social media content.

But don’t confuse medium and the message. Social media is just a vehicle (mostly push marketing) to carry out your content you still need to create engaging content, magnetic copies and effective headlines.

Good publications retain customers and get more advertisers because they’re able to add and keep subscribers consistently.

That’s the beauty of subscription based business model; you’re exchanging attention for revenue so the key is keep coming up with relevant and interesting content.

Keep in mind that all the value starts with the content and the media simply being the delivery mechanism.

Whether you’re writing a book, content for your marketing, or a blog post you want people to act on, the key is to give your customers what they need to make decisions and take actions to get the result they want.

There is no difference between content and marketing.

The quality of the content and its ability to give people the action steps and the information they need to be effective is critical to your success.

Relationship Sells

The difference between how an expert thinks and how a marketer thinks can be the key that’s holding you back from growing your business.

Yes, content is marketing and marketing is sales.

And great marketing is great salesmanship. But what most business professionals, coaches and gurus often forget about salesmanship is that it’s built on trusting relationships.

And in today’s over-communicated digital world, trust is already hard to come by because there is already a huge distrust in general information that’s out there so earning trust should be your top priority as a way to start building long-lasting relationships with your customers.

In fact according to the Gallup poll, a record 57% of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly

Distrust in U.S. Media Edges Up to Record High

Real relationship requires a two-way conversation – a receive and response, response and response mechanism. Don’t make assumptions on what your customers want, hear what they’re saying and listen.

Look at all the top publications like The Economist, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, you’ll find that they all have strong relationship with their audience because they truly understand and give their customers what they want and what they need.

Bottom line, you need to do everything you can to understand what your customers want and the most effective way is to truly focus on getting your customer’s perceived needs met by becoming the customer.

The take away: Unlike the old days where a powerful distributor can help you boost sales due to the lack of distribution channels and competitors (think TV with only 3 channels to watch).

Today there are thousands of distributors and having a large distribution channel will not overcome the true value of your content.

Experts are so used to broadcasting and receiving on what the customers need based on their professional experience that they often just want to get to the end – stuffing down what the customers need (with good intention) asking for the sale.

However; in today’s hyper-connected world, content marketing is the new new thing.

If you want to get more customers you must learn to leverage content marketing and get inside the minds of your customer.

Lately I’ve been researching on how brands are using social media to improve their business.

While doing a bit of thinking on social branding, I recalled a conversation I had with a friend that just launched a web2.0 startup business.

The one advice I gave was to launch it as soon as possible without worrying too much on branding.

The idea is to deploy your initial idea and allow your users to tell you how to evolve the product.

That’s how majority of the new web startups utilize crowdsourcing with an emphasis on the power users then really listen to what they have to say.

The brand development aspect of a startup isn’t as important as the initial user experience.

It got me thinking about business models and how more and more companies are finding it necessary to transform their business model due to the economic crisis.

In addition, the shift in consumer behavior will cause brands to adjust to a fundamentally altered playing field.

In most cases brands will find it hard to transform themselves unless they’ve already got a flexible, dynamic long-term strategy that embraces change.

This means dismantling silo culture within the organization while fostering cross-functional collaboration to spark fresh thinking.

Brands that have this fluid approach are more likely to adapt to change through uncertainty.

Brand Fluidity Creates Advantage

In my previous article “The Emerging Trend of Hybrid Marketing Model,” I pointed out that hypercompetition is no longer allowing businesses to have a sustained competitive advantage, so the idea approach for brands is to have an agile business model.

This happens consistently in the tech industry where every 3-5 years technology evolves and often improves (1.0 to 2.0) leading to a need for adoption.

The key is to stay flexible and scalable because products, services, and business models will evolve over time as knowledge becomes ubiquitous which leads to the path of commoditization altogether.

Just look at the costs of electronics, web hosting, printing, or even internet bandwidth have dropped in price in the past 10 years. In fact, not only are they cheaper, you get more for less even with inflation.

By having an nimble business model, it’s possible to build brand momentum that has relevance in addressing consumer needs.

And relevance is a good predictor of short and long-term success.

However, more focus should be put on proven short-term tactics that aligns with long-term goals.

Short-Termism Is Not Sustainable

The eruption of social media has forced brands to incorporate this new tactical tool as part of the overall brand strategy playbook.

This is indicative of the validity from companies like Intel, IBM, eBay and Wall Street Journal that have moved quickly to publish social media guidelines for their employees.

In a structured brand ecosystem, social media is an unproven short-term scheme because it will continue to evolve as an ongoing, living tool that facilitates real time dynamic conversations.

I’m not denying the success that some brands are having in social media but in general most brands are still trying to figure out the arc of its trajectory in pursing the adequate usage of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even blogs.

Brands that quickly jump on the bandwagon without defining the desire outcome are focusing on short-term solutions that are simply band-aids not cures.

Coupled with a lack of attention to the overall strategy, fundamentals, and conventional approaches to long-term value, it’s simply not a sustainable model.

What’s important is to create an unambiguous structure for brand fluidity while maintaining energy and involvement throughout the organization.

The transformation extends well beyond tactics. Brands must become more engaging by being more social, this means building meaningful relationships that resonates with their audience.

Social Media Accelerates Upstream Reciprocity

Every relationship has a purpose especially on the increasing social web. What social media demands is trust and authenticity.

I see it as doing what you promise and be consistent especially in transactional business. In a recent article “Altruism Repays the Best-Connected Individuals” from Technology Review published by MIT, stated that:

Unselfish behavior spreads through society in a way that most benefits the “hubs” in the network.

The article basically illustrated how being unselfish will benefit you at the end because those who have been helped will likely to go on to help others, then spreads through a group creating the upstream reciprocity phenomenon.

There is actually an entire study done with formulas to support the phenomenon and you can go read the “Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude” analysis from U.S. National Library of Medicine if you like.

I found the information fascinating because it mimics the structure of a social network.

Apply this concept to social media and you’ll realize that you’re the red dot A and everyone else is dots B and C. Imagine altruism can be any form of your direct or indirect influence in social media.

It could be the content on your blog, tweets you’ve answered, or even products and services you’ve sold (ebooks, videos, webinars, web design, copywriting, consulting, etc).

The takeaway is social media accelerates both upstream and downstream reciprocity especially for reputable individuals.

In business, the act of unselfishness is another form of the Freemium business model. And this immediately hit home with me on how social media is transforming the way companies are doing business.

You can no longer neglect your reputation online because that’s where the conversation about you is taking place.

Social Transformation

Social media has evolved to be the hub for instant and viral reciprocation for any organization’s internal structure and external engagement.

The power of its reach and the openness of its platform commands the kind of transparency that challenges your core value proposition.

It really doesn’t depend on the wisdom of gurus or experts for its dynamism.

That’s the primary reason it will almost certainly withstand the “it’s a fed” challenge.

Social media is transforming businesses and it matters.

From Twitter to Facebook and every web2.0 tool in between, consumers are more and more concerned with the integrity and intent of the brands they interact with, while employees are less afraid to expose how companies work internally.

The challenge for marketers is not to merely appear engaged, but to actually be engaged – to live up to the promise and deliver.

I hope this is helpful in uncovering the implications of social media in business, it’s important to identify the fundamentals and rethink the overall picture.

I know I haven’t analyze any of the specific social media tools in detail, but you can simply conduct a Twitter or LinkedIn search to find every possible tactic and how-to’s out there by the so-called “experts.”