Marketing Insights - The Art and Science of Creating Demand

Many marketers wear multiple hats during the course of a quarter (or even a week!): event coordinator, copywriter, collateral order-er, website content refresh-er, data analyzer, and many more. Here’s a new one for your collection: Content Publisher.

With the advent of social media some of the boundaries of marketing are shifting.  It’s not all about features and benefits anymore. Your prospects and customers are now looking for trusted advisers who can provide relevant content in the dialog around a sale. Note that I said around a sale, not just before a sale. If you’re publishing the right content, you can keep that dialog open with your customers after the sale closes.

I recently attended a webinar produced by my friends at Powered and they summed it up nicely:

• Traditional marketing is product/transactional focused and includes punctuated exchanges between you and the prospect.
• Content marketing is focused on the whole lifecycle of a customer and features an ongoing conversation.

Does content marketing replace traditional marketing? No way. Its additive – that means you can’t take off one of your old hats, you just have to add a new one to the pile if you want to pursue this. And if you’re ready to think about moving in this direction, here’s a bare bones road map:

• Start with the Product content that you already have (example: We sell digital cameras)
• Next, move to Category content (example: Here’s how to buy a digital camera)
• Finally, take the leap to Lifestyle content (example: Here’s how to take better pictures on your next trip). [Bonus tip! Are some of your customers producing content that you can repurpose?]

Do you have good examples of any sites that you regularly go to for lifestyle content?

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[Photo credit: binkmeisterrick via Flickr]