Content Marketing: Your Stories Are Now 'Content'

A great story is a great story — and if you develop the story for your specific audience in an educational and non-promotional way (that also helps you achieve your marketing goals), you have really great ‘content’:  Content can work for your brand on a number of different levels since it can be “sliced and diced” into various formats (written, audio, video) for any number of specific — and measurable — content marketing objectives.  

In fact, a fall 2010 study by MarketingProfs and Junta42 showcased the efficacy of Content Marketing, finding that 9 out of 10 B2B organizations – regardless of company size or industry – use content marketing tactics to achieve their goals.  Further, the 1,100 North American marketers they surveyed were said to have spent over a quarter of their budget on content in 2010 – with 51% of the marketers planning to increase their content marketing spend this year.  The tactics preferred by these marketers, in part, include:

• Social media – excluding blogs (79%)
• Article posting (78%)
• In-person events (62%)
• e-Newsletters (61%)
• Case studies (55%)
• Blogs (51%)
• White Papers (43%)
• Webinars/Webcasts (42%)
• Print magazines (42%)
• Videos (41%)

Why does content marketing have such great appeal?  Because the buyer/specifier you are pursuing is usually hungry for information that solves a problem or helps him/her do their job more efficiently and effectively.  So, if you offer relevant and timely information on a fairly regular basis, it stands to reason that you will become an expert in their eyes – and, more importantly, a valued supplier.

In contrast, individuals today in the B2B space are inundated with promotional messages that do little to to engage them – plus they are just plain tuning it out.  They increasingly seek information on their own, on their own timetable – and primarily through the Internet.

For more information on Content Marketing, check out my White Paper, and take a look at Marketo’s “Creating Content that Sells”  white paper that zeros in on the use of content marketing for demand generation.