It looks like faux content marketing has won the game of buzzwords with online marketers. This is not an “SEO thing” — just about everyone from ad agencies to freelance writers now call themselves content marketers.
Language naturally evolves and words and expressions take on new meanings, so this is a normal progression in usage. I wouldn’t usually take an interest in this kind of misapplication of an expression except that all the content marketers are really confused about what they are supposed to be doing.
Of course, anyone who used to be a link builder who is now a content marketer is suspect: they may be trying to build links with their content (mostly through infographics, widgets, and guest posting). Google’s recent crackdown on My Blog Guest may send a shockwave through the ranks of content marketers but I don’t think it will do much damage to this self-imposed paradigm.
Real Content Marketing Creates New Demand
As I have pointed out in the past, if you are really engaged in content marketing then you are finding new audiences who are unfamiliar with your (clients’) brand and introducing them to that brand value through content that is meaningful to them. What I haven’t mentioned very often is that content marketing sometimes fails.
Have you ever seen a television commercial, heard a radio commercial, or read a print ad where you remember the ad vividly but have no idea of what it was selling? That is an example of content marketing that fails. If the audience doesn’t convert into customers then the content is being sent to them in vain.
Whether you are writing an article for an obscure magazine, publishing videos on Vimeo and YouTube, or just blogging on random Websites if you’re not reaching new people you’re not engaged in content marketing; but if the new people you do reach are not converting then your content marketing (such as it is) doesn’t work.
People who justify failed content marketing by saying, “Well, at least we’re getting links” are missing the point entirely. It’s easy to get links. It’s a whole different matter to create new demand. And the same is true of social media shares.
This confusion over the goals and metrics you should be working with most likely stems from the fact that people who never learned what content marketer really was simply guessed that the expression “content marketing” must mean you’re “marketing with content” — and while that is technically accurate the concept behind the expression was originally about “building a new market with specially targeted content”.
Your Content Marketing Is Mostly Poor Demand Management
Demand Management is a better description for what many well-intended content marketers are trying to do. You’re not trying to build new markets you’re just trying to shore up brand visibility and value, communicate with existing customers, and improve conversions.
After the content marketing is done — after you have created the new demand — your content strategy has to accommodate the new audience you have attracted to your brand. You do this through Brand Management strategies; and the content strategy for Brand Management is best described as Demand Management.
Your goal is to satisfy the demand for new content (preferably content that leads to new conversions that would not otherwise have happened) and to sustain that demand. This is why large companies run advertising campaigns into the ground. They are keeping their names in front of consumers, communicating new products and services to consumers, and reminding consumers to come back and buy more products and services from them.
On the Web your guest blogging strategy should be constructed to remind people of who you are and what you do. If you are a marketer or marketing consultant then you need to show people how you work when you market for yourself.
Most marketing bloggers accomplish that goal adequately, except when they talk about content marketing. Then there is a complete and total disconnect between what you’re doing (preaching to the choir) and what you should be discussing (creating new demand).
Demand Management Calls for a Consistent, Long-term Strategy
If you start talking about how you’re doing Demand Management for clients but measuring success in terms of links, you’re still doing it wrong. Demand Management is not a link acquisition process. Demand Management is a conversion funnel process.
Sustaining demand is not easy, especially if you have investors breathing down your neck who are looking for increased demand. Any falloff in demand means you have to recalibrate your marketing strategies to make up for the slack. That mean reallocating resources (people, Websites, advertising budgets, meeting time, etc.) to developing and implementing new strategies that you had not included in your most recent plan.
Sometimes that’s just the way it goes, but if you don’t have a consistent, long-term strategy for marketing then you’re really not doing what you need to be doing. Marketing has to divide its resources between new outreach and sustainability.
Guest Blogging is Perfectly Fine for Demand Management
Despite the recent wave of Google penalties for guest bloggers there are still many good reasons to include guest blogging in your marketing strategies. Just stop thinking about how you can stuff keyword-targeted links into your author biographies and focus on what you can do with the content. In this context you want to pursue two goals with guest blogging:
- Creating new demand by reaching new audiences who haven’t heard of your business
- Sustaining demand by returning to audiences you have introduced to your business
When you look at guest blogging this way you should begin to understand why “relationships” are so important to marketing. You should be making a commitment to anyone who accepts your content — a commitment to stay with them, create new value for them, and keep their readers intrigued with their Website. The value for you is a steady growth in brand recognition, which will manifest itself in several ways including new searches on brand names, new editorially-bestowed links from people across the Web, and new opportunities to engage with other Websites.
The greatest challenge for Demand Management is to grow your resources in relation to the demand you create and sustain. If your revenues increase but you don’t increase the marketing budget then sooner or later your resources will be stretched too thin and your long-term strategy breaks down. Hence, you need to define appropriate metrics to measure the success of guest blogging and counting links is not one of those metrics.
Creative Advertising Works Best for Demand Management
We all wish we had the budget and the creativity to duplicate the success of many well-known advertising campaigns (such as the Heineken “date” commercials, the Miller Lite “tastes great/less filling” commercials, etc.). While those kinds of campaigns are beyond the resources of Web marketers you can still be ambitious with your creative advertising.
Instead of hiring an infographic company to create more phony content you should think about how to get visitors to engage with a page. If they cannot copy-and-paste the text from an infographic users will never engage with it. Sharing an infographic on social media is not true engagement. Engagement comes down to people being able to respond to any part of your content in a context of their choosing. Infographics prevent engagement.
You can put widgets into articles, break up articles into miniature libraries of content, and include graphical memes. Many successful articles have done these things and others. Creativity knows no boundaries.
Being creative calls for experimentation. But your experiments cannot stop with presentation. You should experiment with concepts, messages, and goals. Look for new ways to measure engagement, to track responsiveness, and to tie conversions into your metrics.
You’ll also want to define a whole new class of conversions for your creating advertising. It’s not just about bringing in sales. You want to capture people’s imagination, trust, and memories.
Demand Management is a Part of Digital Audience Relations
We talk about Digital Audience Relations on Reflective Dynamics because we’re not interested in just being on the Web for search engines. Some people execute Digital Audience Relations very well. They bring the audience in closer to their brand emotionally through brand-to-consumer intimacy that implies and conveys trust and respect.
When the marketer calls upon the consumer to support the marketing campaign the consumer wants to be reassured that the marketer isn’t just using them. Your marketing should be constructed to show consumers that you are learning from their reactions to your presentations; and you should be demonstrating to consumers that you are improving your products and services in response to their demands.
It’s way past time that people stop talking about “Content Marketing”. Most content marketers simply publish content on a random basis with no real objective in sight. You need to focus on managing your relationship with your current audience while attracting new audiences.
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
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”You should be making a commitment to anyone who accepts your content — a commitment to stay with them, create new value for them, and keep their readers intrigued with their Website”
Thanks Michael, these few lines have given me an enhanced perspective on how to approach promotion of my site(s).