Content Marketing

More about what you say online and how you should say it!  Content marketing is taking marketing to a new level.  Consumers are spending less time watching TV commercials, reading sign boards or magazine articles.

Marketing today is about relationships and engaging consumers online about things that interest them or appeal to them.  Reviews, even though 20% are fraudulent, can attract interest and help close a buyer's decision.

 



Thank you to our friends at MarketingCharts.com, here is a perspective on the lack of understanding behind today's B2B marketing.  These are companies that offer products and services to other companies, hopefully to help them deliver better services and products or to help attract buyers.  Clearly, there is a problem about how the companies in this survey apply, measure and perceive content marketing.

Content marketing has been described many ways, but a simple explanation of this valuable marketing technique is as follows ....

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

The key to this definitions in this description are, "relevant and valuable content".  The days of just pushing the quality or value of what you are selling are gone!  Today with mobile content, online content, audio content and email and more, marketing its about knowing your objective and how to focus your text, pics and videos on that while you target the right prospects. 

As you push your content into the various digital marketing channels, you will know quickly if you are reaching your prospects and is your content resonating with them.  Measure results as you add or change content and shift your dialogue and what are the demographics and psychographics of those who respond.  Build your customer profiles and create content that fits your online market.    

Not what you say, but How you say it

For effective hotel and restaurant online marketing, you need to consider how you present your message, even more than what you say.  This is because the majority of website visitors find you as a result of a search and search ranking results are what capture the searcher.  Chances are the shopper does not know your brand name, unless of course, you are a franchise and then you have the issue of competing with the same brand in your local market.

Most search terms today are in a phrase or a question of 5 to 7 words.  Shopper keywords focus primarily on location, price, product/service and personal interests.  The greatest challenge to achieving the best search rankings and a productive presence is "change".  The objective of a search engine is to present the websites and blogs on page one that are have the most activity both on the site and in online social activities.  So how the content on your website changes and the frequency of change, plus the volume of social presence and engagement are key to reaching new consumers.

How do you achieve the volume and presence you need to win business online?  The answer is to commit the time and/or the cost to have the right people develop and apply optimized content, post photos, post videos and engage with customers and potential customers on an active scheduled basis. 

You need to be consistent, timely, current, brief and present real value in each message or response!  But, with all of this in your messages, you have to be social, sensitive and convincing.  Its all about how you say it.  How many times have you sent an email that was misunderstood? Same situation when conveying your business message or responses. 

So if you want to be found, you need to connect the dots and make some noise.