Marketing Effectiveness: The Real Key To Your Success

When Eric Staley launched a career change and shifted to the all-encompassing business consulting practice of EightOne Global in 2000, his passion for content marketing was evident. Together with his team, he started an e-learning platform company called E-Herst. The company was born from a passion for learning about brands and their products and the real-life experiences of the people they serviced and it quickly became apparent there was a cultural need to reach our partners and influencers. Every now and then he’d look at the top blogger on every major social media platform and decided they were just not representative of the consumer’s end consumer. Once a week he went to their sites and began hunting out experts and publishing their content on his social media channels. Eventually he began doing content for the company’s blogs, to his team’s great surprise. They would look at the number of industry leaders they sought out and the content creation process would accelerate their revenue. In today’s world, that same process works to create engaging content around any major subject matter. Content marketing is more than “showering that free resource with a social media hashtag and a call to action”. It’s much more. Before we talk about putting content marketing on a platform to convert others’ messages, let’s create the capability for ourselves to create content ourselves. Personalization also takes a back seat

The definition of content marketing now goes beyond the well-known three-part strategy of publishing high-quality content that resonates with audiences and convinces them that your brand is special. Engagement used to be the basic goal. People expected unique, original and/or compelling content. But that’s no longer the case. According to AMRY, “good/attractive content now “belongs in a list of content” and when we are not all a content I’m not sure what we are all looking for anymore”. Every business needs a strategy that teaches its visitors/customers what to look for and to engage them with regular and telling content. The old content marketing methodology of producing content, publishing it and offering it a number of online destinations and then expecting everyone to pick it up has slowed to a crawl, and that’s not just in the US anymore. Once you publish a piece of content, you can’t run it by humans for it to go viral. People now move much of their lives on their laptops and mobile devices and are more likely to consume content while offline than on the computer. Fortunately, quality content also attracts great consumers, who are engaged with it and trust it. That’s why content marketing is more than a physical channel, it’s an e-commerce component of marketing. In other words, content marketing means more than “inaction” or “thinking” about your online content and have a goal and intend for it to happen. It means taking the time to design for a human experience, one that is fast, fun and engaging. There is the definition of the content you create for your own need. For E-Herst, that meant creating content in the way that brought in the greatest numbers of qualified leads from speaking at trade shows and b2B conferences. And for Content Engine, it meant content that expressed how we felt about some topic that resonated with us and why we chose Content Engine for that instance. Don’t copy-and-paste

Marketers are trained to “know, write and publish” something, and then think it will work for everybody. We now know this is not the case. What works for us will not necessarily work for somebody else. It’s critical to think not like that. The content needs to reflect your needs and concerns and needs of your audience.When you take a step back and consider what your overall purpose is for a business, you start to look at the web as a big living organism and say: If I am interested in how content is used, how is it used, who owns it, how is it used, how do people find it, for what type of services, how much is it cost to use it? You need to think about what it needs to achieve for your business first before you create content that will perform. Learning your business need is easier and will spark your creativity. That’s not to say you can ignore your brand message. Just learn to think and develop your business strategy through looking at your content. If you think content is all about product, then you also need to ask, “Who owns my content? ” And the solution will be a different one than when you initially created the content and how your existing audience will use your content. So don’t write to capture the information. Write in a conversational and real way.

The goal: Create more stuff that is engaging and more engaging and it will be brand unique. You can do that by being intentional in how you define and make more of it.

It’s not about the stuff, it’s about creating content that is engaging and engaging and it will be brand unique. You can do that by being intentional in how you define and make more of it. Content is no longer just what you are putting out into the world; it’s what people will talk about and share with their friends and colleagues and personal connections. No longer will your content be like a magazine spread. People share online; it’s not just how the content is consumed. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, content is about relevance for the user.

Be sure to incorporate your business goals so you have a content strategy you can really shape.

It’s not just about being a good writer, you need to be a content strategist, or a buyer, marketing and social media manager, or working on content marketing. Every one of those people has a different perspective.

Content marketing strategy is where you look at your entire business and it includes what your branding is, what kind of person you are, how you communicate, how many followers you have. And then how content and media fit in with your strategy, your business goals, your target audience. Once you figure out the right context for your product or your service, your story or your purpose, then you can start brainstorming how you should be doing it. Be certain you are putting out the right thing for your business.

Content marketing is much like a marriage. You get married to a good property, it does not hold all the cards, but you know you have one person who can make a difference.

If a publication is the goldmine of content, then you should be providing that, because you know people will love it. But you will need to take on some additional parts of your business, such as media partners, customer service, marketing and promotion, sales.

Get serious about content marketing, you cannot just set it aside, only come back and say, “Hey content, you’re awesome.”

Creating is not the same as building

You cannot make great content unless you work on it daily for at least three months, or even longer. That does not mean you will not always run into small things that can become a challenge, but learn to put it into a larger picture because you will need it in the future.

Content marketing is not something you can just publish it and put it out in the world. You must have a team, you need to be creating. To get started, you should create two short videos, that are roughly two minutes long. Make your brand story about your experience. I have done that. I speak about why my company has been around since 1993.

What you should be creating

All of your content should be content that is fulfilling to your audience. Quality matters, so make the best it can be. That means your audience should be responding positively and having a good experience. Content must be entertaining, informative, influential, something they can say they have never seen before. That you have some knowledge about an industry. That your messaging and content is consistent with your business.

If your video works, then it is automatically done, but if you’re not getting the attention, you are not working on content for them, and you have to keep creating and giving them a reason to talk about your brand or service. The best thing you can do is invest time in telling your story.

The first two things you should build are simple, like 5-10 minutes. There will be still be a lot of turnaround, because you want your content and communications team to be much more resourceful

Content Engine is a State-of-the-Art Content Automation Platform that will craft clear, precise, and powerful Content Marketing for your business.