Joe Pulizzi is the Founder of Content Marketing Institute, a UBM company, the leading education and training organization for content marketing, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world, Content Marketing World. Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s the author of five books, including his latest, Killing Marketing. His third book, Epic Content Marketing was named one of “Five Must Read Business Books of 2013” by Fortune Magazine. If you ever see Joe in person, he’ll be wearing orange. Follow him on Twitter @JoePulizzi.
I found this listing of expert and best business quotes in a presentation from Razorleaf’s Paul Gimbel at SolidWorks World 2008. (Razorleaf is one of the leaders in engineering and manufacturing process management.)
There are some gems in here for this must print out page! Thanks to Paul for sharing his best business quotes of all-time.Continue Reading
Well, after nine months of hard labor, I received the pre-press version of my book (with co-author Newt Barrett) delivered UPS yesterday. The book is entitled Get Content. Get Customers. – How to use content marketing to deliver relevant, valuable, and compelling information that turns prospects into buyers (and is pictured here to the right). Since we have just completed the book and while it was fresh in my mind, I thought I would offer some of the key steps we took to turn this little idea into a publishing reality. The book is now available for sale from the website at www.getcontentgetcustomers.com.
So here goes…my ten key steps to writing and publishing a book when you have absolutely no time to write or publish a book.
The final point to the co-author arrangement is that we both had expertise in different areas, which really helped. Newt was much better than I at interviewing and case studies, while I was a bit more proficient on the industry and research behind branded content and custom publishing (which we call content marketing). Once we completed the table of contents, we could both work on our areas independently, hit key dates, and continue to always more forward.
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I had the pleasure of guest blogging at the King Fish Media ThinkTank blog the other day. You can check out the complete post here.
This was written after I had a brief conversation with a marketer that was taking the angle of content marketing being nice “fluff” to give your clients, but not necessary to the overall marketing strategy for most companies. Of course, I (as nice as I could) disagreed with the gentleman and cited a number of reasons why he was completely off his rocker.
The web has turned most business models completely upside down, and created huge opportunities for others to launch businesses from nothing at all. The delivery of consistent and valuable content may be the most important indicator of financial success for future businesses.
If I’m launching a business today, or looking into the overall vision of the company, I’m looking at these three aspects of the business.
Note that I put the product itself as #3 on the list. Products can be duplicated in almost every industry today, especially with the rise of cheaper labor overseas. What separates one business from another is #1 and #2, which involves honest, transparent and consistent communication with customers and prospects. Cool products come and go – a relevant and consistent message is timeless. IMPORTANT NOTE: new products launch all the time and can become successful very fast just by the nature of the product. We’ve seen this happen with many web-based applications. But without a consistent content marketing strategy, competition can come in and duplicate the product quickly if the company has not clearly differentiated itself through their communications.
Medium-sized and Larger organizations with better-known brands should begin positioning their content as a product in their company (mostly so organizational management starts to take the concept seriously). This means creating R&D budgets, long-term content strategies, ongoing measurements against the content, and content growth strategies.
By doing this, an organization will make the investment necessary to truly differentiate themselves from the competition, and fend off any new competitors who simply try to copy their base products.
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My last post was five days ago. That has been the longest stretch without blogging since I started this blog almost a year ago. Doesn’t feel good, but I guess I had good reason. New Orleans for the Custom Content Conference (launch of Junta42 Match as well as organizing the sponsors for the event), and then speaking in NYC for the Publishing Business Conference (thanks to Marcus Grimm from Nxtbook for proving it). Not to mention digging out of 26 inches of snow to get to the Big Easy.
I have about five blog posts loaded up and ready to go, but I just saw this article I wrote in DMNews about the importance of consistent content as it relates to direct marketing.
This is probably my favorite line:
The future of marketing is not about tempting [customers] or conning [customers] into buying more; it’s about communicating a message that says, “Regardless of whether you buy from me or not, you need this information. Enjoy!”
To direct marketers, that line might be sacrilegious, but I still love it.
I was in the doctor’s office last week for a routine checkup. As I entered, the nurse escorted me to the patient room where I waited for the doctor. On the desk in the office sat a computer monitor that was streaming what looked to be a PowerPoint show.
There were about 10 rotating messages targeted to me, the patient. One talked about checkups for colon cancer, another about weight issues, and another one was about moles (fun!). I learned a lot and paid attention. The one slide on adult shots motivated me to ask the doctor a question, which resulted in me actually buying an additional shot…one that I would not have bought without the computer show.
The health care industry always been a trend setter when it comes to educating customers and prospects. They are in the business of healing and education. Most hospitals either have their own newsletter/magazine, or carry the WebMD magazine. Now they are doing it again by using a computer (which has to be there for the doctors/nurses) and leveraging it to educate customers (and upsell).
Here’s the point: You are also in the business of education. It is your responsibility to educate your customers and prospects about not only your products, but about the industry and key issues that surround your product. By doing so on a consistent basis, with relevant and valuable content, you will sell more to these people.
And here’s your task: Find the places where your customers and prospects are, and take advantage of these locations by delivering timely and relevant information. This could be:
These are just a few. The point is to think of all ways in which customers come in contact with you and leverage those opportunities to help educate and engage them. Most companies lose educational opportunities through many different touch points. Make sure that you aren’t one of those companies by making a list of those touch points and deliver content marketing to them along the way.
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“The future of advertising is radically different from its past. The struggle for control of attention, creativity measurements and platforms will reshape the advertising value chain and shift the balance of power. And, as in previous disruptive cycles, the future cannot be extrapolated from the past.”
– from The End of Advertising as We Know It, IBM Global Services, 2007
Today, most companies are still using traditional marketing approaches that they may have been using since the middle of the 20th century. There are several reasons for this:
In order for a company to alter their mindset toward one of new media or content marketing, they need one of a few things to happen:
The point is that there is great opportunity. There is opportunity for small businesses who can make these changes and adaptations faster than their larger competitive set. There is also opportunity for medium and large organizations who can make decisions based on how their customers want to engage with them, not on what they’ve done in the past.
The IBM white paper that led off this post has an interesting set of questions to ask marketing professionals that speaks directly to the drastic changes that have taken place just in the last few years.
Most everyone has an answer to the above questions – but noone knows for sure if they will be right. All we can do is see what is happening and talk to our customers. That said, the more I interact with marketing and publishing professionals, the more I realize that the old rules don’t apply anymore. What is going on right now is a revolution like nothing we’ve ever seen. The opportunity is great for those companies that buy into this.
Some companies think that the Internet is just another way to market. It’s those companies that are in trouble.
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mar·ket·ing
[mahr-ki-ting]
1. The act of buying or selling in a market (Dictionary.com)
Content marketing, taken at face value, is simple terminology for a complex process. Content, as in creating information that meets your customers’ needs, and marketing, as in distributing and promoting it to a targeted group of people, inherently makes sense.
Go back to the definition of marketing at the top of this page. Marketing is all about behavior. It’s an action. It’s not about generating buzz, or web site traffic, or press mentions – unless those things lead to a profitable customer behavior.Continue Reading
Well, after almost six months in “beta” we’ve decided to launch the full version of Junta42. And what better way to do that than with a cool list.
This week we are premiering the Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs that features the best blogs from the net focusing on some aspect of content marketing. Some, you’ll find, are very well known, while others are definitely “up-and-comers”. Congrats to Millward Brown’s “Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis” on taking first spot on our premiere listing.
I think what I like most is that Junta42 members can vote on the ones they like the best, which generates a user rank. Members can “Hitch!” (or vote – just like Digg) for the blogs they believe are the best. The most popular blogs rise to the top. I believe at the end of the day, that’s the list that will have the most value.
Now, we’ve by no means perfected the selection criteria, but we’ve made a good start. Here’s a full description of how we selected and ranked the blogs. I’m quite certain we’ve left off many, so if you know of any you’d like to nominate, send us a note at add[at]junta42.com. We’ll be adding blogs and refining the process over the next few months.
Other additions to the new Junta42 include:
We are also excited about the launch of Junta42 Match, which will take place over the next few months. Junta42 Match will be the “eHarmony of business content”, matching businesses who need content expertise with custom publishers or content providers that match specific needs and criteria.
We’ll have plenty more to come on Match over the next few months.
Thanks to all of you who have supported us along the way. Let’s enjoy the ride and have some fun.
The formal press release goes out this Wednesday. Here’s a sneak peak…
Just sat through an hour teleseminar (Seth’s Meatball Sundae Book Tour) produced by Author Teleseminars and Elizabeth Marshall, that included Seth Godin, Michael Port and David Meerman Scott. I’m a regular reader of Seth’s and David’s blogs. If you are at all in the marketing game, get their RSS feeds.
The second last question on the call was from me, where I asked about the role of content marketing and its effect on traditional media. Seth was not familiar with the term content marketing, and fortunately David was there to define it as “the creation of valuable and relevant content yourself (instead of using traditional means).”
Okay, here’s the big answer by Seth…
“[Content Marketing] is all the marketing that’s left.”
Seth went on to say (I’m paraphrasing) that teaching your customers and giving your customers the resources to believe you is new marketing. They become a fan of yours because you teach them something that makes them feel better about the world.
For someone like me that lives and breathes content marketing, needless to say I was pretty excited about his response. If you are not creating your own content that gets people talking about you, what are you doing?
Here are a series of 10 other key points from the audio seminar:
Content marketing is not easy because you actually have to listen to your customers and know what their challenges are. You cannot solve your marketing woes through buying advertising space. You must make a connection to your customers, and get new customers, by focusing on their true pain points and healing them with information (okay, a bit over the top, but true none the less).
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Many of our consulting clients are small businesses. For some reason, even though budgets aren’t what they are in the larger companies we work with, I love the potential that exists with small businesses. When we make recommendations to larger companies, it takes sometimes many months to get them going, working through multiple chains of command and different budget buckets.
With small companies, sometimes we execute projects the same day. Also, there is a smaller decision-making base, which helps make decisions faster and more focused. Ultimately, that’s why small companies rule.
This is the first page of Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big:
“Small is the new big. Recent changes in the way that things are made and talked about mean that big is no longer an advantage. In fact, it’s the opposite. If you want to be big, act small.
Consumers have more power than ever before.
Treating them like they don’t matter doesn’t work.
Multiple channels of information mean that it’s almost impossible to live a lie.
Authentic stories spread and last.
That ability to change fast is the single best asset in a world that’s changing.
Blogs matter. If you want to grow, you’ll need to touch the information-hungry, idea-sharing people who read (and write) them.”
Your Website Is Your Greatest Marketing Asset
The changes in technology have enabled small businesses to market their products and services as well as, or better, than a large, well-funded business. The only caveat? Small businesses must understand the power of the internet, and give their foremost attention to their website and online initiatives.
Technological changes are increasing at an ever faster rate than before. Small businesses can adapt to these changes to communicate more effectively with their target customers. Larger businesses, through multi-leveled bureaucracy and committed budgets, have a much more difficult time changing communication initiatives if the signs are there for change.
Small Wins on Local Level
This is especially true on a local level. Companies such as Lowes or Wal-Mart are tied to corporate branding and initiatives, and are challenged by personalizing marketing efforts to local markets. Even a Best Buy, which does an outstanding job of personalizing stores to their clientèle, still must segment stores into groups (busy suburban mom’s or technology enthusiasts), but not truly on a local basis. Big brands are executed at the national level.
Small businesses do not have that concern, and can adapt to the needs of their local customer base. With a focus on quality web content, it is altogether possible that a small business can score a much higher search engine ranking on local key words, especially with a help of locally-focused blogs, white papers and other online content efforts.
I’m a Small Business: What Should I Do?
To compete with the big boys, here is what you need to focus on:
It’s never been better to be a small business. Perhaps small is the new big.
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