Content and Targeting - Powerful Marketing Tools

November 6, 2011 | 424 views

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems with social media allowing access to millions and millions of people that you might think we can get away with the old adage of throwing enough against the wall something might stick. I long ago decided that method could only result in a wall full of... well you know. We are all smarter than that and we have tools that allow us to target - absolutely. The fact that we have access to so many people through social media, dictates that we must target better.

The latest weapon in our marketing toolkit is CONTENT. Yes the misunderstood word of this decade, just as multimedia was in the last decade. Have you noticed the websites that educate and inform you on a subject will often get bookmarked? We all know good sources of information when we see them, yet most of us do not use good content on our own websites. If we could be great content providers, we can actually imply that we are experts in our field without ever saying it.

The best examples of great content providers are magazines. Take a moment and think of 10 magazines and the one sentence that describes it's content. WIRED - a magazine about technology, GQ, men's fashion & lifestyle, COSMOPOLITAN - womens lifestyle, etc, etc. Chances are you can think of 10 more without assistance or prompting. Why is that? How have magazines so deeply embedded their brand in our heads? It is not advertising - most of them do not spend a great deal on advertising unless they are part of a larger group who all cross-promote each other. Newstands are important for sure. As are subscription drives.

We assert it is great CONTENT that attracts us and engages us deeply. We know exactly what we can count on that magazines for and we are seldom disappointed. Issue after issue they produce interesting, well researched and well written content about the topic they respresent. Good reporting looks at all sides of an issue and allows the reader to draw conclusions. The art of implying is not restricted to ad creative types, although it is the common element in most of the award winning ads produced globally.

So lets put our sales pitch where it belongs, buried somewhere in the navigation bar with "About Us" and "Our Services". Our HOME page should educate and inform. It should provide a smell of what's in the kitchen, in other words it should hint that there is much more where that comes from.

So quality content becomes extremely important. Your brand is as good as the quality of the CONTENT you provide. This quality content, properly managed in social media circles will attract the exact target you desire. So as my good friend Andrea Wojnicki, Doctorate in Marketing from Harvard says, "show me a photo of your ideal target". It really does need to be that tight.

We would love to hear your stories about tangible results from quality content.

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