If you ask 100 PR and marketing pros the best way to develop your strategy about the most effective ways that they conceive and launch successful PR and content marketing strategies, you’d likely receive 100 or more different responses. The fact that there are so many successful strategies for bringing your content marketing ideas to life means you’re likely to find a good bit of success for your efforts once you choose to take some efforts to bring your messaging to the market you serve, create organizational thought leaders and build your brand.
A plethora of ideas will likely lead you to a plethora of success because of your efforts. Of course, you’ll have to determine what “success” looks like, but at least there’s no shortage of intriguing strategies for building and fleshing out a program that will help build a community. First, though, let’s start by defining a few things.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing, by the dictionary definition of the term, is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” So says the Content Marketing Institute.
That means that instead of pitching your products or services blindingly as if shot from a shotgun, you’re providing truly relevant and useful content (information) to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues. Content marketing is used by the world’s leading brands, and by the vast majority of marketers. You can find content messaging from the likes of P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, John Deere and thousands of other companies.
We’ve been content marketing professionals for more than 10 years. As part of our work in PR, content marketing is one of our favorite parts. Through it we get to tell client’s stories, educate people and create valuable, informative pieces that let us relive some of our glory days as credentialed journalists. Ultimately, though, we use content marketing in millerrupp’s client’s campaigns because it works.
Why “content market”
There are three primary reasons to use content marketing in your marketing efforts:
–Increased sales
–Cost savings
–Better customers who have more loyalty
Content marketing materials tend to be much less “junky” than other historical outreach efforts. And, in many cases, such content is actually published by sector-leading publications (trade magazines and sites) that supply the news and messaging individuals need and want to stay at the top of their game in their respective fields. For example, if we work with and care about tractors, we will probably read websites and publications where John Deere has some share of voice. Thus, we’re likely already reading messaging from the company’s content marketing team, even if the piece is bylined by the company’s CEO or other members of the leadership team. For those in software and IT, the same holds true of the publications you read – CIO.com, Inc., Wired, etc. — they all contain content marketing messaging from “thought leaders.”
How to content market
What are some of the best ways to launch content marketing programs? How do you start such a program if you have no previous experience doing so? What are some of the metrics you should consider? What do these programs look like before they are rolled out?
To answer some of these questions and more, we’ve asked some content marketing experts for their insights. Here is their guidance: