I had an amazing conversation this week with an agency that was trying to convince their client to invest in a content strategy and full content marketing program. Just to give you the quick take, the client’s goal was to reach certain consumer segments in the southeastern states. They had a budget of $2.5 million dollars for marketing spend for the campaign.
The client’s VP of Marketing didn’t think anything could be done with a marketing budget that small.
That client is thinking about the world we used to live in. The world of radio, television and placed media. It’s hard to believe, but most of the marketing world still live in this reality.
Just think what kind of impact we could make with a $2 million dollar content marketing budget. Boy, hire a few expert journalists to crank out some amazing content and you still have almost $1.9 million dollars left.
The conversation made me realize that, even though content marketing is certainly a legitimate and growing field today, there are still so many reasons why (we, you, I) don’t do it.
Here are ten reasons. I think it’s helpful to know the reasons why we don’t do something, which then may help us pull the trigger. Now here’s a “Top 10″ you don’t want to be on.
Top 10 Reasons Why You Won’t Do Content Marketing
- Your company is set up to sell products or services, not to provide relevant and valuable information to customers and prospects. It takes a real mindset change to start thinking about your customers’ informational needs as part of your marketing strategy.
- You have well-worn marketing paths that are easy to follow.
Going off the beaten path into uncharted territory is intimidating.
- You have strong relationships with media partners that may go
back decades. It’s not easy to break those relationships by pursuing a
brand-new content marketing strategy.
- The reduced effectiveness of traditional marketing may have
occurred so slowly that no alarm bells have gone off within your
organization. You also may think things will come back at some point.
- Many companies (possibly yours) aren’t measuring their marketing, so you may not even be sure what is and what is not effective. Hard to make any changes when you don’t know.
- You lack both the right people and the right processes to implement a new kind of marketing.
- You are reluctant to abandon traditional marketing
tactics for what they may believe to be unproven content marketing or
new media practices.
- You lack content marketing role models from whom they can learn best practices.
- You place very little value in marketing versus other
aspects of the organization (operations, product development). Little
do you know, that every part of the organization is affected by (or
actually is) marketing.
- Even though I’d hate to think this one is true, I’ve seen it first hand…You have some real idiots running marketing for your company that don’t have a clue about the needs of your customers or what to do about it. Before you can even look at content marketing, you have to ditch the idiots.
And Bonus #11 – It’s hard. It’s more difficult to consistently create valuable and relevant content to our customers than place media. It’s easier to just place an ad. Listening, creating, co-creating, commenting, and actually having real customer conversations is harder. Higher payoff, but harder none-the-less.
#12 (from Jonathan Kranz):
What did we miss?
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:
- Business gets so bad that they start trying new things.
- Voluntary or involuntary turnover creates new thinking in the organization.
- A culture change in sparked in the organization, through an
internal champion, external customer demands, or the merging of a new
business culture through an actual merger or buyout.
The opportunity to become the expert industry source for your customers is there, right now. How you take advantage of this opportunity is up to you.
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10 Reasons Why You Won’t Do Content Marketing (and continue doing the same thing)
I had an amazing conversation this week with an agency that was trying to convince their client to invest in a content strategy and full content marketing program. Just to give you the quick take, the client’s goal was to reach certain consumer segments in the southeastern states. They had a budget of $2.5 million dollars for marketing spend for the campaign.
The client’s VP of Marketing didn’t think anything could be done with a marketing budget that small.
That client is thinking about the world we used to live in. The world of radio, television and placed media. It’s hard to believe, but most of the marketing world still live in this reality.
Just think what kind of impact we could make with a $2 million dollar content marketing budget. Boy, hire a few expert journalists to crank out some amazing content and you still have almost $1.9 million dollars left.
The conversation made me realize that, even though content marketing is certainly a legitimate and growing field today, there are still so many reasons why (we, you, I) don’t do it.
Here are ten reasons. I think it’s helpful to know the reasons why we don’t do something, which then may help us pull the trigger. Now here’s a “Top 10″ you don’t want to be on.
Top 10 Reasons Why You Won’t Do Content Marketing
Going off the beaten path into uncharted territory is intimidating.
back decades. It’s not easy to break those relationships by pursuing a
brand-new content marketing strategy.
occurred so slowly that no alarm bells have gone off within your
organization. You also may think things will come back at some point.
tactics for what they may believe to be unproven content marketing or
new media practices.
aspects of the organization (operations, product development). Little
do you know, that every part of the organization is affected by (or
actually is) marketing.
And Bonus #11 – It’s hard. It’s more difficult to consistently create valuable and relevant content to our customers than place media. It’s easier to just place an ad. Listening, creating, co-creating, commenting, and actually having real customer conversations is harder. Higher payoff, but harder none-the-less.
#12 (from Jonathan Kranz): You don’t
know how to connect your knowledge/experience/expertise with the hopes,
fears, desires and objectives of your target market.
What did we miss?
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:
internal champion, external customer demands, or the merging of a new
business culture through an actual merger or buyout.
The opportunity to become the expert industry source for your customers is there, right now. How you take advantage of this opportunity is up to you.
Subscribe - Junta42 - Custom Content Experts - Get the Book