Content Marketing: 5 Tips to Go Big or Go Home!

By Joe Pulizzi | Published: March 10, 2011

I read this announcement with pleasure about Hubspot’s recent investment from Google Ventures, Sequoia and Salesforce. Congratulations to them.

The last point from Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan is critical for not just business owners, but content marketers.

It Is A Go Big Or Go Home World We Live In – I learned in b-school that the natural state of most industries is an oligopoly where there a number of players with smaller than 50% of the market. Since the internet, we believe we have moved into a winner-take-all world where the market leader in a new industry gets 80%+ of the market cap in their industry, like Google (search), Salesforce (CRM), Groupon (group buying), VMWare (virtualization), etc. We believe we have a head start in an important new industry, so we are hitting the gas to try be that winner who takes all.

This is EXACTLY the way you have to think about your content marketing creation or distribution.

In your market niches, you must be THE expert in your category. The content expert gets the best search engine placement, the most number of links, the largest amount of social media sharing, the most invites for speaking events and (here it comes) the most business from that content.

If you are not the leader, the gap will widen unless you do something about it right now.

As I was contemplating Brian’s last thought, I scribbled down some ramblings of my own.

Visualize the Lead. Most brands feel they either can’t for whatever reason or don’t have the right to be THE quality source for information in their market. If you believe this, get over it quickly. The move into content marketing is happening fast in every market around the world. Those that move fast and hard will win. And by the way, budget is no excuse anymore. I’ve seen companies with very little budget do amazing things from a content marketing perspective.
Resource Everywhere. To be the content leader, you’ll need to heavily leverage both internal and external resources (like my friends at Openview Venture Partners). I don’t believe we have a choice anymore…outsource, insource…the answer is…YES.
Move Faster. Think you are moving fast? It’s not enough. There is only one speed, and that’s faster.
What’s Your Content Competition? Be friends in social media, but in content creation, be better…be the best. Know who you are competing against (both traditional media and your actual competitors). Make sure someone on your team reads every word they write and watches every video they shoot.
Invest in Content R&D. Every quarter, you should be testing out a new content product as part of your buying cycle. Treat your content investment just like you would invest in an actual new product launch.

It’s very hard to realize the magnitude of what’s going on around us right now. It’s just like playing a baseball game…while on the field, we tend not to notice the people in the stands, those ordering food, the chaos or the normalcy. That’s where you are at this very moment. We are seeing the greatest marketing transformation of our time right now. Yes, you know it’s changing and that it’s significant, but you have no idea how truly momentous this is.

Champion your content marketing effort now. Be the best. Move faster. Dominate. Win!

Do or do not. There is no try.

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http://byronfernandez.wordpress.com Byron Fernandez

Been incredible to be a part of the transformation/revolution taking place in the world of content/inbound right now. The time is Now
Sorry to miss you at the TweetUp last week @DeagansKitchen, Joe. Recently joined the blogging community…been a whirlwind past month but savoring the rush of each new day/stepping stone. Hope to catch you at the next outing!
-Byron

http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Thanks Byron…looking forward to catching up soon.

http://www.JasonMatthewMurphy.com Jason Murphy

This is a gem phrase “Treat your content investment just like you would invest in an actual new product launch”.
http://www.riotsportsmarketing.com Jim Harshaw

What are your thoughts about leveraging the networks of partners to help grow each others networks? Creating content is a lot of work. Disseminating is a big step that can be the more challenging piece.

http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Hi Jim…I take the position that there is no one way to create and distribute content. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute is successful because we partner with over 50 individuals that help us get our message out. Partnering in content = good in most cases.

http://englishtutornetwork.com.tw/ Paul

What do you think about the the Asian market? Just an observation, but for Chinese keywords, internet companies aren’t marketing with content at all in our industry. my key competitors are buying ad space with the keywords searches showing personal blogs that fill the page. how would you go about taking full advantage of that situation?

http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Hi Paul…I’m not sure how the market works, but I think domain expertise issues are the same. Identify the target niche and become the true solutions provider with content through multiple channels.

http://Www.sunsnaturalllc.com Hank

Thanks for the great info Joe! Yes we are at the edge of the frontier…yet again. I find it very interesting that while this is a “new fashioned” media to sell within, the principles everyone is excited about are old fashioned. Reality has struck; If you are not the best at what you do, your business will show it. There is nothing new under the sun.
http://www.ebooksandtutorials.com Igor Mateski

What do you think of ecommerce sites and content marketing? I’ve just recently started a ecom site and want to cover more areas. IT, because I’ve been in it for over a decade, and I already have a blog that’s got a PR1 on a few pages. SEO/LPO because it’s interesting and I’m doing it for my ecom site, and psychology because I’ve studied it. So… can I compete at all? Can one site be The Place for such a wide field? Or should I segment, and start content sites for each field, and point to the ecom site as “This is the publisher’s site for my books, you can buy them there”?

http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Hi Igor…it’s critical. Sites like expedia and, of course, Blendtec have shown how important content creation is with ecommerce (not to mention Best Buy among others). The more you target your audience the better regarding content. I’m not saying that you can’t be successful with such a broad topic, but it’s much, much harder.