This article is about hitting the right balance in content marketing, between providing practical, objective information, and delivering a blatant sales pitch. Get the balance right and content will win customers; get it wrong and your content creation efforts won’t pay-off.
photo by Todd Anderson
 So who am I to dish out advice about content marketing? I didn’t invent content marketing, but I did engineer an early content marketing success. Back in 1999 my three partners and I sold our boutique information security consulting firm to a NASDAQ company for a premium price. We achieved that price because we had a premium client list (including AT&T, American Express, Edward Jones, and Sprint).Â
How did we build that client list? We attracted a lot of our clients through website content, notably a library of “free information security articles” which was one of the first things I created when I set up the company website. These articles were originally written by myself and my partners for publication in magazines and that meant they were written to professional editorial standards, one of which is objectivity.
Objectivity means the articles did not talk about our company and the services we offered, they talked about specific problems and solutions. The result? Anyone reading those articles was likely to think the authors knew what they were talking about and were happy to share their knowledge. If you needed to deal with these specific problems and solutions it didn’t require a big red call to action button to realize “these guys would be a valuable resource.”
Skip forward a decade or so and we find content marketing applied to any type of “useful” information employed to advance the marketing effort without making overt product claims, such as “custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or microsites, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, video portals or series, in-person roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, email, and events.”
That list is from the ‘content marketing’ entry in Wikipedia, which goes on to state quite clearly, and in my opinion correctly, that the purpose of this information: “is not to spout the virtues of the marketer’s own products or services, but to inform target customers and prospects about key industry issues, sometimes involving the marketer’s products.”
Unfortunately, the resources available to Marketing are always limited. Whenever sales slow down it’s possible Sales will question the use of resources for content marketing. Depending on factors such as workflow and company dynamics, you might experience “spout-creep.” That’s when open declaration of product virtues creeps into content marketing pieces. Unfortunately, because none of the forms used for content marketing dictate function, it can be difficult prevent spout-creep. So what should you do? Here are some suggestions.
1. If Sales has a good case for more direct product marketing materials then oblige Sales and switch resources from your content marketing. Better to scale back content marketing than risk polluting it with blatant product pitches. If Sales needs competitor kill sheets, generate them, just don’t pass them off as content marketing.
2. Adjust your content marketing to the different levels of awareness people have of your product and the problem it solves. Develop different nurturing paths for different levels of awareness. For people just becoming aware of the problem, go lightly on product pitching (they will appreciate you educating them and at this point they’re not ready to buy from you or your competitors). However, there’s still value in content targeted to people familiar with the problem, your solution, and your competitors’ solutions. Good content, freely shared, will always win the day with some buyers.
3. Think twice before placing content behind a click-wall that requires the completion of a lengthy form. Sales might be screaming for leads but requiring loads of details may be a mistake unless you’re talking premium content without a hint of pitch. Content that educates at the early stages of a market may travel further, to greater effect, if accessible without providing extensive contact data.
4. Consider just email registration. Concerns about spam are declining and people are more willing to supply an email address than a few years ago. But don’t abuse their trust. If you plan to send them more content, make that clear.
5. Have faith in your content but track access. Google Analytics tracks page access, not file access. Make sure you have server logs handy to see how often files themselves are downloaded.
6. Set expectations honestly, otherwise content marketing can hurt your reputation. Today there’s little tolerance for product pitches misrepresented as pure content. Be honest up front and you will avoid “blowback” from people offended at being pitched when they were expecting to get educated.
A prolific blogger and content marketing pioneer, Stephen Cobb has helped a series of hi-tech startups to achieve successful outcomes by educating the market for their products. Currently Marketing Evangelist for Monetate, the Philadelphia-based marketing optimization company, Stephen resides in Upstate New York.
