I’m not one to make waves. (I almost typed that with a straight face) Who am I kidding!?!?!? I’m a virtual wave machine…and in my humble opinion marketers in my related industry face increasingly difficult times ahead. In my best Dennis Hopper voice – it’s the information age man…we’re multi-tasked, multi-media’d, data tsunami’d and socially swamped. We’re at a point where we have over inundated our consumers with content – content that we’ve all been schooled to regard as the “king” of our collective marketing strategies. So have we been led astray? Misguided to believe that by producing “valuable” content we are positioning ourselves for an onslaught of leads from the ‘old interwebs??? Yes. And No. But also Maybe.
I’m of the mindset that it’s a bit of a catch 22. We simply cannot deny the interplay of digital platforms and the importance of searchable content. Having said that, we need to re-acquaint ourselves with marketing’s oldest trick in the book – targeting. Without question, targeting will always be the most important - though oft overlooked – component of an effective marketing strategy. Slightly unrelated story - I sold ad space for a few big publications for a few years, and I believe my best clients were the ones who didn’t pull any punches when I presented my demographics. I extrapolated and exaggerated the data, it’s what we did (insert crooked smile here)…but those who saw through that nonsense were the ones who I respected tremendously. How does this relate to content strategy? You see, creating content for the sake of SEO is foolish. I see it all the time, ghost-writers hammering away blindly based on some simple direction around current news articles. They work diligently creating blogs and white papers and all sorts of stuff that contributes to the rising tides of the data flood. Content for content’s sake is like standing on a soapbox in an empty parking lot and professing your love to the girl of your dreams...who isn’t there. (not in any way a personal story) Tying back to my slightly unrelated story – it’s like spending boatloads on an advertisement in the wrong magazine – one who’s demo doesn’t line up with your product. Strategy, in this case, would be to create targeted content for a specific demo or subset of your audience. One step further, “personalizing” this content turns out to be the missing link. It HAS to be representative of the voice of the firm, otherwise it’s wallpaper…background noise…another stick floating by in the flood waters.
I don’t claim to be an expert with extensive source information and factual reports. I subscribe to the foundation of common sense marketing – understanding ones consumer, their behaviors, and putting yourself in their shoes. Read some of the content you produce, and if you find it actually valuable and targeted than maybe it will succeed. If you fall asleep and start drooling on your freshly pressed white shirt after the first paragraph…shake it up, and stir in a bit of excitement and targeted messaging and instead of a stick floating through the flood waters it just might become a raft…