If you are reading this article then chances are you know a little bit about content marketing. If you’re like me, you’ve sat through many marketing meetings throughout the years where every new budget brings some new way of getting consumers interested in your goods or services. It started with print, then color, then radio, then television, then the almighty internet.

Now it goes even deeper into the digital world and it’s email campaigns, then a website, then a new website. “How much shall we invest in the internet?” you say. Well, unless you’re investing your money in your business’s untimely gravestone, I would say keep investing in digital marketing.

Now, having mentioned many of the forms of media that most successful companies have used in the last 50 years, do you know what they ALL have in common? Content! In one way or another, each of these media outlets are using content. Some good, some bad, some absolutely horrible! But they all are sending a message about your company.

The question remains: Is it the right message?

I mean, let’s face it. We’ve all seen Superbowl ads where, of course, you laughed hysterically but do you even remember what they were selling? Who was the ad for? You remember the punch line, you remember it being funny, and you might even remember a catchy jingle. But did you remember or learn anything at all about the product, and did it really persuade you to purchase??

Marketing as a whole has become much harder for the average CMO over the past 15 years. When it was just print, radio, and television, marketing was somewhat predictable. You could plan an annual budget, speak at a level that the rest of the chiefs could understand and just focus on impressions to a target demographic with a bunch of smoke and mirrors numbers. Ah, the good old days!

Now you mention SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Analytics, PPC, and other digital marketing initiatives, and the management team glazes over in pure horror.

Again, the interesting thing about all of these new forms of marketing, that you need to keep in mind, is that in order for any of them to work well you need to have great content. It’s not enough anymore to just have a website, your competitors have that. It’s not enough to have an email campaign. Your competitors have that, too. Your content has to be better. It has to be AWESOME! You have to know more and share more and give more than your competitors to not only get the attention of your potential new customers but also to get the attention of the entity that many or most of your customers use to find you… The search engines.

Now, I know what a lot of companies think: We can’t share all of our secrets and information, can we? Our competitors will know all about us! Let’s be real here, folks, they already know. There aren’t any secrets out there. Wouldn’t you rather educate your consumers so they make a smarter purchasing decision and pick you? Wouldn’t you rather they know what they are purchasing and cut down on customer service needs and back end returns? Of course you would! And your customers will certainly thank you for it. In fact, your customers will find you because they searched and the search engines thank you for that content with high quality traffic.

That’s right! It’s now the deciding factor between the good SEO’s and the not so good ones. Search Engine Optimization doesn’t need to be expensive, just effective. High priced, high-end SEO companies and low cost SEO’s all must at least have a common strand throughout and that’s content! Without it, you just have pretty pictures and nothing memorable. Content marketing and strategy has grown into it’s own huge business for a very great reason. Because it had to!

So now, more than ever, content is king. It’s imperative that your website, your marketing, and your company as a whole embrace the new…yet very old way of marketing. Or just get the chiefs together to pick out your business’s gravestone.

RankPop’s President and co-founder, Dave Conklin, has been in the Internet marketing industry and helping companies with their online strategies since 2000. RankPop.com is in the business of making Internet marketing simple, AWESOME!…and affordable.

 

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