How A VPN Can Focus Content Marketing
Posted on 23. Feb, 2011 by Tony Wanless in B2B Marketing, Content, Reinvention
Much has been written about the role of content in modern business to business (B2B) marketing, invariably from the content creation side. Far less time is spent on the concept of content delivery, aside from the ubiquitous advice to optimize for search engine optimization.
While SEO is undoubtedly important, its underlying methodology is rooted in mass distribution and has distorted the entire content marketing process. Very often, the content becomes watered down, or denatured from its original intentions to maximize SEO.
The concept of SEO is similar to the old advertising concept in that its purpose is to reach as many potential customers as possible. Too often, the target for content swells as more SEO is larded on in an attempt to reach as many Internet readers as possible.
As a result, like general advertising, much content marketing today is akin to throwing a lot of mud at a wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Much of it doesn’t, because this is a misalignment of purpose and method. The true spirit (and effectiveness) of B2B content marketing is much different. It is essentially delivering useful information about how to solve problems to target prospects who have been carefully researched in order to determine their most pressing problems and needs.
That is why some content marketers are fighting off others in their organizations who still live by the old numbers dictum — that more is always better.
Further, some are now designing systems that concentrate content distribution to smaller lists and fewer but far more understood prospects.
For example, many B2B companies today operate in relatively small, but often highly lucrative, niches. They do not want to talk generally to masses of prospects, but aim instead to engage in ongoing conversations with only a few who are likely to be highly interested in their products or services.
However, the Internet mitigates against these kind of conversations because for the most part it depends on search engines such as Google to qualify clients.
Simply, it is too much.
That is why, here at Knowpreneur, we are working on creating smaller Internet pipelines that will allow clients to deliver content to highly qualified and specific prospects. As with Virtual Private Networks of old, these private online communities would invite prospects to join and then deliver regular and, above all, useful content to them.
A further service that takes the private VPN beyond a simple e-newsletter is the inclusion of a discussion forum so that these prospects can hold conversations among themselves about important issues. Think of it as a kind of sponsored industry community center.
The presumption is that some of these prospects will move much more quickly through the buying cycle.
These VPNs may not work for every company that engages in B2B content marketing, but for companies with complex products or services that are delivered to niche markets they will be far more efficient than an SEO’d Internet blast.
