Knowpreneur

Content marketing has become THE preferred means of marketing for many businesses today. This is especially true in the B2B market where decisions are not made in haste and the sales cycle can be very long.

In fact, nine out of 10 B2B marketers in a recent survey conducted by MarketingProfs and Junta42 use content as part of their marketing mix. More than 50% said they planned to increase their spending on content over the next year.

But all this publishing of content is worthless if it isn’t done right. For example, you can buy keyword-loaded content cheaply from some content mill. It may drive traffic to your site, but if it doesn’t talk to the right prospects in the right way even that’s a waste of money.

In reality, it’s worse than that because irrelevant, absurd, content that clearly is aimed at driving traffic but not educating could cost you an important chance to begin a prospecting conversation.

So if you’re starting a content marketing campaign today, be sure it has:

A target. Shotgun marketing doesn’t work today. Everyone has hundreds, if not thousands of choices (read: your competitors). So pick one particular type of person in one particular type of company that you want to talk with.

A purpose. What do you want that prospect to do? Communicate that.

Education. People trust educational information. They don’t trust blatant sales pitches and obvious tricks to make you buy. It’s that simple.

Strategic integration. Content isn’t everything in marketing. It’s part of the marketing mix. And therefore it should also be part of your overall marketing and business strategy. If all you want to do produce white papers, and perhaps a blog, than so be it. Don’t feel bad if you’re not doing everything. Pick what’s most comfortable and natural for you.