Content Marketing is all the rage – and with good reason – it works! Similar to Inbound Marketing, the gist is that you provide awesome content on your website to attract potential customers to you. They find the information you provide valuable, they trust you, and sooner or later they buy your product. Typically, you make a blog and post articles that will be of interest to your customers. But today I got an email from a trucking company that looked like this:
The left column links to their services – that’s good. The center column talks about trucks and conversion vans – that’s good. But the right column is a bit off. I clicked on the article titled “Five Easy Green Beauty Swaps.” It took me to what looked like Peterbuilt’s blog. And the article was actually well written content. But I have a strange feeling that someone that is shopping for parts for a full size pickup truck is not very interested in beauty tips.
So the lesson learned is simple: Content marketing is not difficult, but you can’t just outsource it to someone who grabs a bunch of content, throws it in a newsletter / blog, adds some of your content and calls it marketing. Content Marketing starts with looking at what your customer wants – and that starts with who your customer is. The content of this newsletter doesn’t need to be all about trucks, but maybe about Nascar, fishing or the NFL. Not charming inns and beauty tips.
Stepping off my soapbox…