Blue Spur

Content: Where Does It Come From?

We keep hearing all the SEO guru's saying that content is king. They tell you to get content out on the web that somehow points back to you. But where to you get all this content? Most companies have a brochure or two with some content. They may have written a press release about a new product or a twist on an old product. But content has to come from somewhere. And it has to be meaningful, relevant content (a.k.a. content that someone wants to read, that factually relates to the product or service behind the story). So where do you find this content?

Most companies start by going to their marketers and begging them to write more stuff about the product. They write another brochure, a blog, a white paper (that's a popular one) - in short, anything that can add to the word count about their product. Is this stuff meaningful? Usually in the first one or two rounds, then it starts to turn into the same old stuff. You can only say "use this peg to fit that hole" so many times before people start to yawn and go back to their face book. Is it relevant? It's exhaustively relevant. Please, throw in a tangent to move the reader out of the deepening furrow in their brain. The goal is good, to get the word count up, but you want to get the word count up in a way that gets read. Remember, the search engines of the world may look at key words, but the customers of the world look at interesting thoughts.

The Relationship Between Selling and Marketing

A recent article appeared in the Baltimore Business Journal asking "Are you selling or just marketing?" In the article, Matt Neuberger noted some important aspects that a salesperson should engage in such as becoming "more personalized and should be designed to understand a client or prospect." Selling he noted "involves real buy-in." He then goes on to note marketing tasks that really aren't part of sales, but which many salespeople spend their time doing, such as gathering information, writing elaborate proposals, or heaven forbid, lowering prices.

Where Mr. Neuberger falls short is a classic point at which many business people, especially sales people fall short. He states, "Selling is the next step from marketing." In many business peoples minds, marketing attracts and sales closes. Unfortunately, in trying to clear up the confusion between marketing and sales, the author has confused marketing taken two subsets of marketing - namely research and advertising - and confused the with marketing as a whole.

What Do You Believe In?

Okay, you have a brand. It's a brand that provides value to customers in the form of quality products. It's a brand you've spend umpteen thousands of dollars advertising and building. And yet consumers want to know something else about your brand. What do you believe in. What are the grand causes that keep you pounding away at business each day.

It's what the PR consultant told you and you dismissed as too expensive: support a cause. When you show consumers that you believe in something beyond making a buck they pay more attention to your brand, and they choose your brand, even if it costs a bit more. You can afford to support a cause, because when you support a cause the right way, the cause pays for itself in sales.

Your Untapped Viral Marketing Power Tool

Many companies think of marketing communications as mere advertising, mass, direct, or otherwise. Public relations seems to also be a well-tapped channel among larger companies. Marketing communication, however, reaches way beyond the confines of advertising and public relations. Companies need to look at and engage all the communications avenues open to them, even ones currently buried in the back corner of engineering.

Don't fail to engage the power of great documentation in garning loyalty and feeding viral marketing.

The Dangers of Competition Between Sales and Marketing

I recently ran into an interesting situation. A business owner learned that his marketing managers had extensive sales experience – always a good thing in a marketing manager. He put his brain to work on this little tidbit and figured that if his marketing people were selling along side his salespeople, he could increase sales without increasing overhead. This guy saw himself as someone who thought outside the box, a real problem solver. Unfortunately, he practiced seagull management, where rather than working in the business, he flew in every couple of weeks, crapped all over everything and flew out. He told his marketing people to spend 50% of their time selling, he gave them a commission structure to motivate them, and threw on a sales quota to cover accountability. (oh yes, it was a sales quota above and beyond what anyone in the company had ever accomplished, based on the 400% increase he hoped would magically take place.)