Content Marketing's Dirty Little Secret. There is an inherent danger lurking in the shadows of the halls of content marketing. In his piece Robert wrote “The goals of Content Marketing are to: Build relationships with existing clients, attract new customers, demonstrate benefits, tell interesting stories about your brand and to appear in search engines and increase web traffic.” He of course is dead on. The goal is absolutely to do all that Robert says and I love the fact that he leads off with “build relationships.” That is truly the foundation for content marketing – for ANY marketing for that matter. Same Old, Same Old Way back in September 2011 I wrote a piece entitled Social Media’s Dirty Little Secret. And wouldn’t you know it, these two icons of the marketing lexicon – social media and content marketing – share the same dirty little secret. Why hasn’t content marketing helped our sales liked it has our competition?” Bob: “Um…” Now here’s how I think the conversation SHOULD go down but never does… CMO/CEO: “Ah Bob, we need to be doing content marketing. Fear of losing his/her job by telling the boss that no matter what they do – be it social media, content marketing, whatever, it’s not going to matter because the very thing you are trying to get consumers to buy and patronize, stinks. Over the past few years some folks I respect and follow have made statements that speak directly to this dirty little secret. Much like social media and any and all marketing “tools” that come along – content marketing is not a magic elixir.
There is an inherent danger lurking in the shadows of the halls of content marketing. Those in the digital marketing space know of its existence but are often times reluctant to acknowledge its presence. But it’s there all right.
It permeates into every form of content marketing: from mobile marketing to social media to all points north, south, east and west.
The other day my fellow Forbes scribe Robert Wynne penned Content Marketing – The Real Story. In his piece Robert wrote “The goals of Content Marketing are to: Build relationships with existing clients, attract new customers, demonstrate benefits, tell interesting stories about your brand and to appear in search engines and increase web traffic.”
He of course is dead on. The goal is absolutely to do all that Robert says and I love the fact that he leads off with “build relationships.” That is truly the foundation for content marketing – for ANY marketing for that matter.
But the part Robert left out – and it is surely not his fault, deals directly with the aforementioned dirty little secret.
Same Old, Same Old
Way back in September 2011 I wrote a piece entitled Social Media’s Dirty Little Secret. And wouldn’t you know it, these two icons of the marketing lexicon – social media and content marketing – share the same dirty little secret.
Paraphrasing something I wrote entitled When It Comes to Social Media, Companies Need to Look In Before Looking Out: (I changed all references to “social media” to “content marketing.)
Here’s how I think many a conversation in B2B marketing and B2C marketing conference rooms around the world has gone down in the past few years, AKA when the world began to wake up to the power of content marketing:
CMO/CEO: “Ah Bob, we need to be doing content marketing. Our sales are way down and I see our competitors are all over content marketing and their sales are up… so obviously the…
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