Why Content Marketing is the Jose Mourinho of Digital Marketing

As Chelsea Football Club prepare themselves for the presentation of the Barclays Premier League trophy this weekend, their manager Jose Mourinho will naturally be given a large amount of credit for bringing back the title to Stamford Bridge for the first time since 2010.  Mourinho is undoubtedly one of the finest managers in the history of the game with an impressive trophy haul in every country he has managed.  But what makes him so successful and what lessons can be learned from him by both digital marketers and businesses?

Here's a list that I think summarises this well:

He's not scared to spend money when he thinks he's right

Over the years, Mourinho has spent hundreds of millions of Euros assembling the squads that have delivered success.  While many managers would have hesitated in breaking world transfer records for players such as Cristiano Ronaldo due to the pressures that would go with it, this is something that Mourinho simply embraces.  As business owners or marketers, how many times has your business missed an opportunity by not making a decision despite you being sure that it's the right thing to do for your company?  It happens alot and it needs to happen less.  In football, this is the difference between winning and losing, and although the lines are more blurred in business, the impact can also be the same.

Within the context of content marketing, how many times have you written an article that has generated a good number of organic likes, shares and re-tweets but then never spent that extra $100 maximising the visibility and reach of that content to potential customers?  When the opportunity is there, it needs to be grabbed!

A tactical genius

Mourinho is widely regarded as the wisest and most tactically astute manager in world football and for good reason too.  There have been times when his football teams do not have the best, most talented players in the league, but yet somehow, he will pull off a win when it matters the most.  This is a trait that most of us, whether we are football managers or not need to learn.  So, how does he do it?  In my opinion, it's about playing not only to your strengths but also playing to the weaknesses of your opponents and that's where Mourinho gets it right.  This season, Mourinho's Chelsea squad is not the strongest in the league, yet he has won the title with weeks to spare by consistently outperforming those with better quality resources at their disposal.

In digital marketing, the landscape is very similar to the premier league, where businesses need to outwit their competitors in order to maximise market share.  All businesses have something that makes them unique compared to their competitors and if this is a major strength, it needs to be used and highlighted to your potential customers.  In digital marketing, assessing the weaknesses of your competitors is absolutely vital and can present areas of opportunity that your business can take advantage of - similar to a counter attack in football.  If your competitors have weak search engine visibility or poor content on their website, this presents a immediate opportunity for your business.  In this scenario, the creation of a blog filled with high quality content will quickly start producing results for your business and will have your competitors playing catch up with you.

He's consistent and highly disciplined

Whether you like him or not, Jose Mourinho is extremely consistent and expects high discipline from his team.  Whether its the style of football his teams play, his mannerisms, the way he speaks about his team and how he handles the media, there are very few surprises left whenever you look at Mourinho.  But this takes some getting used to.  Even Chelsea, the team he loves and where he was extremely successful had issues with his style and the consistency that he brought to the team.  Many at the club, including the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, felt his consistent style was not as sexy on the eye as they'd have possibly liked.  The result was that Mourinho was 'let go' of only to be re-appointed once the hierarchy realised that consistency is actually no bad thing if it brings you results and ultimately trophies and success.

In digital marketing and especially content marketing, every business needs consistency and a high degree of discipline in order to succeed.  Consistency comes in the form of creating, managing and maintaining the visibility of your business online in order to achieve success.  The more regularity at which you create content, the more successful your business will be online.  It's really as straightforward as that.  If you combine this with the discipline required across a company to help the ideation process in order to create high quality and regular content, this combination becomes extremely powerful for a business.

He's outspoken

One thing's for sure, if Jose Mourinho has something to say, he will say it.  Whether this be in the media, during a live interview, mid-match to a referee or even in his own dressing room at Stamford Bridge, there is no doubt about this at all.  And I say, good for him.  In business (and sometimes in life) those who stand up for what they believe in are often the ones that get noticed first.  Digital marketers and especially content marketers need to take this on board.  How often has your company taken a stance on a position, maybe a ruling or practice in your industry that isn't ethical and not publicly spoken about this?  How often has your company achieved greatness either internally or for a client and not broadcasted this publicly?  I'm sure most of us have been in this position and have looked back on this with some level of regret.  I know that we've been guilty of that at Nexa.  In this digital age, where publishing content is no longer a challenge, we should all be more outspoken.  After all, the internet today produces so much content that the only way we can stand out is to be the most visible and 'loudest' company out there within our competitive sets.

When implemented correctly, Content Marketing can bring the kind of results that can help your business stand out amongst the pack.  Much like Mourinho at Chelsea.  It can enhance your brand positioning and increase your business' visibility not only on search engines (which on its own is awesome by the way!) but also from a though-leadership perspective and your industry peers, existing and potential customers will start to look at your business very differently.  Most importantly, Content Marketing drives results.  In Mourinho's world, results are trophies.  In the business world, we class results as new qualified business leads, new customers, increased web traffic, high customer retention and more.  

Content Marketing is proven as a lead generating vehicle for businesses in most industries but is completely under-utilised especially in the Middle East.  This is the opportunity - do for your business what your competitors aren't doing for theirs!  As discussed above, Mourinho is the master of this and is why he is so successful.

There's clearly a lot we can learn from people like Jose Mourinho.  I'm not a Chelsea fan, but I am most definitely a Jose Mourinho fan and wish he was the manager of my football team, Everton.  This weekend, when he is presented with his trophy I'll sit back and applaud - he deserves it.

Have I missed anything from the list above?  If so, let me know!

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