There are times in your life that you simply never forget. In our personal lives we're filled with moments such as these throughout our childhood and as we develop into adults. For many of us, these moments were possibly life changing. But what about our working lives? Do these moments exist where something happens that changes everything in your career or if you are a business owner, a bolt out of the blue that fundamentally improves your business from that point on?
Well, I think that happens and when it does it leaves a profound effect not only on your business but on your life as a whole. But this often means change and learning how to adapt to this change, whether it be a mindset shift or a completely new dynamic. Whatever it is, the only way to know if it's real is if becomes or has the potential to become one of those defining moments of your business life.
For smart businesses over the next 12 months, content marketing will be this moment. Of this, I have no doubt.
The problem is, we as individuals are trained to do things in a certain way. That's one of the flaws of global academic systems where we are taught how to run businesses, market products and services or manage people in a very specific way. While what we are taught is based on research, theoretical models and a small degree of experience, I'm never surprised when I hear stories about new billionaires who became successful after dropping out of university or college.
I'm a classically trained marketer who just happened to graduate as the world started to understand the power of the internet. My definition of a classically trained marketer is someone who was taught marketing before people understood how the internet would impact business. So in other words, things like email campaigns, CRM and even websites were not a part of the curriculum. And for that, I'm eternally thankful - but I'll leave the reason why for another article! Anyway, I was taught about communication, about understanding local markets and creating marketing campaigns focussed on a powerful message that resonated strongly with a specific and targeted audience. When you think of it, marketing is still about all of these elements but with the technology available today, the way you can distribute a message has developed dramatically - much like TV did in the Mad Men days during the 1960s.
So, if marketing is all about creating great and meaningful content that needs to be distributed to the right audience, then by using the internet as a distribution platform that can reach billions of people around the world, what we have is game changing. Life changing even. This is content marketing.
It comes back to education. Put simply, we are not taught this. Nor are we taught to think outside of the box on a strategic marketing level. The pace at which online marketing opportunities are growing does tend to justify this but if you are company that wants to embrace the internet, create engaging content that solves a problem for a customer or potential customer, build loyalty and drive new business leads, then content marketing is the absolute right strategy for your business. When implemented correctly, content marketing will:
There are many successful case studies for businesses of all types that have adopted content marketing principles to achieve great success and we'd be happy to share these with you.
If you are interested in learning more about content marketing, please complete the form or download our free E-Book on Content Marketing.