This month’s publishing and marketing news round-up is looking at the ways you could refresh your content marketing strategy, deciphering whether your company is suffering website obesity, and highlighting the parallels between your marketing template and a long-running HBO show.
Inspiration in unexpected places
Corey Pemberton’s article on Marketing Profs, examines how Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin can teach you a thing or two about marketing. Corey outlines some parallels between R.R. Martin’s writing and a marketing strategy. To begin with, he explains how Martin has been writing since 1971, yet it’s only in the last few years that he’s begun to receive high and consistent praise. The same can be said for marketing, where marketers must resist rushing a campaign and expecting success overnight, instead allowing it time to grow and nourish at its own speed. Another point that Corey highlights is having relentless focus. When writing, the Game of Thrones author uses an old computer with no internet connection, apps or any other notable distractions. This allows him to focus solely on his writing. Many of us would be wise to follow in his footsteps, as opposed to getting distracted by every new email, tweet or app. Instead, Corey says we should be focusing on the fundamentals, including reaching new leads, building relationships, and working them down your sales funnel and executing them consistently, putting you ahead of unfocused, scattered competitors.
Is your company suffering from website obesity?
In his article for CMSWire, David Hsieh discusses how website obesity could be eating your business. David reveals that websites have grown 150 times in size over the past 20 years - in 1995 the average webpage was 14 KB, today’s site average is 2,162 KB. He notes that although website obesity serves a purpose and can often broaden the customer experience, it does so at the cost of performance. Every change makes a website slower, and if nothing is done, the problem will continue to escalate, leading to frustrated users, increased site abandonment and decreased conversions. David offers up some ways to keep your website and web performance healthy, including cleansing your website. Take out all unnecessary content and unused assets, including third-party widgets, social buttons and unused customised fans. He also suggests simplifying your website design, resisting over-designing, and instead trimming down the number of pages and using a limited colour palette.
Refreshing your content marketing strategy
Eric Siu writes a piece for HubSpot on B2B vs. B2C and how content marketing changes by target audience. Eric highlights some of the inherent differences between B2B and B2C marketing, and how understanding these distinctions and applying them to your campaigns gives you the best possible chances of reaching your prospects in a meaningful, engaging way. First off, there’s intent. Eric explains how one of the first areas where B2B content marketing diverges from B2C campaigns is in the overall intent of the initiative’s messaging. Those creating B2B content should keep the imperative of building thought leadership in mind. Those who are more active with B2C content should consider other goals, such as establishing exclusivity or cost effectiveness. Eric also highlights the importance of messaging, and how the way you craft your company’s messaging can depend heavily on your target audience. For a B2B content creator, he suggests beginning with a message of value, service, or trust underpinning your content, and then adjust your voice as needed to serve your target market. For B2C, however, focus on proving your price and demonstrating emotional satisfaction first.
Marketing Profs features another article, this time written by Marie Dolle, on the five ways to beat content format fatigue. Marie outlines new content formats that we should be using, in hope of keeping our audiences refreshed and continually engaged. She begins by suggesting the use of gifographics, a step up from an infographic. Gifographics combine the imagery and data of an infographic, with the movement of a gif, making it far more interactive. Marie explains how the small animations can guide the viewer through the information in a specific order, enriching your story and making it a far more exciting way of presenting data. Next up is interactive white papers. The goal, Marie explains, is to harness the power of interactive content to boost demand generation and turn content into leads. An interactive white paper allows readers to take part in an interactive content experience, by having readers adapt content according to answers given in quizzes or custom surveys. Benefits can include entering into a dialogue with your clients and prospects, increasing engagement scores, and building prospect profiles.
Concluding this month’s news round-up is Nathan Ellering, who writing for Convince and Convert, reveals the 105 types of content to fill up your editorial calendar. Nathan has created a hefty list of all the different types of content you could be using, and why you should be using them. Though you can’t be expected to implement every single one into your content marketing strategy, there are many that every marketer should at least be experimenting with. Some of the types of content suggested include questions and answers, case studies, personal stories, and failures and what not to do pieces. Nathan’s list continues on with many more ideas that every marketer should consider introducing at some stage within their content marketing template.
It seems unlikely, but are there any types of useful content that Nathan left off his list?
