The 4P's of Content Marketing
Posted by May 13th 09
Marketing 101 taught you the 4 P's of Traditional Marketing - Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Do these fundamental pillars still hold for all types of marketing? Certainly not.
Let us take a look at the 4 Ps of Content Marketing.
- Purpose
- Plan
- Persuade
- Presentation
ClickDocuments: 4 P's of Content Marketing
Purpose
Begin with the end in mind. - Stephen Covey
Identify your destination for Content Marketing. Understand what information your target market wants and how they want it. Be clear about your objectives for creating and marketing content. Set a SMART(specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound ) Goal. Consider this - Technical Decision Makers are always overwhelmed with information and are unable to spend enough time with every solution offering before making buying decisions. Instead of pitching your product in a sales brochure, create a white paper on "Top 10 Consideration before buying your next Server" or "Top 10 Mistakes to avoid in your Server Networking Project". The purpose of your Content Marketing should always be to educate and inform your prospects and customers. If you do this right, business and profits will follow. For more insights on finding out purpose of Content Marketing read Joe Pulizzi's Key Questions when Launching a Content Marketing Initiative and Russell Sparkman's Tips for Getting Your Content Marketing Initiative Started.
Key questions to ask before embarking on your Content Marketing journey
- What are the goals of your Content Marketing Initiative?
- Why are you creating content?
- Who is it aimed towards?
- What information are your prospects and customers seeking?
- Are you trying to create awareness or drive preference?
- What are the goals and aspirations of your prospects and customers?
Plan
A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there. - H. Stanely Judd
Have a strategic plan before you start executing. Determine how best to achieve your Content Marketing goals given the resources you have. Find the actionable tasks to execute on your Content Marketing vision. Align your tasks with what your target market wants for their informational needs. Build a clear and consistent theme for your Content Marketing and each individual piece of content. For example, if you are creating various content to reach the same set of target audience plan ahead to ensure consistent theme. You might be creating an external version of a white paper for your customers and prospects, handing out an internal version of the white paper to your sales force and creating a video or podcast of salient points in the white paper. The important point to remember here is that before doing all of this, to have an integrated Content Marketing Plan. For more insights on planning ahead for Content Marketing read Rohit Bhargava's How To Create A Content Marketing Strategy.
Key questions to ask when planning your Content Marketing program
- What contents needs to be created?
- How do your prospects and customers consume information?
- How can you reach your prospects and customers?
- Which content needs to be prioritized?
- How are you going to influence your target audience during different touch points of their buying journey?
- Do the people who are making purchase decisions reading the kind of content you want to publish?
Persuade
I'm not really interested in persuading people, I don't want to and I try to make this point obvious. What I'd like to do is to help people persuade themselves. - Noam Chomsky
By creating and distributing content you educate, inform or entertain your target audience. However, there is also a goal that you are trying to meet. What is that goal? Do you want you readers to buy your product? Do you want them to sign up for a seminar? Identify your goals behind creating and distributing your content. After idenfitying your goal, think about how you can persuade your customers and prospects to take action. For example, if you have created a white paper highlighting how Informational Technology buyers can benefit from implementing security for their networks, call out a specific action that they have to do after reading your white paper. The action might be a demo to further understand the product or a trial version of the software to try for 30 days. For more insights on persuasive Content Marketing read Dean Rieck's The Yogi Berra School of Persuasive Writing and Brian Clark's Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques.
Key questions to ask when creating your content
- What do you want to persuade your target audience to do?
- How do you use content to persuade your target audience?
- Do you use facts, figures, examples, case studies, graphs, research, illustrations?
- How can you make your arguments clear in a way it appeals to your target audience?
- How do you emphasize the benefits of your product/service?
- Does your content flow well and have a 'call-to-action' at the end?
Presentation
If your idea is worth spreading, then presentation matters. - Garr Reynolds
It doesn't matter how compelling and valuable your content is. It has to be presented in an appealing way so your prospects and customers can engage with it and more importantly take the desired course of action you want them to take. Have a visual appealing layout for your white paper. If you are covering a customer case study in your white paper, present the customer's quote by placing it prominently on the first page. Present illustrations or examples that your customers and prospects will find useful and convincing.
Key questions to ask about how to present your content
- How do you present your content?
- How do you get feedback about presentation?
- What marketing vehicle do you use to present your content to your target audience?
- Does your content appealing to the target audience?
- Are your layouts neat and easily readable?
- Do you have catchy headlines and clear, crisp content?
Over to you…
What questions do you ask when creating your Content Marketing Strategy?
posted in Thought Leadership
July 2010
