Tag Archives: content marketing

Go Beyond Features and Benefits – Look for the Compelling Story

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Features and benefits are the staples of any basic sales training course. The ability to differentiate between what something is and the benefits that its features deliver to the user is an essential foundation of all sales and marketing. But really effective online marketing does more than this. Effective online marketing uses the power of storytelling to evoke emotion and create a strong desire.

online marketing

How does your online marketing make people feel?

Here’s an example.

Neverfade ™ is a paint for external woodwork that is guaranteed to last 15 years without becoming dull, losing its colour or flaking off. It can be painted over bare wood, existing paintwork or woodstain. It costs £100 for a 1 litre tin. How would somebody sell that to me?

I might be sceptical about the claims. Some technical details about the formulation, how it uses the latest polymer science developed by NASA scientists and so on will help deal with those concerns. But it’s still £100 a tin!

OK then – some benefits.

You will only have to repaint my window frames after 15-20 years. In the long run this is going to save  money as you might otherwise have to buy 3 or 4 loads of primer, undercoat and topcoat in that time. The product will be saving you time and money over that period.

OK I see the point. But this is all a long way off. And you want £100 per tin today. And actually I might need 2 tins!

Now tell me a story that invites me to think of how I prefer to spend my time; up a wobbly ladder sanding down window frames, covered with dust, cleaning paintbrushes and the mind-numbing boredom of painting. Or playing golf, watching Exeter Chiefs or having a day out with family and friends. Take my mind to a happier place and I’m likely to be hitting Google to see where I can buy this stuff.

This is a simple example to make the point. I’m sure you can think of plenty of ways that you can apply this logic to your marketing. Don’t just tell people about the benefits – help them to feel the benefits.

Website content

Now think about your website content. Many smaller business websites I look at focus on features. Some of the better ones are clear about benefits. But hardly any use content that is focused on how people will feel as a result of using the product or service. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I rarely meet small businesses who are totally satisfied with the contribution that their online marketing makes to their business results.

Content marketing

The evolution of content marketing takes story telling in marketing to a new level – you have so many stories to tell and so many opportunities to tell them. Your content strategy should be based around the challenges, concerns and interests of your target customers and these should always be the starting point for blog posts and other content.

Resist the temptation to make a direct sales pitch with a systematic explanation of how your offer addresses the customer’s issues. Take one of those issues and build a story that shows somebody that things can be different. Offer helpful advice and valuable insights that deepen understanding and encourage people to look at their issues in a different way. Above all, put a bit of your heart and soul into the content. Show that you care about your customers’ issues and that you are caring and thoughtful about what you do.

People and businesses now spend significant amounts of time online researching potential purchases before they part with their cash. So the quality of your online marketing content is becoming more critical to the success of your business. If you want to make the most of this opportunity then you need to invest in content that moves beyond ‘features and benefits’ and engages your audience by evoking feelings and emotions.

Note: Neverfade is not available in the shops or on line, because I made it up.

Image: danorbit. via Compfight

Copywriter Content Marketing South West EnglandRichard Hussey, RSH Copywriting

Find out how to use written content to build trust and build sales. Call me on 01823 674167.

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Uses for an Old Blog Post – Get More Value from Business Blogging

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Writing a good blog post takes time and effort. Identifying a relevant message, framing it in a way that resonates with your audience, making it interesting and entertaining – this all needs work. What a shame then if you only ever use that post once. Here’s a few thoughts on how you can get more value from this hard work.

business blogging - content re-use Nick Wheeler via Compfight

I’m assuming that you are already making full use of social media tools to distribute your content, and that you’ve identified the networks that the people you want to engage with are using. This is not an article about how you link your business blogging activity to social media, I want to focus on different ways that you can use the stock of content that you’ve built up.

Business blogging – don’t be a one-hit wonder

The simplest thing you can do is go back through your posts, find ones that are still relevant and repost them on your social media networks. You should be continuously growing your network of connections, online and through networking. You may also have found some new discussion groups on LinkedIn or Google+. If your post is a few months old there should be plenty of people new to your network who may have missed the content first time around – why deprive them of the experience?

Think before you re-post

Being in business should be a learning experience. We learn more about what our customers need and we continue to think of new ways to apply our expertise or products. New ways of doing things, new technology – all of these affect how we think about what we do. But our core purpose and the value we bring to our customers rarely changes at a fundamental level. Your older blog posts should continue to carry a strong and relevant message about the value you offer – but may need updating with a fresh insight. But you don’t have to start from scratch for every post. If you have good existing content go and ‘mine and refine.’

Email Marketing

Not all of your connections will be glued to social media networks 24/7. So it’s possible that they may miss your posts linking to your content. Include summaries of your blog articles in email marketing with links to the full content. If people have opted in to your email list it’s because they are interested in what you have to say.

Queries and follow-up

Sometimes your blog post can answer a question posed on social media forums. If your content is relevant, answer the question and provide a link. A word of caution though: make sure it IS relevant and it doesn’t look like you’re being opportunist or doing a bit of cheap link-building. Also, use blog posts to follow up conversations with people you meet at networking events. If you have built your content around things that matter to your target customers there should be plenty of opportunities to use it as part of your follow up.

Turn it into something else

People like to receive information in different ways. Think about whether your article can be turned into a presentation and posted on Slideshare. If you can find some engaging visuals, your blog post might form the basis of a video script. If you have a series of related, good quality articles you might have the basis of a valuable e-book, You can use the e-book as a way of getting more online contacts and email sign-ups to replenish your sales pipeline.

That’s just a few suggestions for getting more value from your business blogging. As always, these will only work if your content is well produced and based on the things your customers care about.

Richard Hussey

Richard Hussey Freelance Copywriter South West EnglandI’m a copywriter based in the South West. Call me on 01823 674167 or use the contact tab to find out how written content can boost your b2b marketing.

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Content Marketing – Finding the High Value Sweet Spot

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Effective content marketing needs a focus. With the right focus and sense of direction, finding suitable topics for blog articles, infograpics, videos, slideshares and so on should never be a challenge. The formula is relatively simple to understand. In fact here’s the simplest of diagrams to illustrate:

Content Marketing Focus

 

 

 

 

 

But, while the concept is simple, making it work still needs research, mental effort and planning.

The green circle above represents your side of the content marketing equation and the blue side represents the people you want to engage. You could call the bit in the middle ‘Value’. Put simply, what you have to offer only has value when it overlaps with what a potential customer needs. That’s the area where you need to focus your content.

Looking first at the ‘you’ side of the diagram, the products and services aspect is, in theory, the easiest bit to understand. It’s also the most common bit to misunderstand. Your services can be a context for your content, but shouldn’t be the subject.

Here’s an example to illustrate. One of my clients provides web-based software applications for a range of businesses. We never publish articles that just talk about how great their software is. We always focus on an issue or challenge that businesses face, these, of course, happen to be the sort of issues that their software is really good at overcoming. The primary objective is to get businesses to think a bit more deeply about how the processes and systems they use are affecting their business performance.

Knowledge and Experience

There’s a similar argument with both knowledge and experience. Your content is an opportunity to reinforce (subtly) that you have relevant knowledge and experience to address the things in the ‘customer’ circle above.

Of all the words in the green circle ‘beliefs’ is probably the most interesting. As a business, what do you care about? What makes you do what you do in the way you do it?

These last 3 elements: knowledge, experience and beliefs, are what will give your blog and other content a distinctive and engaging personality. This will make you stand out from all the other content that just passes on information without getting people to stop and think. Have a look here if you want to know more about business blogging with personality.

Content Marketing – Customer Needs

Apologies for not starting this article by focusing on the customer (won’t happen again, I promise), but I thought it was helpful to look at your side of the equation first on this occasion. Naturally, the starting point for your content strategy has to be the customers you want to win.

For all of us in business, the two most precious commodities are cash and time. Successful business people don’t part with either readily, and without getting something back. If you want people to spend some of their valuable time reading your content you have to be helping them with at least one of the words in the blue circle: objectives, needs, issues and challenges.

Your content strategy needs to be based on a thorough understanding of your target customers, what they want to achieve, what they are struggling with, and how what you do helps overcome those issues. You need to spend time researching, discussing and documenting this before you start producing content. Often, it’s helpful to include somebody external in this process to get a more objective view.

This analysis of customer needs and how your offer addresses them also pays off with the identification of relevant keywords for internet searches. Somebody looking for a particular solution ends up finding your excellently produced and highly relevant content through Google – think about that.

How Many Circles?

In reality most businesses will have a number of different types of customer they are targeting: different sectors, different sizes and so on. A more accurate diagram would have several customer circles and different areas where your services, knowledge and experience overlap. So you need to segment your targets in a meaningful way and carry out this analysis for each group.

This may seem a bit more effort than what you are currently doing but I can promise you it’s worth it. The prize on offer is the capability to publish content that people will actually want, value and engage with.

Richard Hussey, RSH Copywriting

I run a copywriting and content marketing business in South West England. Find out more about how I can help you win more customers: Content Marketing Services, Devon

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Does Your Business Blog Have an Identity Crisis?

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The best business blogs are not necessarily the most grammatically perfect and may not even be the ones with the most finely-honed copywriting. The critical factor is having a distinct identity and a personality. As more businesses take up blogging, how will yours stand out from the crowd – with the distinct identity you need to build a loyal readership? By identity I don’t mean how your blog looks, but what it has to say.

business blogs

Originality is the key to effective business blogging

Nick Wheeler via Compfight

The proliferation of business blogs means that we’re not short of information sources.  For pretty well any business topic, whether it’s marketing, finance, IT, HR or PR, you’ll find plenty of words of explanation on any number of blog sites. Yes, people want to be informed, but getting people to engage fully and regularly with your blog needs more than just informational content.

Business Blogs Need Personality

So what makes a successful blog site? One that people will subscribe to and one where they’ll make the effort to click on a link that pops up in Twitter or LinkedIn feeds? The ‘personality’ of your blog is critical.

The personality of your blog is partly to do with the writing style: friendly, easy to read content always wins over self-important and preachy stuff. This isn’t always easy for people to do but there are plenty of copywriters who can turn your thoughts into readable copy if that’s not your thing. Most importantly, it’s what you have to say and how that resonates with your audience.

A major reason for business blogs failing to generate a return on the time and effort that goes into creating them, is that businesses don’t work out their key messages: the fundamental views and values that underpin their blogging strategy. Once you understand these it’s much easier to identify the topics that you need to blog about and what you want those blog articles to say. Without these fundamentals you’re likely to end up just posting more information into a crowded space in the hope of establishing some kind of on-line presence.

Insight and Originality

Factual and informative articles are fine but they don’t engage. What your audience is looking for is your personal take on the subject. Rather than just describe something, think about the implications for your customers; pose some additional, relevant questions that they might not have thought about. Aim to help your audience develop their understanding. Be thought-provoking and even controversial if the situation calls for it. Above all, add your personal insight to every topic.

I have a feeling that one reason so many blogs fail to establish an identity is that the authors aren’t clear about who they are writing for. Business blogs should always be planned and written with a defined audience in mind. If you understand who you are writing for you can work out the following:

  • the subjects they’re really going to be interested in
  • how those subjects relate to their lives or businesses

The key is understanding not just whether they will be interested but why they will be interested.

Good blogging is about interpretation and analysis rather than just passing on information. You don’t want your blog to be like the boring bloke down the pub who knows lots of things but has nothing interesting or original to say about any of them.

Business Blogs: Give Them a Reason to Return

People have a reason to come back to your blog if you’ve helped them think a bit more deeply about something. Develop their thinking and level of understanding and they’ll decide that it’s worth paying a return visit. But if you just give them the same information they could get on a dozen other sites, they might try one of those next time.

 

RIchard Hussey is the founder of RSH Copywriting, Devon. Copywriting, web content and content marketing for SMEs in the South West. Call me on 01823 674167.

See more: copywriter Devon

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Are Your Competitors Already Building Relationships With Your Customers?

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There might have been a time in the early days of online marketing, when having a website as an online brochure, one that said a bit about what you do and how to contact you, had some value. For most businesses those days are over.

For one thing, there are now so many websites that just getting found in the first place is becoming more challenging. It’s also the simplest thing in the world for your customers (potential ones and existing ones) to do their research on competitors to see whether you really are offering the best value. If your website doesn’t make a clear case for why you deserve somebody’s business, they can easily find one that does.

online marketing - building relationships

I’m going to be blunt here: if your online marketing is based around a website with content you pulled together yourself, is all about you rather than your customers, and is not part of a coordinated on-line marketing plan, you might as well save yourself the maintenance and hosting charges. Here’s why.

Online Marketing – Customers Do Their Research

Increasingly, customers use the internet to research the things they want to buy. This is true in the business to consumer and business to business arenas. If a potential customer compares your site to one with content that is written from the customer’s perspective, focuses on their issues, and explains clearly the added value of their solution, where do you think they will spend their money?

Google Loves Good Content

Read any report or Google press release on the development of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and they will tell you that good quality content is the way forward. Google owns 90% of the UK internet search market and wants to ensure its users have a good experience. That’s why it is getting ever more sophisticated in its ability to distinguish between good content and poor content. The stuff it deems to be poor quality, out of date and not helpful to its users is downgraded.

Are Your Competitors Building On-Line Relationships with Your Customers?

Publishing online content such as blog articles, infographics, videos and so on is a great way to reach new customers. Publish things that people are interested in and, no surprise, they read it. Every bit of content they consume is building awareness and trust and developing the relationship. Eventually they become a new customer. ‘New’ customers, however, are rarely new in the sense that they have just started to exist. They are just new to you, which means they used to be somebody else’s.

You might think that you have a large and loyal customer base and don’t need to keep them engaged by publishing content; but do your competitors see it the same way? Are your loyal customers gradually being made aware of competitors’ offers, not through overt marketing, but by somebody continually providing them with useful, relevant and well produced information? Are your existing customers gradually turning into their ‘new’ ones.

Content Strategies Help SEO

Even if you have a great website, you still need to be thinking about a content strategy. That’s because Google rankings are increasingly influenced by the things that happen outside of your website. Not only does a content strategy help you reach a new audience, it also increases search traffic. Here’s a few reasons why:

  • A wider range of content means you can optimise for a wider range of more specific search terms.
  • Google rewards sites with regularly refreshed content – blogs are a great way to generate a flow of new content.
  • Good new content generates social media activity. Google measures these ‘social signals’ and uses them to rank your site.
  • Good new content generates good quality links back to your site. Again, Google measures these.

All the indicators point to the fact that online content is an increasingly critical factor in deciding tomorrow’s winners and losers. If you’re not already investing in content, don’t assume that your competitors are being as slow off the mark.

Image: Adam Foster via Compfight

Richard Hussey

I’m the founder of RSH Copywriting, a content development business in South West England. I help businesses develop coherent content plans and improve their on-line marketing with engaging content. Call me on 01823 674167 to see how I can help you. See More: Content Marketing South West

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What Do Christmas Cards Say About B2B Marketing in 2013?

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The way you approached your Christmas card writing might say something about the way you do on-line marketing. And might give you food for thought in your B2B marketing plans for 2013.

B2B marketing

A traditional image – but is it right for everyone?

 

Royce Bair via Compfight

The quickest and easiest way to finish the card-writing task is to get a big box of identical cards, sign your name and then whack them into address-labelled envelopes. Job done in no time!

On the other hand, you might take a little time to find a card with a suitable image and message. After all, would you send the same card to your nan as you would to an old schoolmate? If it was somebody important you hadn’t seen for a while you could also take the time to write a brief personal note.

If you looked at your Christmas cards as an opportunity to maintain relationships, you would certainly take a bit of time to find just the right card and include a personal message.

B2B Marketing – Increasingly Personalised

OK, so what about your on-line marketing? If it consists of firing off a standard email or newsletter to a long list of contacts, isn’t this a bit like stuffing a load of cards into envelopes with no thoughts about who they are going to? What does that do for engagement?

Look through your email marketing list, you’ll soon realise that, just like your Christmas card list, it’s a diverse bunch of contacts. You will have a different history and a different level of engagement with each address on that list. As the aim of your on-line marketing is to move each one through different stages from ‘awareness’, through ‘interest’ and into ‘conversion’. The messages and content they need will be different at each stage.

For content marketing, this means a ‘one message fits all’ approach is not sufficient. The B2B content marketing world is moving closer to individualised content, targeted at people’s specific interests and based on where they are in the process of becoming customers.

B2B Marketing – Jobs for 2013

So for 2013, here are two tasks you should get started on:

1. Analyse your contact list. Make sure it is segmented according to the different areas of your business and to where people are in the sales process.

2. Devise a content plan that builds on your existing awareness-raising activities and has carefully targeted messages and promotions that help to move your contacts to the next stage.

It might be too late for your 2012 Christmas card list, but start now on your on-line marketing and 2013 should be a much more prosperous year.

Richard Hussey

I am the founder of RSH Copywriting. I help businesses to win new customers through good quality, relevant content and effective use of social media and on-line marketing.

 

 

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B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012 Survey

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This interesting slide-share looks at B2B content marketing trends based on a 2012 survey. There’s a clear trend, not only to using content in marketing but also to using a wider variety of formats.

No surprises that the capacity to generate sufficient content of the right quality was the biggest issue highlighted.

Content marketing

How are you going to attract new customers in 2013?

 

Adam Crowe via Compfight

Content curation continues to grow in significance, and rightly so. The risk, however, can be that businesses see curation of other people’s content as an easy fix and start indiscriminately harvesting every bit of content related to their business without much thought or effort. Two points to make here: be selective and choose the best content that relates most directly to your target audience; and make sure you mix it with your own original content.

I will probably read 10- 20 posts on content marketing before I find one that I want to share, based on the needs and interests of the people I want to reach.

In any case, content marketing is here to stay and evolving rapidly in sophistication and impact. If you’re not already using it then 2013 is the time to start. I’d be happy to talk to you about how you can get started. Call me on 01823 674167 or email richard@rshcopywriting .co.uk

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Blogging for Business Part 3 – Planning Your Content

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When I’m talking to people about starting a business blog one of the most common barriers people put up is ‘I don’t know what I can write about – my business isn’t interesting enough to generate regular new content.’ I’ve yet to find a business where this was true and for which blogging couldn’t be done effectively.

business blogging

Effective blogging is about finding engaging messages

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There’s a group of people out there who will be interested in what you do, they’re called customers. If they weren’t interested in what you do they wouldn’t be your customers. And there are other people who have similar interests to your customers but are not yet doing business with you. The first step towards a blogging plan is to look at your blog from these people’s perspective, rather than from an internal viewpoint.

It’s easy to become focused on this internal perspective. We naturally devote a lot of energy into thinking about how to do things better and day to day problem solving. You can lose sight of the things that you already know that other people would find useful and on the beneficial effects of what you do on other people’s lives or businesses.

So here are a few steps you can go through to help develop your blogging plan.

1. Identify your blogging targets

It’s unlikely that your target audience will be homogeneous. In most cases you can break your customers down by size or business sector, for example. It’s important to do this as the issues and challenges they face will differ. The more you can refine the picture of what your customers ‘look like’, the more you will be able to target content specifically at each sub group.

Think carefully too about the bits of your business that you really want to grow. You only have so much time to create and publish content, so make sure you focus on products or services that have a profitable future and on the people who are likely to have enough money to buy them.

2. Think about their issues and challenges

For each group of customers you identify, make a list of issues and challenges that they face. What’s going to be keeping them awake at night? Then write down alongside each of these points the ways in which what you do helps overcome those issues and challenges.

3. Themes and key messages

Having identified your audience, what matters to them, and how you can help, you are well on the way to a content plan. By this stage loads of potential blog topics are usually popping into your mind. But before you start writing it’s also worth thinking about some overarching messages; these may be specific to each group of customers. Think of it as an overall impression you want to convey through your content. Here are some examples:

We can make their life simpler

We can help them be more efficient

We can help them get more business

You should also consider the specific values that you have in your business. Is your marketing based on the customer service you offer, price, specialist knowledge, skills, or is your approach to business in some way unique? It’s worth documenting these values as a reminder that you want to reinforce them with each new piece of content.

4. Who and when

Having been through the above processes you should have a list of blog articles that you intend to publish. At this stage it will probably just be a list of topics, themes and messages for each customer group. Now comes the slightly dull but absolutely crucial bit. You need to plan when each article will be published and who is going to produce it. As a minimum you want to be clear about what you will be putting out over the next 3-6 months.

The plan doesn’t need to be elaborate (in fact it’s often a case of the simpler the better), but it needs to be a plan. Blogging should be an important element of your marketing mix and you need some structure to avoid it being overwhelmed by more urgent issues.

The plan should also include time to review the effectiveness of the blogging strategy. I’ll say more about how you can use analytics to improve the results you get from blogging in a later article.

5. Spread the word

The other feature in your plan should be to identify the networks you will use to disseminate your articles. If it’s LinkedIn, think about the specific discussion groups that would be most relevant. You also want to consider whether the blogs and social media posting will be from the company or from an individual. Above all, be clear about who will be posting the articles and where they will go.

6. And finally, be flexible

Effective blogging is often about being topical. So don’t be afraid to deviate from your publishing plan if urgent and relevant issues come up in the news. Beware of coming across as opportunistic, however. There were some ghastly examples on Twitter of people trying to hijack the news of the recent hurricane in America as a marketing opportunity.

Hopefully you’ve now got a clearer idea of how you can come up with suitable things to blog about. Next time I’ll be discussing some tips for making your articles more engaging and effective.

Richard Hussey

If you missed the first 2 parts of this series, here they are. They’ll help you decide on your blogging platform and give you some tips to help get your blogging site up and running.

Part 1 - Getting started

Part 2, SEO Sharing and Statistics

I’m the founder of RSH Copywriting which is based near the Devon, Somerset border. I help businesses across a wide range of sectors including IT, training and healthcare to use written content to win more business.

 

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Why you Need an Online Content Strategy

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Anything that can take a website from getting virtually no traffic to getting several hundred hits per month has to be worth looking at. This type of experience is actually typical for businesses which adopt a well planned online content strategy. And yet, increased website traffic is just one reason that businesses should think seriously about a coherent plan for publishing and distributing online content.

Content Marketing Strategy

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Are you getting found on the web?

But let’s deal with the traffic issue first. As the internet gets more crowded, setting up a website and hoping people find it through searches is becoming an increasingly misguided approach. No matter how good your on-site Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), it’s still getting more difficult to get found by search alone – unless you are a really big player or in a very narrow niche market.

The value of publishing online content is that you are putting highly relevant and interesting  information in front of people and inviting them to read it. In doing so they link back to your site. These ‘hits’ would otherwise require somebody to decide they need your services and type something into Google that hopefully matches the keywords you have chosen.

Some businesses, copywriting included, don’t naturally generate a lot of search traffic. They need to stimulate website visits. And even for businesses where internet searches are more common, competition for page 1 ranking is likely to be stiff. Getting your share of this natural or organic search traffic can be challenging.

Your content is your SEO

Which brings me to the next big reason for implementing an online content strategy. The Google search ranking algorithms place an increasingly high importance on the number of links to your site, how much your content is shared, and your social media presence. Your ranking is determined by many things that go on outside of your site. You could say that your content strategy should be part and parcel of your SEO strategy. Without publishing regular content, and without generating activity around your site, a high Google ranking will get harder to achieve.

Use content to grow your business

Of course, it’s not just about traffic. The idea is to generate business. One limitation with a static ‘brochure’ website is that, just like a printed brochure, there’s a limit to how much you can say. They can also go out of date. An active blog allows you to look at your services from a variety of angles, illustrating different ways that you add value to your customers.

Blogs naturally keep pace with changes in the market place because you are continually adding new content. Get it right and you can appear ‘ahead of the game’, knowledgeable and focused on your customers’ needs. The resulting increased awareness and trust is a great platform for future sales. Here are a few things to consider when developing an online content strategy:

1. Brand Values. The important messages that sum up what your business stands for need to be reinforced consistently. If you don’t know what these are you may have a bigger problem than a lack of a content strategy.

2. Target products or services. If there are more profitable parts of your business or specific areas you are looking to grow, focus on these.

3. Target customers. Who are they, what’s important to them, what’s the best way to reach them? No point putting stuff all over Facebook if your target customers are on LinkedIn!

4. Key Messages. For each of your target services and your target customers there will be critical messages that you want to get across. These illustrate how what you do and how you do it add real value.

Spend a bit of time analysing these four areas and you should come out with a pretty clear idea of what you need to say, the tools you will use, and the media you will need to spread your message.

Richard Hussey is the owner of RSH Copywriting, which helps small and medium sized businesses achieve results through targeted written content. Find out more.

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Do Terms like Content and Inbound Marketing Help or Confuse?

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Marketing confusion Richard Scott via Compfight

Marketing people love inventing new terms for what they do. You could trace the history of marketing just by listing a whole load of terms and arranging them in chronological order. Latest among these you’ll find digital marketing, content marketing, inbound marketing, social media marketing and reputation management.

I often wonder how helpful these terms are to somebody looking for the most cost-effective way to promote their business. Often the implied message is ‘forget what you’ve been doing – this is the way you should be marketing your business now.’ Perhaps it’s more helpful to focus on the fact that it’s still ‘just marketing’ but done in a way that takes advantage of new tools and technology.

Focus on the basics

I sometimes meet business people who have come away with the impression that social media marketing means learning how to use Twitter and LinkedIn, or that content marketing means starting a blog. That approach will probably run out of steam pretty quickly. Why? because these approaches focus on the tools rather than the purpose.

The following definition of comes from businessdictionary.com, and is quite helpful:

‘As a philosophy, marketing is based on thinking about the business in terms of customer needs and their satisfaction. Marketing differs from selling because (in the words of Harvard Business School’s emeritus professor of marketing Theodore C. Levitt) “Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariably does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs.”

Focus on the the last few words: ‘discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.’ That’s what effective marketing has always been about. It’s no different now, except that we have some great tools to help us do the job better.’ (Outraged sales people, please address your comments to Theodore, by the way).

Marketing involves listening

Social media tools help you tune in to what your customers are concerned about, what they need, and the things they value. Social media is not just a way to push out your content and sales messages – it’s also about listening and genuine engagement.

Marketing is all about value

Creating and arousing needs are areas where content is critical. We used to do this (and still do) with brochures, marketing letters, flyers and static websites. We’ve now added blogs, video, email, infographics and on-line discussions to ways that we can make people aware of how what we do could add value to their lives or business. The internet and social networks mean we can reach more people. But without a clear focus on the needs of your customers, none of it works – no matter how often you blog, tweet or post things on LinkedIn.

Meeting Needs

When it comes to meeting needs, what could work better that a good content strategy?   Demonstrating that you can meet your customers’ needs and have done so for similar businesses time and time again. The simple message is that you need to build your content around the things your customers need and care about rather than the things that you do.

OK, on-line marketing does mean learning how to use some new tools effectively. But it’s just as important to keep hold of what you already know how to do: learn what your customers need and show how you met those needs. You also need good, persuasive content, but then you always did. You just need more of it now.

I’m Richard Hussey, Owner of RSH Copywriting. I’m based on the Devon Somerset border. I help businesses use written content to drive growth. Use the Contact tab on the left if you’d like to talk to me about your content marketing needs.

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