Marketing is often viewed by business leaders as a tactical challenge or one-time event that needs some concentrated attention and resources to address a campaign.
And as soon as that campaign gets developed, produced, and deployed, the business can get back to what they think is really important—making products or delivering services.
The one time event is over. Make a commitment with forever.
As popular blogger, John Jantsch, author of the Duct Tape Marketing blog points out, online marketing today is never done. Because it’s one of the most critical components to business success, it needs to operate at high performance at all times.
As more and more businesses are turning to Content Marketing, and away from traditional media, to attract prospects and convert customers, it’s becoming more and more obvious that a one-time event mentality just won’t cut it anymore.
In this changed environment, a recent study conducted by Constant Contact uncovered some disturbing findings when it comes to small businesses and online marketing. Half of the respondents in their survey admitted never updating their website or online presence. What’s more, the same percentage of these small business respondents had an inaccurate web address or one that went to a dead end online.
Other findings cited in this study included:
- | 94% of SMB websites are not optimized for mobile device
- | 93% don’t have a contact email address on their site home page
- | 78% believe new customers find them through search
- | 70% don’t have time to manage all of the online sites being used to connect with customers today
- | 49% don’t have a phone number on their home page
A growing agenda to succeed with online marketing.
Marketing today for every business is all about online. Between blogging, email marketing, SEO and Social Media, businesses are now expected to participate effectively and regularly in each of these disciplines.
For those who have embraced the idea that they are now publishers—and media companies too—in the most real sense, they have a lot of new roles and responsibilities and not much training or experience on how to succeed online.
Like old school media companies, businesses must now own and build, one prospect or customer at a time, proprietary networks that they can interact with and distribute content to. If you want to build awareness for your brand, increase credibility and trust in your business and stay “top of mind” with existing clients and prospects, Content Marketing can help you accomplish these goals.
Consider these strategies on how to move forward and succeed:
Content marketing must be a habit.
It must be something that invades your daily routine. You must identify and keep two or three high-priority marketing and content creation activities at the top of your agenda each month.
Set a consistent publication schedule and stick with it.
Foster a mentality of deadlines and create a monthly theme to build your plans and tactics around. Brainstorm and put on paper a content theme or action plan so that when you publish, you will appear consistently online in the same time period. The result of this regular and frequent activity trains your audience to know when to look for your content.
Balance original content with curated from others.
Show your audience that you’re on top of the latest news and information in your industry. Add your perspective to help readers and site visitors understand the latest trends and why they should be paying attention to them.
Expand your content variety with guest posts.
Foster relevant contributions by others to expand the depth and variety of your content library. Ensure that the content you solicit and deploy by others will be on target and aligned with your audience’s expectations and interests. A set of guest posting guidelines that detail the type of content that you’ll accept, who owns the rights to it, and how it will be distributed will help you keep everyone on track.
Pay attention to competition.
Staying abreast of what your competitors are doing can give you ideas for content and topics that you may have overlooked or have not considered.
With consistency and perseverance, good things happen.
When you take a structured and monthly approach to content creation, you’ll find that progress happens. Things get moved forward, your library of content assets increases in search value, and so much more.
And when you look back over a quarter or two, your consistent investments will build awareness for your brand, increase credibility and trust in your business and help you stay “top of mind” with existing clients and prospects—the business results of what content marketing promises.
How are you doing?
Have you taken a structured approach to your online marketing? Are you having success? Please share your experience.
As president and creative director of TeamworksCom, Paul develops brand strategy, engineers content to express customer value and creates integrated online and content marketing solutions to help businesses succeed. Connect with Paul, send an Email, or just call 415.789.5830.
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