Article
Monday, November 7, 2011
I heard someone use this in a talk a few months ago and I just can't let it go. Content Marketing Strategy is like pinball.
Most of us have done a lot of things right so far. We have corporate blogging software, we are starting to do story harvesting, and we have been doing e-mail marketing & SEO forever. Our social strategies are getting some traction on Facebook & Twitter.
But we are still making one big mistake: we don't think about the actual behavior of the prospect or online visitor.
Look at that red arrow... it's pointing to your prospect. Where is that prospect going to hit next? How many times will she bounce off of one of those bells? How many bells will she hit?
This is Pinball Marketing. You have to make sure that you are leveraging your content marketing strategy to deliver your message to wherever and whenever she might show up.
People are not making one stop and done. They are bouncing all over the place. Websites only make up 20% of online activity. Suppose she saw an Ad (shudder....even an "old media" ad); then, she noticed one of her friends on Facebook posted an experience with the same product. A week later she's got a minute and she does a search on the problem she's trying to solve through Google... then asks on her wall if anyone else might have experience with this product... then finds the site and opts in to email...
This is real behavior, and it's something that most marketers are not prepared for. Content Marketers have to take a central view of ALL content in an organization. You have to have internal Content Curation Tools to get a central view of everything and from there have central control and measurement to know where that content is and what it's doing for you.
Fortunately this isn't hard and it's not expensive. (hint: Think business blogging software)
Are you a Pinball Marketing Wizard?
I heard someone use this in a talk a few months ago and I just can't let it go. Content Marketing Strategy is like pinball.Most of us have done a lot of things right so far. We have corporate blogging software, we are starting to do story harvesting, and we have been doing e-mail marketing & SEO forever. Our social strategies are getting some traction on Facebook & Twitter.
But we are still making one big mistake: we don't think about the actual behavior of the prospect or online visitor.
Look at that red arrow... it's pointing to your prospect. Where is that prospect going to hit next? How many times will she bounce off of one of those bells? How many bells will she hit?
This is Pinball Marketing. You have to make sure that you are leveraging your content marketing strategy to deliver your message to wherever and whenever she might show up.
People are not making one stop and done. They are bouncing all over the place. Websites only make up 20% of online activity. Suppose she saw an Ad (shudder....even an "old media" ad); then, she noticed one of her friends on Facebook posted an experience with the same product. A week later she's got a minute and she does a search on the problem she's trying to solve through Google... then asks on her wall if anyone else might have experience with this product... then finds the site and opts in to email...
This is real behavior, and it's something that most marketers are not prepared for. Content Marketers have to take a central view of ALL content in an organization. You have to have internal Content Curation Tools to get a central view of everything and from there have central control and measurement to know where that content is and what it's doing for you.
Fortunately this isn't hard and it's not expensive. (hint: Think business blogging software)
