The Cyrano de Bergerac school of marketing

I recently read an article about the future of information and marketing in which it stated that soon we will be paying for people to read our emails and to watch our ads.  This made me laugh out loud. As firstly it sounded a bit mad, and sad, but also with AI and the automation of nearly everything to have someone to do something as simple as read your emails, seemed a bit, well, retro.

What of course the article was implying was as we all reach information overload in both our professional and personal lives, how in the earth do we curate this information to ensure that we resonate with and record the best bits and delete and destroy those of no interest?  Of course, this is the age old marketing dilemma - how to make your email, blog, piece of content really stand out and be counted amongst its competitors.

I also read another blog about making content accountable and how different content pieces served different means. For example, a downloadable white paper might be a great brand driver, add credibility to your brand and increase the profile of the person who authored it, but might not work as a lead generator or a marketing conversion tool. Likewise, a sales email might drive people to your website, but if your landing pages aren’t strong enough might stop those potential customers in their tracks - so tick for brand again and cross for sales lead.

Curation of content and the whys to how and what we do are pretty important and something which I think is getting lost in the race for everyone to have a content strategy.  There is nothing better to have a host of content written and ready to go, but what's its purpose and who does it serve? Does it align to what you are doing as a business, does it reflect your brand messaging and does it have your tone of voice?

There are many clever wordsmiths out there. There are many clever strategists out there. What we need to do is combine the two and make content about the long term. Like courting a partner, we need to woo them in with words that will engage, entice and excite. We need to make them trust us with examples of our credibility and friends' recommendations. We need to make them realise they are special to us - with a personalised approach and an understanding of who they are. And we need to make sure we don’t take them for granted by working at our relationship with them, ensuring we put them first and making sure they know we care.

Apologies if I am beginning to sound like Cyrano de Bergerac giving you relationship advice but content marketing is exactly this - relationship marketing using content. Those who use content as a long term conversation with their clients, rather than a clever quick aside will be the ones who ultimately get the girl and keep their client.