This post first appeared in a slightly different form on Junta42. It is reprinted with permission.
I had an amazing conversation last week with an agency that was trying to convince their client to invest in a content marketing program. Just to give you the quick take, the client’s goal was to reach certain consumer segments in the southeastern states. They had a marketing budget of $2.5 million.
The client’s VP of marketing didn’t think anything could be done with a marketing budget that small.
That client is thinking about the world we used to live in. The world of radio, television and placed media.
Just think what kind of impact we could achieve with a $2 million content marketing budget. Boy, hire a few expert journalists to create some amazing content and you still have almost $1.9 million left.
The conversation made me realize that, even though content marketing is certainly a legitimate and growing field today, there are still so many reasons why (we, you, I) don’t do it.
My top 10 list of irrational reasons follows.
- Your company is set up to sell products or services, not to provide relevant and valuable information to customers and prospects. It takes a real mindset change to start thinking about your customers’ informational needs as part of your marketing strategy.
- You have well-worn marketing paths that are easy to follow. Going off the beaten path into uncharted territory is intimidating.
- You have strong relationships with media partners that may go back decades. It’s not easy to break those relationships by pursuing a brand new content marketing strategy.
- The reduced effectiveness of traditional marketing may have occurred so slowly that no alarm bells have gone off within your organization. You also may think things will come back at some point.
- Many companies (possibly yours) aren’t measuring their marketing, so you may not even be sure what is and is not effective. Hard to make any changes when you don’t know.
- You lack both the right people and the right processes to implement a new kind of marketing.
- You are reluctant to abandon traditional marketing tactics for what staff and clients may believe to be unproven content marketing or new media practices.
- You lack content marketing role models from whom they can learn best practices.
- You place very little value in marketing versus other aspects of the organization (operations, product development). Little do you know that every part of the organization is affected by (or actually is) marketing.
- Even though I’d hate to think this one is true, I’ve seen it first hand…You have some real idiots running marketing for your company who don’t have a clue about the needs of your customers or what to do about it. Before you can even look at content marketing, you have to ditch the idiots.
And Bonus #11 – It’s hard. It’s more difficult to consistently create valuable and relevant content to our customers than place media. It’s easier to just place an ad. Listening, creating, co-creating, commenting, and actually having real customer conversations is harder. Higher payoff, but harder nonetheless.
#12 (from Jonathan Kranz): You don’t know how to connect your knowledge/experience/expertise with the hopes, fears, desires and objectives of your target market.
What did we miss?
In order for a company to alter its mindset toward one of new media or content marketing, it needs one of a few things to happen:
- Business gets so bad that they start trying new things.
- Voluntary or involuntary turnover creates new thinking in the organization.
- A culture change is sparked in the organization, through an internal champion, external customer demands, or the merging of a new business culture through an actual merger or buyout.
The opportunity to become the expert industry source for your customers is there, right now. How you take advantage of this opportunity is up to you.
Joe Pulizzi is founder of Junta42, the go-to site for content marketing and custom publishing. You can read more about Joe at his blog or check out his book, Get Content. Get Customers.
