The Content Puzzle: ...and the Missing Piece

By Andi Robinson

If you Google "content marketing," you will get thousands of results. But not each of these results will be related to true content marketing. Because this area of practice has exploded in recent years, there are many people and organizations who are looking to profit from sharing information about content marketing. I encourage you to do your own research (like reading this book!) and make the right decisions for your situation. There is no silver bullet in content marketing, only guidelines to consider and apply to your own work.

You likely see examples of content marketing every day and don't realize it. It is standard practice in industries from packaged foods to beauty products to the travel industry. Consumers are becoming savvier about companies' advertising techniques and expect more from brands. Perhaps you have seen REI's Miranda in the Wild YouTube series, where one of their employees discusses how to find the right camping gear for the right situation. Or Dove's Real Beauty campaign. Or any of the multiple blogs and recipe sites by food companies such as Pillsbury, Kellogg's, and Kraft. These are all examples of content marketing.

The content itself is one part of content marketing, but in many respects, it is not the most important. Before you start thinking about what types of content you need to create, you need to lay the groundwork. Think of this as the edge of the puzzle that holds the whole picture together. As you will learn, there are a lot of steps that you need to take into consideration before you get to the actual creation of content. Content planning doesn't come until you establish your objectives, define your audience, and research keyword usage and social chatter. When it comes to content, think out of the box. Think about yourself as a consumer and how and when you would like to get your content. There are many content types, but we tend to stick with what is familiar. Later in Section I, we will go over some of the most popular types of content and some that you may not have thought of before.

How do you know if this book is right for you? Maybe you are a small business owner who wants to learn more about how content and content marketing can help your business, or perhaps you are a new marketer launching a career and want to learn more about content marketing. This book is meant to be both an inspiration and a roadmap, depending on your perspective. If you are a new content marketing practitioner, knowing how to put the pieces together will help you perfect your craft. If you are looking for content marketing inspiration, there is plenty of that on the following pages. Entire books have been written about most of the topics in this book. This is not an in-depth look at the individual pieces of content marketing. Instead, this is a starting point for those who are new to or interested in learning more about the practice of using content strategically in your marketing efforts. Those efforts are shaped and secured through a thorough understanding of psychology. Throughout Section I, you will begin to see why psychology is an important part of creating content and developing marketing plans. In Section II, we will dive into the psychology behind content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667889214

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I did not begin my career as a marketing guru or even with an eye toward marketing. Instead, I graduated with a degree in Juvenile Justice from Indiana University and worked as a juvenile probation officer and a social worker for many years. A good portion of my undergraduate studies focused on human psychology. From there, I planned on going to law school, but when I met my husband, I decided to leave the workforce to start a family. As the time came for me to return to a full-time job, I started working in the marketing department of a pharmaceutical company. My previous professional life focused on human psychology, which complemented the principles of the marketing process. More importantly, I really enjoyed the process and how it helps you relate to your audience . The psychology of your audience is something that most people don’t factor into their marketing. At most, they may develop customer personas , but some organizations don’t even do that. After an overview of content marketing in Section I of this book, Section II will show you how psychology plays a role in content and content marketing to help you better connect your marketing with your audience in a more profound way. Section III will fit everything together, whether you are marketing for a small business or a large corporation.

Who doesn’t love a good puzzle? Whether it’s Tetris™, blocks, Legos™, or just a good old-fashioned cardboard version, snapping pieces together, and bringing to light a beautiful design can be satisfying.

Since I was a little girl, I have loved puzzles. I even have a puzzle tattoo. I believe this love is what drew me to content marketing - it is one big puzzle. There’s a picture that you know you want to create, and you try different pieces to see if they fit together to complete that picture. You want to bring the picture into focus and bring order to chaos. If you are anything like me, you pour all the pieces out on the table and find the corners and edge pieces first. You have a plan, a systematic process you follow the same way every time. Maybe you group all the pieces that are the same color together. You may start from the middle. Whatever your process, knowing what the pieces are and how they fit together is essential to bringing that bigger picture into focus.

Different puzzles have different shapes and sizes of pieces. Does your content marketing resemble a 20-piece puzzle with big, chunky pieces or a 150-piece puzzle where so many of the tiny pieces are the same shape? Traditional puzzle shapes or something unique? A 3-D puzzle? Different puzzles may require a different approach. The concept is the same with content marketing.

Content marketing is not a new concept. One of the earliest examples of content marketing comes from John Deere. In 1895, John Deere introduced The Furrow, which was described as A Journal for the American Farmer. But The Furrow was not explicitly created to sell John Deere tractors and other implements. It provided information to farmers that would possibly make their difficult jobs easier. The Furrow is still in circulation, and topics range from features on individual farmers, food, farming, and environmental topics. It’s a quintessential example of how providing valuable information to your customers can help you build your business. I’m not saying that The Furrow created the success of John Deere - a household name whether you’re a farmer or not that generated $35.5 billion in sales and revenue in 2020. However, it has helped build trust with their customer base, which endears customers to their brand.

While The Furrow is an early example of content marketing, the term content marketing was not coined until 1996. At a journalism conference, John F. Oppedahl defined this type of marketing as focused on helping companies build trust and stronger relationships with their customers (not advertising ), hence creating advocates that are undoubtedly more valuable than traditional customers.

Over the past decade, content marketing has come to prominence due to several factors. We are getting ready to enter a cookie-less world where marketers will have a more challenging time tracking and targeting potential customers. And the use of ad blockers has increased exponentially since 2011. From 2010 to 2015, the number of users of ad blockers increased from 21 million to 181 million.

One of the factors driving the change is that social media has been widely adopted. According to Backlinko, social media platform usage exploded from a mere 970 million users in 2010 to 4.48 billion users by July 2021. And it continues to increase, shaping how marketers reach customers. When social media first rose to popularity, it was a free-for-all. With the increased focus on privacy, algorithms, and combatting hate speech, social media companies are being forced to readjust constantly. As we will discuss later, the rise in the sophistication of algorithms on social media platforms has been a detriment to traditional product advertising.

If you Google content marketing, you will get thousands of results. But not each of these results will be related to true content marketing. Because this area of practice has exploded in recent years, there are many people and organizations who are looking to profit from sharing information about content marketing. I encourage you to do your own research (like reading this book!) and make the right decisions for your situation. There is no silver bullet in content marketing, only guidelines to consider and apply to your own work.

You likely see examples of content marketing every day and don’t realize it. It is standard practice in industries from packaged foods to beauty products to the travel industry. Consumers are becoming savvier about companies’ advertising techniques and expect more from brands. Perhaps you have seen REI’s Miranda in the Wild YouTube series, where one of their employees discusses how to find the right camping gear for the right situation. Or Dove’s Real Beauty campaign. Or any of the multiple blogs and recipe sites by food companies such as Pillsbury, Kellogg’s, and Kraft. These are all examples of content marketing.

Miranda in the Wild video, REI

Sharing information that will solve a problem instead of just showcasing product attributes through advertising will build trust with your audience. Strong bonds of trust lead to better-qualified customer leads. According to Convince & Convert, content marketing provides three times more leads than traditional marketing. Trust also leads to your audience being more likely to advocate on your behalf. One customer typically purchases items for themselves and does not share information about that purchase with others, but advocates can convince others to make a purchase. Lastly, if you want to stand out from your competitors, content marketing can give you a platform to showcase your brand and drive people to your products outside of traditional marketing channels .

BENEFITS OF CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing provides a variety of benefits that product marketing struggles to achieve. It provides fertile ground for increased search engine optimization (SEO ) and various types of content that can drive traffic back to your website. It helps build expertise, authority, and trust - a concept called EAT. It can be used to build thought leadership and relationships with your key audiences, whether those are current customers, potential customers, or influencers . Those deeper relationships help you build advocates for your products or services and can increase brand awareness. It also helps shepherd your potential buyers through their journey with your company, from before they know they need your product or service through their purchasing from you.

CONTENT MARKETING ACROSS INDUSTRIES

You may think that content marketing could only work for business-to-consumer (B2C ) industries, right? Wrong. While this marketing process has been primarily used across consumer-facing companies, it can also be very effective for business-to-business (B2B ) industries. The Furrow is, again, another great example. While John Deere is both a B2B and B2C company, this publication is for everyone. Even if you are marketing to other businesses, those businesses are made up of people. And people have emotions and experiences that shape their decisions and their company’s decisions (discussed more in Section II). To create great content experiences, you need a person with a problem that you (and, in the best-case scenario, only you) can solve. Let’s look at a couple of examples:

•If you sell financial products, there are many ways you can provide added benefit to your audience above and beyond just selling them your products. Think about things like the top-10 tips when purchasing a new car or how to get the most out of your real estate agent when moving. These topics may tie tangentially to your products (as all good content marketing should), but they are also helping your audience solve a problem.

•If you sell software, you may embark on content marketing that aims to provide the latest and greatest tech news to your audience. This content may result from sharing respected third-party content, collaborating with other companies to offer cross-product information, or even sponsored or affiliate content.

•What if you are a small local business that sells gifts and cards? Your audience could potentially be large. Instead, think about narrowing that down to a specific niche. Focus on one segment of your audience, create a campaign providing content that they would find valuable, and give content marketing a try. After reading this book, you will have a good start and lots to think about. Maybe the specific audience you target is people purchasing gifts for mothers. You could share content about how to determine the best gifts for women, particularly mothers. Or content that focuses on ways to relieve stress from caregivers.

In each of these cases, you aim to build relationships with your audience so that when they are looking to purchase a product in your category, they will think of you and trust you. According to Hubspot, over 60% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales. Since you took the time and continue to take the time to build that relationship, your audience is more likely to purchase from you.

CONTENT ≠ CONTENT MARKETING

This book isn’t called The Content Marketing Puzzle. It is called The Content Puzzle. We will not only dig into content marketing but content creation and the psychology behind different types of content and how it can influence your content marketing strategy and, inevitably, your audience and your success.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is defined as:

a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Notice that the word product is not included in this definition. That is because content marketing is not about selling. It is about influencing, educating, and building loyalty. Also, the first word in the definition is strategic because there are a lot of variables to consider when building a content marketing campaign. From your goals to your audience and what channels you are going to utilize and how you will define success, it is all encompassed by your content marketing strategy.

The content itself is one part of content marketing, but in many respects, it is not the most important. Before you start thinking about what types of content you need to create, you need to lay the groundwork. Think