I never know what people mean when they use the term “content marketing.” With “content strategy,” I always like what I hear. But with “content marketing,” I hear a lot of what sounds like $20-an-article, factory-made stuff like press releases, ezine articles, keyword stuffed pages, and the like.
So I was skeptical about Tim Ash’s latest Landing Page Optimization podcast, with Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. But I’m glad I listened, because it was a great discussion with a lot of actionable takeaways and reminders. Here’s a random list of some of mine:
- Most enterprises don’t have a clear segmentation of their site visitors into what states of the buying process they’re in, and lack the ability to map different content types to those segments
- Marketers ought to talk to 5-10 customers per month to help get away from a world of hunches
- Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can be an expert on a broad content area (e.g. pet supplies). Pick a niche and own it.
- The more you talk about your products and services, the less likely people are to share that content (that makes intuitive sense to me, I’d love to see some data behind it)
- On a blog consider having just 1 call to action – “sign up for updates” – rather than continually trying to push the product.
- Just because someone fills out a webinar form doesn’t mean they’re a lead that you should be calling
Check out the podcast: Content, Content, and Funeral Homes With Joe Pulizzi