AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – CONTENT MARKETING: Farmers would stroll over to the farm gate, operations managers would dust off a chair, and the CFO might even be persuaded to buy you a coffee. The reason? Curiosity – they wanted to know what was going on in the industry, and some of their supplier’s sales reps (the good ones) would have all the ‘goss’. It built the relationship, fostered rapport and generated business.
Sales reps these days are fewer and further between. Although B2B marketers recognise the value of educating and informing their customers, they also seem intent on boring most people to death with the same ho-hum ‘useful’ information.
Today, most PR and content marketers seem preoccupied with task-specific content like “Four ways to manage your cash flow”. The problem is everybody is doing it, and it’s a bit of a nothing content that probably doesn’t get much attention.
However, what if you make your content industry-specific? What if you started sharing things like startups, closures, new appointments, threats and new technology? After all, who doesn’t want to know what’s going on in their neighbour’s backyard? Creating content marketing that shares industry news and information with your customers is one way to make your content marketing more relevant.
In the early 2000s, I was the news editor at Autofile, a motoring specific industry publication that brought news, issues, updates and industry information. For example, new versus used vehicle import sales, dealerships changes, regulatory developments, judgements etc. It was hugely popular, and still is – every motor vehicle dealer had one on his or her desk.
This kind of content may be seen as the preserve of industry or businesses associations but, who says? And let’s face it, they usually do a crappy job of it if they do it at all.
Imagine being the source of news and information (industry ‘gossip’) for your target market?
Perhaps your target market is accountants or environmental consultants, or architects. Would bringing them industry news and developments be a powerful brand builder for your business? At the very least, you will stand head and shoulders above most of the commercial fluff your competitors are publishing.
What you do with that engagement is a blog for another day.
Photo: By @unitednations