Brandscaping: How to Avoid Becoming a Lazy Marketer

Andrew Davis has worked behind the scenes for The Muppets, has been on The Today Show talking about "Manfluence", and set a goal to get a meeting with philanthropist/billionaire Warren Buffett (and accomplished that goal...see above...Drew is on the left).

But more than anything, Drew travels around the world telling brands to stop being lazy and to start bypassing the media to communicate directly with customers through content partnerships. To Drew, this idea is called Brandscaping, and is also the name of his new book.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Drew about his concept, and what marketers need to do now to create new customers with content. The quick overview includes these five basic steps for marketers:

1. Identify a key partner.
2. Find out what content inspires their audience.
3. Ask them if you created the content, would they promote it to their audience?
4. Focus on one key channel.
5. Whatever you do, plan for consistent delivery, not a one-time campaign.

Is it possible, or smart, to think that a brand could totally focus on their own channels and not on paying for media access?

Buying media is for lazy marketers in today’s online environment. Lazy marketers are focused on ego stats like page views, likes, follows, fans and friends. Hard-working marketers are focused on sales. You need the media if you want to pump up your ego. You need partners if you want to pump up sales.

Why do you need the media? You no longer need to pay for access to an audience. Everyone has an audience today.

You have an e-mail list and direct connections with your customers, so you are already a media company in some way. To grow your media presence, it’s about time you leveraged partnerships with brands who already have access to your audience to build trust through valuable content.

Let’s be honest, everyone needs relevant content to share with their audience (the social stream moves so fast), so why not create a partnership with another brand to help your partner maintain and build trust while you do the same?

Today, content is an asset - use it as one!

What's the first step a company needs to take in order to go in this direction?

Take a content-first approach to building a partnership with a trusted partner.

Call up an existing partner (we all have one) and ask them what content you could create that would help them sell more to their existing client base? Offer to create the content for them and share it with your audience as well as their audience. Basically, you want to work with partners who have your NEXT customer as their current customer.

Create a short bit of content and invite them to e-mail it, or invite them to share it online (on their platform) to their audience. If it works for them, it will work for you. Don’t over-brand it. Remember, this content is about helping your partner sell more (while you do too!). Once you've demonstrated the power of the relationship you've created, work towards a more organized schedule of content sharing.

What would you recommend? Focus on being great at one channel or a number of channels?

Start with one partner at a time and one channel at a time. For example, the best content partnerships leverage one channel (like a YouTube, Flickr, Instagram or Facebook) as neutral territory on which to release their content as a Content Brand (A content brand is different than branded content). Then, focus on leveraging the content against a content partner. Make sense? How can they share it in their e-mail newsletter once a month? Or on their Facebook page when it’s released?

If you can’t think of a partner, imagine if you were searching for your product or service on Amazon.com. What would show up for the customers who bought this also bought that boxes? For example, my book, Brandscaping shows up with Jay Baer’s Youtility. So, instead of buying ads for people who are searching for Youtility on Amazon or Google, I write content for Jay’s blog - Convince and Convert. Instead of an ad, I get to leverage the trust of Jay’s blog and the audience he has to share my ideas, build trust, and sell books. Does it work? Hell yeah, if I write a post on Jay’s blog I see sales of my book rise. Is it more work? Yes. Is it more effective? Yes. Is the ROI better? Yes. So why would I buy ads?

Who's doing this right?

On the consumer side, it’s worth checking out how Devin Graham has partnered with Mountain Dew for a cross country tour. Devin has partnered with a bunch of great brands including Ford and they've all been great successes. No media required.

On the B2B side, it’s worth considering how FoldFactory has leveraged their Super Cool Fold of the Week video series to partner with the United States Postal Service (both of whom service people in the Direct Mail business.)

Wouldn't it be better to leverage media channels to promote your content marketing messaging?

Sure, if you have a giant budget for media. Here’s the problem. Buying time or space is fleeting - you don’t really own anything. Instead, investing that money in content that benefits you and your partner you both have an interest in creates a content asset that can work long after your media buy is over. You don’t need the media anymore to access your audience -you just need a partner.

What's the biggest mistake companies make when going this route?

Everyone wants to post content on their website and measure the impact with page views and click-throughs. But do you really care? What if you could make a sale without the customer ever visiting your website? Partnerships help you get closer to the customer. Content builds relationships and when it comes from an already trusted brand (the brand of your partner) it’s much more valuable.

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Could it really be as simple as Drew details above? What are your thoughts? Have you thought about including a partner in your next big marketing program?

If this concept interests you, get all the details about how to put your own brandscaping program together by picking up the excellent book, Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships.

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@JoePulizzi is founder of the Content Marketing Institute, which runs the industry's largest content marketing event, Content Marketing World. He is also overly passionate about the color orange. His third book, Epic Content Marketing, is now available.