The Definitive Guide for Great Content

MY JOURNEY

Communications and people have always been a part of my professional and personal paths. I started as a receptionist at the Dan Hotel in Eilat, while also writing a blog on the Tapuz website. Then, I worked as a bartender at London's “Eagle Pub” and wrote a blog on TheMarker Café site, all the time listening to other people's stories and writing my own.

My career in marketing began in the very vast marketing department of Isracard, Israel's biggest credit card company, and continued in advertising agencies. I also worked as a researcher on Ben Kaspit‘s TV show, "The Israeli Conspiracy“, before returning to the client's side, taking on more senior roles, at big companies such as Bezeq Online and Taldor Group. And all this time, I’ve kept up with my passion for the art of writing in today’s flourishing social era, when anyone can become a published writer and reach once unimaginable audiences.

Everyone agrees that content is king. It is common knowledge. But I’m saying that today it’s just not enough anymore. You can't just write content and expect it to be king, because we are bombarded by information. It's all around us, flowing to everyone and shared by us all.

Just to put things in perspective, here are some mind-blowing numbers I've taken from the internet, that show us the crazy amounts of data that is uploaded and consumed worldwide per minute!!

Information Taken from: https://blog.microfocus.com/how-much-data-is-created-on-the-internet-each-day/

So now you can understand that you need more than good content, in order to get noticed in this sea of data.

THE THREE STAGES OF A CONTENT LIFE CYCLE

We’re all familiar with the marketing funnel. It consists of three major steps in a buyer’s journey: awareness, engagement, decision. We hope that these are ultimately followed by the action we’re aiming for: buying from us, becoming our customers and, if we play our cards right, even becoming our ambassadors.

We all take this under consideration when planning our marketing strategy, but not when creating our content. Why is that? I’m saying that content planning is a crucial part of marketing strategy. Plan your content based on where your customer is located in his journey. Let’s examine this together.

Stage 1 - Awareness

The first stage is awareness, in this stage, you need to step outside your immediate environment and gain a wider perspective. Your content needs to be inspiring, insightful and stimulating.

For example: A company called OptimalPlus wrote a Weekend Inspiration post every Thursday. In the post, they didn’t talk about the product or the company, but rather presented interesting information that they knew would appeal to their target audience. And it worked! They received a lot of traffic, which helped in recruiting, and in getting attention from potential customers.

Stage 2 - Engagement

This brings us to the engagement stage. Now that you’ve got their attention and they know you’re out there; you need to let them know you’re the best at what you’re doing. You need to demonstrate authority and relevance.

A good example is what Cisco is doing: showcasing its power in a podcast. The podcast is showing that Cisco has a lot of experience in the field, as well as providing a sneak view on how other organizations are handling the same problems your customers are handling. And that’s basically what we all want to see – how and what our peers are doing.

Stage 3 - Decision

Lucky us; we made it to the decision stage. Here, we need to help our customers make an informed decision: provide them with calculators, comparative articles, and so on. Make them feel like they are making the right decision when choosing us.

A great example is the timeless IBM slogan – “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM.” The customer wants to make sure that the choice he or she makes is the safest and best one.

MIND THE GAP

With your permission, I want to elaborate on this point, because it’s a very crucial one to understand. A secret gap has been created over the last couple of years due to advances in marketing technology. On the one hand is the marketer, who has bought a robust system centered around content and is eager to use it and prove to colleagues and managers that he's top notch.

This marketer is setting up SDR, email nurturing programs, collaborate funnels, scoring mechanisms to qualify leads, gating content and so on, sometimes forgetting that, on the other hand, there’s the customer, who’s just interested in getting the information needed to make the right decision, and doesn’t have time or patience.

What we need to do is get back to focussing on the customer, when creating content. Ask important questions like: What is your pain? How can we solve your problem?  How do you want to engage with us? How can we help you?

Don’t get me wrong, I'm a technology enthusiast and data driven, like all marketers, but I use it as a means and not as a goal, and that's a huge difference.

Let me give you a great example for a company who did it well. The world of information security is a saturated one. There are loads of information security companies out there, with hundreds in Israel alone. When you look at conferences like Cybertech, you realize that there is not a lot of differentiation among the companies. They are all just trying to attract the attention of many CISOs, whose choices are countless. Realizing this, A company named Cybereason inquired about the CISO’s true pain. What they learned is amazing! They found out that the true pain of CISOs isn’t about one feature or another, but about getting recognition for their achievement. they felt transparent in their own organization, like nobody knew or understood what they were doing. Cybereason was smart enough to leverage this insight and produce a full-length documentary film, featuring the CISOs as superheroes, similar to films made about firefighters. They screened the film in theater halls, with premier and trailer. Of course, this brough them a lot of attention and publicity.

CASE STUDIES - FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE

Stage 1 - awareness

As we discussed, the first step in the marketing funnel is awareness. This step involves grabbing the buyer’s attention and providing wide-ranging inspirational content. My prospective customers are very sought-after senior tech executive from enterprises. As you can imagine, they get lots of invites for many events. I wanted some quality time with them and faced an enormous challenge of just getting them to show up.

That’s when I came up with the idea of a collaboration with the prestigious Epoch Times content magazine, bringing them high quality content that they couldn't get from my competitors, and I couldn't get with my B2B budget. And the result was spectacular! It was such a huge success that other top-ranking executives from the industry started contacting me, asking when the next event will take place.

Stage 2 - Engagement

The next stage is the engagement stage. That’s when you need to show them that you’re a top professional in your field.

I love using meetups as a great marketing tool for demonstrating leadership. I choose a trending topic, making sure it’s specific enough to ensure that the presentation is thorough and bang-on professional, attracting a very carefully tailored target audience.

Stage 3 - Decision

Last but not least is the decision phase. Here, you need to make the customer feel that choosing you will get them the “employee of the year” badge.

I personally love using testimonials due to the “crowd effect.” People feel safer and more secure when they're not the first to experiment with your product and company. When they see their peers, especially senior ones, satisfied with their decision to work with you and speaking publicly on your behalf, it's much easier for them to make that choice too and choose you.

IN CONCLUSION

I want to leave you with these three tips:

THINK: Know where your customer is in the funnel and what you want to achieve from your content material.

FEEL: Don’t be in love with your content. Connect to your customer, know their pain and problems, and address them to provide solutions.

DO: Take chances and get creative. In a world where everyone has seen it all, there’s always room for the first time

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