What is Content Marketing and why is it important for my Geospatial Business?
Elaine Ball
Sales & Marketing TRAINING & DOING for Survey Engineering Cos & Geospatial Equipment Sellers/ Manufacturers ?? Co-Founder of Get Kids into Survey
Our purpose has not changed in 100 years! Content marketing is about reaching an audience and moving them to action.
Marketing with content is not the same as content Marketing.
-Marketing with content equals interruption
-Content Marketing equals attention and ROI (Return on investment) $$$
Classic Example of Content Marketing is the 400 guide MICHELIN GUIDE - this is a tyre company who wrote a guide! That tyre company now credits restaurants!
Content Marketing is not a replacement to traditional marketing like advertising or exhibitions! It must be integrated into your current marketing! This means brands must build valuable media/ content operations that engage audiences that can be turned into money.
“It is about turning customers into Fans!”
So how do we create fans?
Feeding off the original ‘customer satisfaction’ idea from Heskett et al (HBR); Robert Rose has tweaked Heskett’s graph to relate to today in the form of 'building fans'.
How do we get our customers into the zone of action? ie. those customers who talk about us? (Psst... check out Safety Apparel Inc who is approximately at the top of ZONE OF PASSIVITY - maybe at the bottom of ZONE OF ACTION; you can see this with the 'shares' on Instagram alone. What is missing is the $$$ - and this is why we need to understand where we are is key for any Geospatial Organisation.
So what does these three ZONE's mean?
ZONE OF ABANDONMENT
In this zone you are creating lots of content but the content isn't doing anything! Just think about all the people in your database that are just lingering about!
ZONE OF PASSIVITY
Here you are publishing content; you are getting stuff done! Writing blogs, adding posts to IG etc but there is not a lot of ACTION. There is no sharing, its not getting turned into leads!
ZONE OF ACTION
Here you have fans! Getting to be advocates EARLY and OFTEN! Creating fans early! This create fans! This does what? Move audiences, reach audiences and keep audiences attention as they become more $$$ in our business!
This is where we need to be! Fans! Fans who are sharing our content, telling their friends!