You Are Not a Media Company: Quality over Quantity in Content Marketing

In these Shelter-and-Beyond days, many of you are trying to dial-up the media and content side of your business. Which is good. IMHE, content marketing, done right, always works. Webinars almost always work. Corporate blogs almost always work. Podcasts almost always work. Virtual events can work. But you have to do them right. More on how here:

What’s the key? The key, like most things, is to pick the right goals and KPIs.

I see so many marketers tweeting and posting on LinkedIn about how they have 1,000 signed up for their virtual event. But — so what?

What matters is who, not how many. At least for most of us.

• The world does not need another digital summit or yet another podcast.  There are millions of podcasts already, literally. Over 30,000,000 podcast episodes are already out there in fact. And more digital events now each week than any human being in your industry could ever possibly attend.
• But … but … your prospects will come. If you design it to help them do the discovery they want to do. Because they want to learn about you and your product.
• Your customers will come. But only if you help them get better at your product, for real. Because they are invested. They will take a half-day out to come to your digital conference if it’s awesome because your app matters to them. To their job. To the value they provide at their company.

So don’t worry about how many folks come. If 80 folks come to your digital event, but that includes half of your top customers, that’s a win. If 30 people listen to your podcast, but one is a prospect that now decides to buy because they learned you are the expert in the space — that’s a big win.

• You need to track who. Who comes. Who listens. Who downloads. Not how many. Not vanity metrics. Get at least someone great to come, to listen, to download, to watch. And then, figure out how to get 2 of then.
• You need to carefully tailor the content and distribution to the who. Not to maximize how many. You don’t need the same guests everyone else has on their podcasts. You don’t need to write the same boring blog post on Work From Home. Even worse, don’t outsource it if you can avoid it. And certainly, don’t outsource cut-and-paste content. That won’t get you any leads.
• Be authentic. Only do what adds true value.  A smaller topic that you are the expert on, in the entire world? That can be your entire podcast or blog series. Be authentic. Only do what adds true value.  A smaller topic that you are the expert on, in the entire world? That can be your entire podcast or blog series . Do nothing that does not add unique value to your prospects or customers. If it doesn’t, just take a pause.

That will get you leads. Eventually, at least.