Understanding the Content Marketing Hype: What It Means for Business Owners

Guest Post by Christina Motley, Christina Motley LLC   

 

Content marketing is among the hottest buzzwords in the marketing community. In fact, some considered 2013 to be the “Year of Content Marketing.” If you Google this term, you will find 877 million results in less than 2 seconds. So, what exactly is content marketing? And, what can it do for your business?

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable action.” Marketing formats include news, videos, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles and photos.

The list above may seem like the standard marketing tools with which you’re already familiar. You may be wondering, “What makes content marketing different?” The difference is that the focus of content marketing is on communicating, not selling, to your prospects and customers. The ultimate goal is to inspire brand loyalty by providing consistent and valuable content.

As a business owner, how can you successfully incorporate content marketing into your existing marketing strategy? The following takeaways from the Content Marketing Boot Camp by the American Society of Professional Education (@ASPE_ROI) will shed some light on this subject.

Top Three Things to Know about Content Marketing

• Know Your Audience – The more you know about your target audience(s), the better you can tailor content to them. Among the things to know are their occupation, age, gender, marital status, education level, interests, geographic location, household income and where they consume their information.
  
• Attention is the New Currency – In content commerce, you compete with every other fragment of life that is demanding your audience’s attention. Thomas Davenport and John Beck say, “Unless companies learn to effectively capture, manage, and keep it–both internally and out in the marketplace–they’ll fall hopelessly behind.” Read their groundbreaking book The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.
  
• Less Than 8 Seconds – This is all the time you have to capture someone’s attention on a web page, according to an Associated Press (AP) survey. The survey reported 17% of page views lasted less than 4 seconds while views over 10 minutes were only 4%. 

Six Tips for Rising Above the Noise 

1. Thought-Leadership – Position your business as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to stand out from the crowd. Provide consistent information about your area of expertise or industry. For example, look at Lisa Barone’s video, What Stuttering Taught Me About Running a Business.
   
2. Stop Selling and Start Helping – Your target audience is inundated with marketing messages. Traditional marketing tactics no longer have the same impact in our multi-tasking society. According to Nielsen, 88% of U.S. tablet owners use their devices while watching TV. This means your content needs to be better, focused and more helpful than your competitors’ to grab and hold someone’s attention.
   
3. Where’s the Good Stuff? Gather valuable and relevant content using mobile apps like Zite, It analyzes millions of articles daily, delivering the best of your favorite magazines, newspapers, authors, blogs.
   
4. Show Don’t Tell – This is an essential best practice tactic of content marketing. Videos continue to rise in popularity. In fact, YouTube is currently the second largest search engine. Platforms like Instagram and Vine continue to grow in popularity with 130 million and 13 million users, respectively.
   
5. Do Better – Start small and make gradual improvements. Effective content marketing requires patience; so don’t take on more than you can manage. Consistency is also key to delivering regular and valuable content.
   
6. Analytics, Analytics, Analytics – Content marketing is constant and an investment. It is critical to measure and evaluate the data behind the content – page views, shares, likes, comments, etc. – to adapt, adjust and experience content marketing success. 

Content marketing may be among the hottest search terms, but it is a strategy that’s here to stay. Invest the time and resources into building and implementing a content marketing strategy.

To guide you through this process, download your free white paper: Key Components to an Effective Content Marketing Strategy.

MIT Media Lab Trip

This post is by CED Director of Entrepreneurship Jay Bigelow and also appeared in “On the Go with Jay Bigelow” on ExitEvent.com

One of the reasons we are still a second-tier entrepreneurial region is lack of density. Please don't misinterpret that to mean I don't love living here— I am bullish on our prospects for further growth. But the facts don't lie, we are not (yet) in the big leagues of Boston and Silicon Valley and one of the key reasons is that we lack density.

 What I mean by density is the sheer depth and volume of disruptive innovations being developed, times the cross-pollination of really smart people working on other disruptive innovations. A major driver of this in Boston is the MIT Media Lab.  

I made a return visit to the MIT Media Lab last month as a part of MIT—Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) Global User Group meetings (CED has been a practitioner of VMS for more than three years). The Lab is purposefully designed to stimulate collaboration and collisions: “Actively promoting a unique, antidisciplinary culture, the MIT Media Lab goes beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas.”

So how does this create density? And how might we create density into the big leagues?

The MIT Media Lab is unlike any university setting I have ever been in. By design, the Lab is not “inside” any college within the university. “Anti-disciplinary culture” means that the 27 labs inside the structure are not organized by academic department or discipline(i.e. material science or chemistry), but by area of interest (i.e. cognitive machines, fluid interfaces, human dynamics, responsive environments, even Opera of the Future.) Each of these labs may have five or 25 separate projects, so the full list is nearly 400 projects long (density). 

The first floor of the Lab is both a showcase of work as well as a fully-equipped fabrication space for prototyping. Models, like the various biomechanical feet pictured right, are made and on display here.

You notice the collaboration happening as you wander the Media Lab's two interconnected buildings with six stories of glass-enclosed spaces (one building is the design of the famous Chinese architect I.M. Pei). The various labs exist inside rooms and in hallways and have interactive displays that explain a project within that lab. Visitors can also interact with the working prototypes. One of my favorites was the half-scale city car pictured above. Designed in 2009 by a team led by William Mitchell, the famed former head of the lab's Smart Cities group and dean of MIT's architecture and planning, it can be folded up when parked.

It's also cool that the labs are sponsored by corporations (even LEGO), allowing corporate partners a first look at the innovations underway at the Lab and encouraging real world feedback and input to the researchers. (More density!)

Can we envision what an RTP Media Lab might look like? A massive sprawl in the RTP where the “best and the brightest” forward thinkers of NC State, Duke, UNC, NC Central and beyond are all in one place, colliding and collaborating.

What would make it unique? How would we define ourselves differently? What lab definitions would we have?  

The RTP Foundation and Bob Geolas are planning the future of RTP, as we speak.  How about it, Bob?

Starting a New Venture: Marketing Plan Basics for Entrepreneurs

Guest Post by Christina Motley, Christina Motley LLC

You have a great idea, business plan and investors for your start-up company, and you’re ready to hit the ground running. So why spend time developing a marketing plan? Because according to the Small Business Administration, 80% of small businesses close their doors within the first five years. This is due in part to poor or no marketing efforts.

Many business owners think marketing is easy and fun. While many small business owners attempt to do their own marketing, it’s more important they specialize in what they do best – operating the business and developing new opportunities. Smart business owners recognize this fact and choose to partner with marketing firms or advertising agencies to drive their marketing efforts.

Marketing should not be an afterthought when building a business. Developing a strategic marketing plan is as essential to your business’ success as having a business plan. If you don’t know your desired destination, how are you going to get there?

Similar to business plans, marketing plans are not set in stone. The marketing plan serves as a roadmap and should be revisited annually and updated as needed. This plan is also a powerful tool because it keeps a business focused and true to its vision. Everyone within the organization needs to be aware of the plan because one person or department doesn’t own marketing. It’s a shared responsibility.

Where do you start to develop your marketing plan? While marketing plans range from simple to complicated and vary based on business needs, every plan should include the following:

1. Market research, which may include primary, secondary, formal and informal research.
   
2. Competitive assessment of the marketplace and specific industry, including best practices.
   
3. Evaluation and analysis of the business. This part of the plan identifies:Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT)Competitive advantage/unique value proposition
   Target audience(s) and personas
   Mission, vision, brand attributes and key messages
   
4. Clearly defined short- and long-term goals. These goals should include key performance and success metrics to measure, evaluate and make adjustments as needed.
   
5. Specific strategies (the what and why) to achieve the goals, including measurable objectives for evaluating progress.
   
6. Specific tactics (the how) and a step-by-step plan (who is responsible for which tactic) to achieve the goals.
   
7. A realistic budget (usually 5-10% of revenue, but varies by industry) that supports the goals, strategies, objectives and tactics.
   
8. Identification of one person to oversee and manage the plan.

With these elements in the marketing plan, you can begin implementation and execution of the tactics. Keep in mind that part of the implementation includes measuring results and reporting progress to the entire organization.

You know the saying: First impressions are often lasting impressions. In the ever-expanding business world of increased global competition and tough economic climates, a start-up business’ first impression can make the difference. And a business that develops and implements a strategic marketing plan is poised for growth and will make a positive, lasting impression.

CED VMS: Because “Startups are a tough business…”

Written by Ann Revell-Pechar as part of CED's Venture Mentoring Service: Stories from the Front Lines Series.

Charlie Farrell, Principal at 8 Rivers Capital and CFO for two of their companies, just returned to the Triangle in 2011, having retired from the role of CFO for Edmunds.com in Los Angeles. He learned a lot about growing a business while he was there, starting as employee number 39 in a $6 Million company and leaving when it was a $150 Million, 400 person company. He was enjoying reconnecting with some of his former partners in Triangle, such as Judd Bowman, founder of Motricity and current CEO of Appia. Farrell helped raise the first $1 Million for Motricity and had stayed close to Bowman ever since.

And Bowman stayed close to and supportive of the entrepreneurial community in the Triangle. He strongly encouraged Farrell to connect with CED. And CED immediately connected Farrell to a series of ventures through the Venture Mentoring Service (VMS).

“What a terrific experience this has been for me,” said the veteran executive. “I think I may have worked with as many as six or eight different companies the first year. There’s something so invigorating about CED’s VMS process. You’re spending your time with enthusiastic and serious entrepreneurs who are absolutely committed to doing the right thing.”

As Farrell described it, he would see entrepreneurs really “crank up” with new ideas from mentors. Two or three mentors with different skill sets would go into meetings with founders and provide insights on a team basis. He brought his accounting and finance skills to the table, and applied his experience in internet and technology startups.

“More often than not, the coaching became a question of defining markets and marketing needs,” he said. “You have to get the product right before you can turn your company. Often it was just basic business planning that was needed to get the segment right.”

According to Farrell, having a team of mentors with a mix of backgrounds is valuable for the ventures. His teams included mentors from pharma, consumer goods, engineering -- diverse groups that brought something different to table so that input was never one-sided. Ventures might be raising money and building a pitch deck, so they need feedback on those 12 magic slides for a presentation to an angel.

“Startups are a very difficult business, with a 95% failure rate,” he noted somewhat resignedly. “Sometimes startups fail, and we have to help the company get to the point of shutting it down. One seemed like such a good idea: they had an endorsement from a major company, their pilot had the positive desired effect, yet they couldn’t get anyone to spring to pay for it. After a while, we had to say ‘if they’re not willing to pay, you need to think about doing something else.’ They gave it a good shot for six months before joining VMS. We worked with them for six or seven more months, but when they still weren’t successful, you had to suggest it might be time to fold.”

He tells a very different story about another venture, a company that had a model for converting marine engines from diesel to natural gas called Blue Gas Marine. “This was really fun because the founder, Miguel Guerreiro, is so passionate and embraced our feedback. We think he really got his business model right. We helped him with his pitch deck, and ultimately he raised enough to begin building prototypes to demonstrate that it works. I’m really hopeful for this company.”

Farrell has more stories about the companies he worked with prior to engaging full time with 8 Rivers Capital. One is about a group of materials science engineers at NC State looking for an industrial partner to help them commercialize their product. The team coached the partners ahead of meetings with large companies, offering hints on how to address questions that might arise. In one instance a joint venture contract was proposed, and the mentors helped the ventures through contracts negotiations.

"Our real world experience really came into play for them at that point. If they could have afforded lawyers, they probably would have turned there. But we gave them something of value without a price tag -- coaching from a group of experienced executives that had been thru co-development agreements. The experience we offered made a huge difference for them.”

For companies considering VMS, Farrell recommends that you come to the table with ‘a fully baked idea.’ He suggests founders be devoting themselves full time to their new company, and have enough money to survive without salary for 12 months.  Then he whole-heartedly recommends you dive into VMS. “What else is really available here? Mostly sandboxes, where you can work for three to six months with intensive coaching, but then you’re kicked out. VMS is great because of the experience of the mentors  and it costs nothing but your time."

“I love being a Mentor with VMS because it is so rewarding to see companies develop, succeed, and know you’re helping them to achieve goals and make it over hurdles.”


For more information on CED's Venture Mentoring Service, visit www.cednc.org/vms.  Applications for ventures and mentors are available online.

Take Business to New Heights with a 3-Step Strategic Marketing Plan

Guest Post by Christina Motley, Christina Motley LLC

Has your business reached a plateau in terms of growth? When you started your business, did you create and implement a marketing plan? If not, now is a good time to revisit the importance of what a strategic marketing plan can do for your business.

To refresh your memory, marketing plans serve as a guide for achieving your overarching business objectives, determining how, where and to whom you will find the greatest opportunities for lead generation and increased sales. Similar to business plans, strategic marketing plans  range from short to long documents and vary in terms of breadth and depth. If you don’t know where to begin, follow these three simple steps. Addressing these questions will provide the foundation of a dynamic marketing plan that evolves over time.

1. Who are you? What do you want to accomplish?
Whether your business is a start-up or well established, it’s important to record the history in the marketing plan. Keep the story brief and include the background about your founders, core products and services, mission and vision.

What’s your position in the marketplace? Do you focus on business-to-business (B2B)/business-to-consumer (B2C), a specific geographic location or industry segments? Make sure to define your target audience as well.

Next, where do you want to take your business? An essential element of your marketing plan is articulating specific, measurable business goals, number of clients, revenue forecasts and desired timeframes for achieving your goals.

2. What does the competition look like?
Analyze the competitive environment by conducting a SWOT analysis, and identify your business’ Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). This information allows you to discover key differentiators and develop a Unique Value Proposition. The value proposition explains what benefit you provide for your customers/prospects and how you do it uniquely well. Among the information to include are details about competitive products, pricing, promotion methods and brand attributes.

3. How will you achieve your goals?
You’ve outlined your business and goals and defined the competition. What comes next? Developing the strategies (the why), defining success metrics (how to achieve the strategy) and identifying the tactics (how and where the messages will be distributed.)

The other crucial piece of the strategic marketing plan is a detailed action plan that specifies roles and responsibilities, timeline, message frequency and costs. One thing to note – if you’ve identified several business goals, then you will need to develop multiple strategies and tactics to achieve them.

What’s next?
Whether the marketing plan is simple or complex, implementation and execution are critical to success. Equally important is measuring the outcome and reporting results against the plan. Are you on track, or do you need to make adjustments?

Also, revisit the plan periodically and keep it up to date. Best practices suggest 2-4 times per year or as needed based on Political, Economic, Social or Technology (PEST) factors that may impact the business.

To better guide you through the process, download your complementary marketing plan template.