Content Marketing.
Nobody really believes digital marketing bullshit and everyone understands there are no perfect companies, so why not just be honest?
Driven by digital agencies, content marketing used to be all about product – lists of product or services benefits skewed to meet the needs of consumers. Now it’s more about engagement, culture and trust.
Digital agencies and organisations are (re-)waking up to this and a “people buy from people” mantra is returning and replacing the “product-repetitive” digital marketing that has clouded how companies communicate.
Companies are created around a culture, not products, and engage best with customers that share or least recognise those values. The challenge is to dig-out those hidden values and then communicate them in a way that works in the attention-poor digital age.
We refer to these as core values and they form the very foundation of the company. In the past, these core values have been drowned out by the (perceived) needs of digital messaging.
Getting your digital agency to understand your core values (warts and all) and then communicate those in a RoI-driven, keyword obsessed, digital world was frequently a step too far. And it took too long; the average 12 month tenancy of a digital agency is arguably too short to reach a mutual understanding of how to market an organisation in the digital space.
It’s time, then, top form deeper relationships with those that work in and around your digital messaging. This entails spending work and social time together to reach a more complete picture.
This completeness, and understanding, of the core values needs to be communicated to consumers. We started off by saying that folks don’t believe the marketing bullshit, so we should be giving something they can believe in.
Good companies are founded on great culture, openess and transparency – in every case, they’re great places to work and that normally translates into great staff loyalty and client retention.
So why not start speaking openly and honestly? It’s actually easier and should naturally communicate your core values. Besides, products and technical features are not very interesting.
