Thought Leadership

,

To Sell a Story, You Must Tell a Story

,
To Sell a Story, You Must Tell a Story

What’s more convincing: If I told you how many times I’ve helped a client out of given problem, or if I told you a story about the person I helped yesterday?

Too often, we litter our marketing copy with statistics—facts, figures, bullet points, specs, product lists, empty promises—when we should be telling stories. Stories are magical tools that convince people that what you claim to be true is actually rooted in reality. Stories make people feel. They make people care.

There is an old quote, often misattributed, that is taken from a work of fiction: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” Here’s how you can apply that logic to your marketing messaging…

How to Know if Content Marketing Is Working

How to Know if Content Marketing Is Working

The goal of content marketing in the business-to-business world is not to convince someone who is not in the market for your product or service to buy from you when they’re not in need. B2B decision-making doesn’t happen that way.

Yet too many B2B marketers put too much pressure on themselves to identify success metrics in a way that consumer marketers and advertisers might. The mistake they’re making is applying consumer marketing methodology to an ecosystem with a much longer buying cycle, a much more sophisticated buyer, and likely, a much higher price point than a typical consumer product.

,

The Secret to Great Content

,
The Secret to Great Content

Content is becoming an ever-more-critical component to the marketing ecosystem. But as more and more content is being generated, good content is becoming harder and harder to find. Meaning, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to create content that stands out and sinks in. Quantity can actually beget quality, if you know where to find it…

,

Building on Rented Land

,
Building on Rented Land

"You need to build your content strategy on rented land. In fact, you have no choice."

This somewhat unconventional wisdom sparked some interesting thought and conversation between Jay Harrington and me on a recent episode of The Thought Leadership Project podcast.

At issue: Should you be putting your content on your website and placing it behind “gates,” or sharing it freely on social media and elsewhere?

Content's Proper Place in the Sales and Marketing Funnel

Content's Proper Place in the Sales and Marketing Funnel

Content is working its way down the sales funnel farther than ever before. While we have historically thought of content in terms of “content marketing”—which generally lives near the top of the sales funnel—we should now be thinking in terms of “content business development.”

But if you’re serving your network and people you’d like to include in your network, by providing them with either things of intellectual value or by raising their profiles somehow, that’s not selling...it’s serving.