Expert Copywriting and Marketing Consulting in Medical Technology
The Crucial Content—Marketing Nexus
What It Is and Why It’s Important
– by Lynn M. Little
Jon Morrow, President of Smart Blogger, has written a terrific article titled, Why Most Businesses Get Crappy Results from Content Marketing. In his article, Jon lays out in simple terms the connection between content and marketing in achieving a company’s sales goals.
I was so impressed with his message that I wanted to summarize it here. I chose my title, above, to refer to the crucial connection (nexus) between content and marketing. Here is my summary of Jon’s much longer article.
Content and marketing are both crucial to sales and, therefore, the wellbeing of your company. Simply put, content refers to the information seen by potential customers as they visit your website and possibly see your ads elsewhere. Marketing refers to asking for their business and closing sales.
As Jon Morrow points out, content is not just about traffic, i.e., number of visits to your website and requests for information. Instead, content affects the entire sales process.
The problem with content is that you really don’t know which part of your content leads to the most sales over time.
The reason for this is that the sales process (buying process) consists of a number of steps that can extend over a lengthy period of time — long after any particular content was first used and observed by your audience.
But content is vitally important because it affects every stage of the sales process. Properly used, content can:
• Build trust and authority with your website visitors,
• Persuade visitors to provide you with their contact information,
• Remind returning visitors of your existence and business,
• Use informative persuasion to move prospects toward buying.
The content marketing process can be shown in a table like this one. The metrics indicate the success of each step and show whether prospects are moving through the process.
Placing content and marketing into their proper context, we can say that:
1. The purpose of content is to create influence;
2. The purpose of marketing is to convert influence into action.
To complete the sales cycle, you need both content that creates influence and marketing that asks the prospect to take the next step.
So, you can stop obsessing over:
• your search engine rankings,
• your share counts,
• the size of your email list,
• or any of the normal metrics.
Because none of it matters unless you inspire the prospect to take action. And you can do that by creating a stream of content that gently, but continually, nudges the prospect along the path toward finally making his or her purchase.
If you can create content that generates influence and then back up your content with marketing that converts influence into action, you’ll have built a “machine” that goes “cha-ching,” “cha-ching,” “cha-ching.”
Here is Jon Morrow’s step-by-step guide to constructing such a “machine”:
1. Map out the process prospects follow before deciding to buy.
2. Create content that builds trust at every stage of that process.
3. Create marketing to follow the content that asks prospects to take the next step.
4. Measure your success in getting the prospect to take that next step.
5. If (when) the process breaks down, improve the content and marketing at that stage, until the prospect takes action.
That’s it―content, marketing, and the vital nexus between them. Follow all these steps … and listen for the cha-ching,” “cha-ching,” “cha-ching.”
Adapted from Why Most Businesses Get Crappy Results from Content Marketing, by Jon Morrow, President of Smart Blogger, September 22, 2016