“Content marketing is the only marketing left.”
This gem is from Seth Godin. Not sure who Seth is? His career is long and winding. He was a Direct Marketing guru at Yahoo, authored 17 books, founded Squidoo.com and is an inductee of the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (don’t worry, it’s real – we checked). His blog is one of the most popular in the world. Now, I am not saying that Seth should be blindly obeyed. However, I do believe that Seth is a marketing expert. Better yet, he is an innovative marketing expert. So, if he says that content marketing is the only marketing left, then who am I to argue? (Plus, if it really is the only marketing left, then little old wordly is set for success!)
If we look at the stats, it seems that Seth might indeed be onto something. Customers really do prefer information delivered via online channels. It is estimated that 330 million people read blogs each month. Over 27 million pieces of online content (that’s articles, blog posts and the like) are shared each and every day. Most content is shared via email, followed closely by social media and then blogs. If we break it down further, the average internet user spends 50% of their time online reading content, and 30% on social media.
That being said, you have to make sure that your content is relevant. The old school marketing approach (that used more traditional brochures and flyers) was all about companies proclaiming how great they were. With the advent of the more modern content-marketing approach, you need to demonstrate to potential clients how useful you are. You want clients to know, for certain, that you have all the answers to their problems. The end goal is to make yourself indispensable. Content marketing is, above all, a client-centered approach to marketing.
