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- Since content marketing is different
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from traditional marketing,
it's important to define
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thought leadership versus selling,
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when you're first starting out
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and creating your content
marketing strategy.
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Your content should
contain thought leadership.
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What is thought leadership?
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A thought leader looks to the future
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and sets a course that others will follow.
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Thought leaders look to
existing best practices
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to come up with better best practices.
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They format change,
often causing disruption.
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Your content should be thought leadership.
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It should be educational,
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it should be focused on best practices,
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it should really help your
customers do their jobs better.
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Your content shouldn't
just be a sales pitch.
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What do I mean by a sales pitch?
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You shouldn't be just
talking about your own
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products and your own
service in your content.
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That will cause buyers,
especially your buyers
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that have never heard about your company,
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to be turned off.
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Your content should,
instead, show your buyers
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how to do their jobs
better, and educate them.
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What's the difference
between thought leadership
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and sales content?
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Thought leadership educates,
sales content sells.
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Thought leadership pulls
your customers to you,
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and sales content pushes your
marketing messages on them.
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Thought leadership
contains best practices,
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and sales content
contains product details.
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Let's take a look at what
this looks like in action
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by looking at two real-life examples.
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The company that I work for, Marketo,
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we create both thought leader pieces
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as well as sales pieces,
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so I think it could be a
good example to show you
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the difference between the two items.
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The piece on the left,
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The Definitive Guide to
Marketing Automation,
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is a thought leadership
Ebook that we've created
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to help customers think
about marketing automation
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as a theory and as a practice.
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Within the Ebook, the content itself
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does not mention Marketo,
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but it does mention marketing automation,
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and we do try to educate customers
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on how to do that better.
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The example on the right is a
sales data sheet from Marketo.
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This is very product-specific,
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talking about one of the
products that we offer.
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This does not have a ton of
thought leadership in it,
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it just has product details.
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As you can see, there's a real difference
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between thought leadership
and sales data sheets.
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Another thing to think of is the 411 rule.
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The 411 rule was
popularized by Joe Pulizzi
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from Content Marketing Institute.
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You can use this as you're thinking about
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how to set up your content programs
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and your other programs that
you're creating in marketing.
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For instance, on social media,
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for some of your paid programs,
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this works quite well.
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For four educational assets,
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and that would be those
thought leadership Ebooks,
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those pieces that are about
helping your customers
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do their jobs better.
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With one soft promotional piece.
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A soft promotional piece
might be a piece of content
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that you're using to promote, say,
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a webinar or an event.
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And then one hard promotion.
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A hard promotion might be something like
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that sales data sheet.
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As you're thinking about your content mix,
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you do want to mix in thought leadership
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with that sales content, but again,
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content marketing is,
because it's really focused
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on thought leadership,
you do want to do those
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four educational assets.
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You do want the balance to tip
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on the thought leadership side.
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Let's see the 411 in action.
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The top four pieces are
your educational assets
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that you're using to promote your
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thought leadership across
your marketing programs.
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These pieces are best practices,
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they are tips, and they
are not sales-related.
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This will be the majority
of what you're using
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on say, a social channel,
to get your message across.
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Then, we have the two promotional pieces
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on the bottom, here.
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The first promotional
soft-push piece, here,
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is more of a third-party
asset of vendor study.
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It could be some type of report
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that mentions your product or service,
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but also includes some thought leadership.
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The last one, that hard-push, again,
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is that type of sales data sheet
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that you're using to push your product,
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and to really explain your product.
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This combination really enables you
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to create a great content marketing mix,
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and to be able to show not
only your thought leadership,
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but also add some promotion in there.
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As you're thinking about your
content marketing strategy,
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from a to z, you want to think about
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creating thought leadership pieces
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instead of only sales content.
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If you're only creating sales content,
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you run the risk of turning off buyers,
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especially those early-stage buyers
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who have yet to have
heard of your company.
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Thought leadership draws them in,
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it provides them best practices,
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and gives them a reason to
keep coming back to you.