Content Marketing Is More Than What You Say

Posted by Robert Rose on Jun 29, 2011

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”    That quote (along with one from my grandfather) sits on my desk.   Maya Angelou said it – and it’s one of my favorites of all time.   It reminds me constantly that communication is about so much more than WHAT you say.

I just got through re-reading “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business A Stage” by Joseph Pine and James Gilmor.  It’s still a wonderfully relevant book more than ten years later – and still has some wonderful ideas.

That book – plus two recent client experiences with content marketing reminded me that (even as young as it is) we can often get myopic in our content marketing strategies.    In our rushed – “let’s get it to market” mentality we can often forget that, at its heart – Content Marketing is about telling a compelling story.  And, at the heart of telling a great story is creating an engaging experience.  And, at the heart of creating an engaging experience is focusing on how we evoke a feeling.

An Experience Is Content Too

One of the things that really stood out to me in rereading the Experience Economy book is this introduction where he talks about experiences being a new source of value:

“Experiences are a fourth economic offering, as distinct from services as services are from goods…. When a person buys a service, he purchases a set of intangible activities carried out on his behalf.  But when he buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages – as in a theatrical play – to engage him in a personal way.”

That’s incredibly important to us as content marketers.   We are in the business of telling a great story.     And, we need to remember that in addition to text, and images and video and interactive tools – that real people and real, tangible things can tell that story as well.

A Series Of Events

Quick Example.  I recently finished with a client on a content marketing project.  They are a B2B Software company – and they sell a product that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Their sales cycle is long – and (as you might expect) they touch many people during their lead nurturing process.   One of the most interesting content marketing initiatives we put together, was a story around the “Project Manager” target persona for this product and how he/she can become a “Super Hero”.

Because of the complexity of their offering – there is usually a Project Manager for the implementation and rollout of this software.  Typically this person has to manage the creation of a number of new processes, change the behavior of a number of people and deploy a whole slew of new technology.   So for this company we created a series of Workshops that would teach the Project Manager the “best practices” of not only how to “buy” this kind of software – but how to successfully implement, manage and achieve adoption in the organization.    These workshops are highly valuable experiences – taught by practitioners at the Software Company that “know the ropes”.

And, in addition to the Project Manager – different stakeholders are also brought in for different workshops – but the Project Manager is always positioned as the one – true – Superhero.   He/She becomes the “go-to” person in the organization for this new process.    When it’s done, they look like a genius.  And,  then guess how much affinity these workshops create between the Project Manager and the software company.

Now, of course, the company has leveraged these workshops into blog posts, webinars, white papers and every other content marketing that’s running through your brilliant brains at the moment.    But in addition, these real life events – give prospects a series of compelling, educational experiences.

Make Em Feel Good

Here is the most important piece of this initiative.  This company has no interest in, nor could they afford, to give a complete set of training courses on these various subjects.  These sales prospects may or may not even be able to buy from them.    These workshops are not designed to train the Project Manager on every detail of the software, or the process.  Frankly, that’s what the company gets paid for during the consulting and training services they offer.

No, they are rather designed specifically to give just enough information in just the RIGHT WAY, to make the prospect team feel good, gain confidence and build trust with the software vendor.

In short – they’re not built to really educate.  They’re built to make the prospective client stakeholders – and especially the Project Manager feel ever-more confident about the big decision they’re about to make.

As content marketers – when we’re at our best – we create experiences that are memorable and evoke an emotion.  When we can make people feel good with our text, our imagery, our videos – our story – we’re creating wonderful content marketing.   But, let’s not forget about also inviting people to our live stage – and creating a real life experience is just as compelling.

I promise you won’t be disappointed with how great the applause feels…

By the way… if you’ve never heard the Nina Simone version of Feelin’ Good – take 3 minutes out of your day and give yourself a treat.