The New Rules of Custom Publishing

Junta42 | The New Rules of Custom Publishing This combination has created an opportunity for custom publishers and content providers to assist corporations in filling this content gap, by helping them understand and execute the process and power of consistent, editorial content in all its forms. Selling to your customers is becoming more challenging without content. If we believe the premise that buyers actively seek out information before they make buying decisions, then making sure that your content is part of that information is imperative. This means targeted, valuable content for all stages of the buying cycle. Smart marketers know this and are creating strong brand relationships by providing good, authoritative, even leadership-type content. Not having relevant content available at just the right time and place means not being a part of the purchase decision. Because of this, old-fashioned traditional marketing is taking a backseat to content marketing, through which companies engage in an interactive dialogue with their prospects. Smart marketers know that they must be part of the informational dialogue to make an impact on customers. Paul Gillin points out in his book, The New Influencers: Traditional marketing and traditional media will always have a role to play in commerce. They will morph and can adapt to changing demographic trends. But it is clear that growth will be centered around conversation-based tactics. The next generation of customers will want to interact with businesses in very different ways. The new influencers are here to stay. Your challenge, and your opportunity, is in learning how to influence them and becoming an influencer yourself. As Gillin suggests, content marketing is all about engaging in a conversation with your customers and prospects. World-class companies are beginning to do this, but most are not set up to produce ongoing, consistent editorial to position themselves as part of the dialogue. Any custom publisher knows this, or they never would have started in the business. The difference today is that content marketing isn’t just one option anymore. With interruption marketing growing every day as the number of distribution vehicles are increasing, marketers need something different to cut through the clutter. Because technology is both cheap and easy to use, even small companies can deliver great content solutions to a targeted customer base. Fortune 500 companies have long had the technological resources and the investment capital required to build sophisticated content marketing solutions – and to manage huge amounts of demographic data relating to their prospects and customer base. Many, such as Best Buy, Microsoft and Amazon.com, probably know more about us than some of our relatives. They also do a terrific job of delivering relevant and compelling content to different segments of their prospect bases, all based on their knowledge of the buyers’ informational needs. Small- to medium-sized companies, however, have had to rely on media companies to deliver their message to their targeted buyers. This has certainly been true with print publications and, until fairly recently, online as well. Affordable technology is now changing all of the rules. Just a few years ago, it would have been laughable to imagine that a very small organization could create and maintain a Web site that could be updated daily – and which would allow visitors to interact and even to buy products and services. Today, it’s not only possible, it’s pervasive. In fact, a 10-person company may be able to outmarket a 10,000person company in a carefully chosen niche. www.junta42.com/match 4 http://www.junta42.com/match

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The New Rules of Custom Publishing

The New Rules of Custom Publishing World-Class Custom Publishing... Is Possible #1 Understand the Changes... #2 Be Active in Social Media... #3 Acquire Expertise in All Forms of Content #4 Walk the Talk #5 Position Yourself... #6 Have a Clear Value Proposition #7 Price Your Services... #8 Value the Role of the Project Manager #9 Use Questions, Not Answers... About the Author

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