Came across an interesting post on weSRCH.com that reflected upon a maxim used in business circles: Without profits, customers don’t matter. This brought to mind an insight that emerged out of a recent meeting with a harried one-person marketing “team” at a fairly large company (quote): “Without a decent web presence, content don’t mean jack anymore…”
In “The Practice of Management” Peter Drucker said that the purpose of business is to find and keep customers. Granted, Mr. Drucker was writing to an audience of executives schooled heavily in business and who had a tendency to maximize profits to the extreme. Some take this to mean—especially during tough economic times—that it is okay to lose money in order to attract customers. But this can only happen over the short term. Lose money consistently and soon you’ll have happy customers but lose your business.
We see a parallel today, where resource-strapped marketing teams seem to be frozen into inaction. Do you want to have great content and lose your audience? Most companies have a wealth of excellent content, with potential that’s just waiting to be tapped. These typically exist or are created as standard collateral, success stories, application notes and white papers or even take more appealing forms such as (say) flash, video and instructional webinars. All too often, unfortunately, this content simply gets uploaded to a corporate website, buried within pages of fairly static content never to see the light of day. In all fairness, many firms do get creative and repurpose content with calls to action in newsletters, direct marketing and online advertising. Shoot me for saying this… while these traditional approaches may have had merit, they’re a bit tired and running out of steam.
Your content may be king, but it’s begging for more.
The answer is to make the content do the legwork. Its greatness lies not in the words or audio/video themselves, but in what it can do for your business, brand and image. To manage your web presence means to effectively spread your content out there beyond your corporate website, where it matters. Encourage community, sharing and feedback, and make your audience a part of the conversations (in today’s Web 2.0-enabled world, they will do it anyway*). This in turn will further enrich your overall content offering and earn the respect of your customers and prospects.
Content without an audience is like having customers without profits: meaningless and unsustainable. You can now take advantage of content management platforms that seamlessly integrate with corporate and social media channels for efficient distribution of content to audiences. These tools can help even the leanest of marketing teams to manage and grow a high-impact web presence, attract and grow a loyal and attentive audience, and ultimately grow your sales and—the key word here— profitability.
* for example, see theses 8-13 of the Cluetrain Manifesto
