Talking with Content Marketing guru Joe Pulizzi

Ironically, in an age of trying to grab attention in 10 seconds or less, content marketing is making its mark largely due to the determination of people like Joe Pulizzi who heads up the Content Marketing Institute.

Pulizzi started working in media at the time so many of us jumped into the dot.com bubble with great expectations. He saw the growing disconnect between traditional advertising and having a better way to connect with customers.

In retrospect, I also saw what Pulizzi was starting to see when I worked (briefly) at a startup web based consortium of higher education. The dotcom was designed to bring together thought provoking courses from leading universities worldwide. A seasoned educator, and Rhodes Scholar, was hired to facilitate the process of negotiating content with tenured professors to present a series of sophisticated courses on various topics in arts and literature, world history, global economics and so forth. As a writer, my job was to describe such courses in a succinct but appealing manner to potential students…or create content. As it so happened, a very young CEO (whom I guessed was about 12) decided that instead we needed a more relevant MTV style slant for the course listings. “We want to grab them in three words,” was the edict from the junior CEO. As you might have guessed, a content-rich online brochure was replaced with in-your-face-advertising to an academic audience with little response and the dotcom soon disappeared. Now, more than a decade later, content marketing has finally come of age. It has not replaced slogans or ad copy, but given us so much more information with which to make buying decisions.

Speaking with Pulizzi recently, reminded me of how important it is to have passion for what you do. His enthusiasm was evident throughout our entire conversation. “My thought was the best kind of marketing on the planet would be giving your customers such great, amazing value that they came to you whenever they needed something – why don’t brands position themselves as media companies and come to you instead of just selling something?,” asked Pulizzi as far back as 2007.

Of course it was hard to get advertising-centric businesses onboard. Who wanted actual content when you could splash a 15-second TV ad or web banner ad in someone’s face? Apparently the public did.

When movie theaters began showing pre-movie commercials, audiences actually hissed and booed. Yet, while we adjusted, and went out to buy popcorn, the hissing and booing of those early ads was an indicator of what was to come. We collectively began to mute commercials, DVR programs to bypass them entirely and opted for generic searches rather than clicking online ads. Today we bypass advertising overkill and create our own commercial-free content on social media platforms and through our blogs.

But What Exactly IS Content Marketing?

Taking a short version of one of Joe Pulizzi’s six useful definitions:

“Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

“People need to understand that it is not a marketing or advertising campaign. It is a constant, it is ongoing,” explains Pulizzi, adding that “it doesn’t replace advertising, but it is how you build and maintain an ongoing relationship with your customers. Too many companies drop the ball on this. Only 1 in 3 has an audience building program. Instead they are looking at things such as ‘likes’ which is pretty much meaningless unless there is another objective behind it,” says Pulizzi, and that objective should be to build a relationship. “I consider the best metric of all to be subscribers. Most organizations look at the short-term, trying to get people converted. Once they are converted, companies stop dealing with them,” Pulizzi explains. This is in contrast to the idea that 80% of your business comes from loyal returning customers. “Very few companies are loyalty driven,” adds Pulizzi, in hopes that will change.

Today, as marketing execs wrap their minds around new strategies behind using content, from blogs to books, to build an audience, Pulizzi is now at the forefront of something that is more than a passing trend. In fact, content marketing has actually been around for ages. Back in 1895 the John Deere Corporation began publishing The Furrow, a magazine that educates customers on ways to utilize technology to run their businesses. It’s still published today. The content is not about selling tractors, but the idea is to educate readers, since the more they learn, the more tractors they buy from John Deere. Likewise, the Michelin Tire Company started their auto maintenance guides in 1900 and again, quality content and knowledge proved rewarding through sales.

Today, our rapidly growing means of communication provides more businesses, large and small, with the opportunity to provide quality content to their audiences.

“Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective, and that there is now a better way,” says Pulizzi, of content marketing.

CMWorld2015, the fifth annual Content Marketing Convention, will be held at the Cleveland Convention Center, September 8th-11th. Last year, over 2,500 people attended and this year more are expected, including keynote speaker John Cleese.