Ever since Johannes Gutenberg
invented the printing press 450 years
ago and started printing the Bible
there have been people
who never had the time to read it.
It was like that 450 years ago
and it's still the same.
The reason is that
there's always more content out there.
You can always choose something else.
There is always something more alluring
than the content that you create.
Or the content
that Johannes Gutenberg created.
It's more obvious now than ever,
when such a lot of content is created.
So that to get your content across,
no matter what that content is,
it has to be incredibly good. "Good
enough" is not good enough anymore.
That worked 20 years ago, but today
your content has to be fantastic
to be able to reach the right
target group, the right audience.
To succeed with this
you have to have a strategy.
It's a well-known fact that a company
with a documented marketing strategy
is four times more successful
than a company without one.
But 32 percent of all companies don't
have a documented marketing strategy.
These figures come from
the Content Marketing Institute.
And that's a great shame. Mainly for
them, because they won't succeed,
but also because it creates an
uncertainty in the marketing industry.
And also for us, because we may think
that content marketing doesn't work.
That it is, or was, a buzzword on its
way to disappear, as mentioned earlier.
Working with content marketing
without a strategy
is a bit like
orienteering without a map.
Maybe you have fun for a while
and find a chanterelle or two,
but you'll definitely
get lost, sooner or later.
Then those chanterelles
won't be of much use.
That's exactly
how content marketing works.
You have to have certain things
documented in your strategy.
For example, your target group.
Which audience do you want to build?
Which are the pain spots
of this target group?
Where, when, how and in which channels
do they want to see your content?
You have to know what you want to say.
Which are your sweet spots?
All this is crucial if you want to
succeed with content marketing.
That's why we continuously nag about
having a documented content strategy.
