Content Development

What is “content development,” and why should you care about it?

The first part of this question is rigged. Content development is a moving target. It’s everything in your marketing arsenal – from the way you design educational materials to the way your trade show booth tells a story. It’s about so much more than producing marketing collateral like case studies, brochures, white papers, flyers, direct mail, email marketing campaigns and PowerPoint presentations. . but those are included, too.

But why should you care about it? That’s not so difficult to understand. You need to care because content drives leads, and leads drive sales, and sales bring in dough, and dough motivates your people, your shareholders and partners. It’s also good for your family, friends and personal worth. There’s nothing wrong with success.

Good content development starts by carefully considering your customers and prospects. You have to know your customers inside and out, and understand what their biggest problems and dreams are.

The problem is, most companies want to start elsewhere. They want to talk about themselves, and what their products and services can do. In the mean time, prospects just want to know WIIFM (what’s in it for me). They have to first understand what the result of using the product or service will do for their life, their company, their career path, their health, happiness and so on.

What about SEO and content development?

We can talk about content development in terms of SEO, too. Here’s a key point to consider, however. You’ve undoubtedly come across plenty of SEO experts and gurus. It’s a shady business. There are people who can help, but it’s not always about traffic generation and Google position. One of the keys that’s often overlooked is traffic value.

What’s that?

In blunt terms, it’s about generating traffic that actually gives a “bleep” about where they’ve landed – what they’ve discovered when they make it to your pages. There are plenty of cheezy sites that get great traffic but have very little value and, thus, high bounce rates and very little conversion success.

3rd Street Marketing would like you to do both things – generate traffic and ensure that the traffic is valuable and can convert to leads, sales, relationships and progress.

3rd Street Marketing Fits in with Your Team

The writers, designers, web developers and strategic marketing project managers at 3rd Street can complement your content development efforts.

We can help you discover what’s keeping your customers and prospects up at night. And, we can do tactical work, as well, like designing consistent looks and integrated messaging for your latest campaigns, or using social media strategies for leveraging existing content.

Call us today at 855.373.7873 to explore some new approaches for marketing smart in 2011.