I am not sure who coined the term “content is king” but who ever said it nailed it when it comes to online marketing.

My firm focuses on the small and medium business market (SMB) and there is no bigger hurdle for any of my clients and their online marketing presence than content.

I am sad to report, more SMBs fail online or struggle because of poor content.

Marketing online is more difficult than traditional face to face sales unless your content can; interrupt the buyer, strike up a conversation, walk the website visitor through the sales process, answer all the questions, overcome the objections, educate the buyer and ask for the order.

Sounds easy enough but it isn’t.

The inexperience SMB business owner or online marketer often falls into the trap of seeing successful online businesses and think overnight instant success is awaiting them if they just get their website up and people find it.

Traffic to websites is easy. Targeted traffic of the right buyers is getting easier each day. You can find SEO people lining the streets like vultures to a carcass in the desert. Traffic that converts is more dependent on content and your ability to continually serve up content that educates the buyer to the point of the sale.

I meet business owner after business owner who will spend thousands of dollars attending conferences, peer groups, executive coaching, executive consulting and all kinds of self improvement but wont spend 3 hours with a team of content and copy writers who design effective content. Yet in comparison to effectiveness, the content could out perform all the other executive junkets combined on a ROI basis.

One needs to have converting content for the following:

1.       Prospect outbound communications to include; email, text, direct mail, audio, video and social media communications.

2.       Landing pages/Website

3.       Customer retention communications to include; email, text, direct mail, audio, video and social media communications.

I see too many executives gloss over the importance of content and it’s delivery. They listen to the marketing experts and get wrapped around their brand and a message. For the SMB, brand can be the pet python that strangles them because they spend their money on brand development and not effective communication of the business proposition to the buyer. I have said this before and I will say it again, no one loves your logo more than you!

Poor content and poor delivery of content means your communications will just be noise or the proverbial hay and not the needle.

Invest in great content for your online communications and your business will grow. Invest in tools that will automate the delivery of your content without adding people.

Stay connected and invest in your content.