By Rex Hammock
This week marks our 150th Idea Email. (Here’s the complete archive.) Until now, we’ve never included New Year’s resolutions for people who market with content and customer media. Pick and choose from these 10 content marketing resolutions for 2019 as needed—or, if you’re feeling especially productive, tackle all 10.
1. | Resolve to focus your marketing on help, not hype.
This is our mantra at Hammock. Customers believe and appreciate help. They look forward to it. What’s more, they will turn to Google for help if you don’t provide it.
2. | Develop marketing content focused on reaching your customers, not focused on pleasing your CEO.
Or, as our favorite Finnish professor, the late Osmo Wiio, said, “If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails.” Said another way: Your CEO already knows how great your company is and how effective your products are. Don’t waste your time or budget telling the CEO what she already knows
3. | Always fall in love with your customer’s problem rather than your company’s solution.
We borrowed this great suggestion from software giant Intuit.
4. | View your brand as a village of friendly people who love to share stories. Don’t think of your brand as a soap box and megaphone.
Your brand should be a story that never ends. While the correct logo, slogan, mission statement and corporate design standards all reflect who you are and what you stand for, your stories are what keep your organization relevant to its workers and customers. It’s what creates a brand that is fresh and new far into the future.
5. | Never confuse the lowest price with the best value.
Perhaps you can sell generic pieces and parts, but great content that works is never a fill-in-the-blank commodity.
6.| Do your own research instead of believing what “the experts say.
The definitive expert on your product is someone who has just purchased it or one who has owned it for years. That’s why we stress the importance of viewing marketing through the eyes and experience of a customer.
7.| Don’t promise more than you can deliver.
Make sure the train pulls out of the station when you promise it will. If you are doing things to slow down the departure, you are undermining the importance of the product itself.
8.| Don’t embrace new technology that your customers don’t use.
We live in an era where very few ideas stick. Let large companies or deep-pocketed venture capitalists plow through enormous amounts of money looking for new ideas. Put your toe in the water if you see something catching on in your industry niche, but don’t feel left behind if you take a wait-and-see approach to the latest trend.
9.| Be consistent.For 27 years, we’ve partnered with clients to deliver millions of copies of newsletters, magazines and digital media to readers and viewers. We believe consistency and timeliness are important, no matter the medium. Sometimes it takes 150 issues to say just the right thing for that one individual who discovers the answer to the question they’ve long been asking.
10. | Give the client credit for everything good.
Why not? It’s the truth. Especially when it comes to our clients.
Thank you for subscribing to the Idea Email.
Have a Joyful Christmas and a Prosperous 2019.
Your Friends at Hammock Inc.
Image: Getty Images
About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email | This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here . To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.