Clever content marketing explained simply - with the 4 Ps of classic marketing

Do you know the 4 Ps of marketing? Almost certainly yes: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. A lot has already been said and written about this. There is a lot of knowledge about it. In contrast, there is - at least in this country - a great deal of uncertainty and ignorance about what "content marketing" is. My thesis: If you understand "marketing", then you also understand content marketing, because both work according to exactly the same principles.

"Marketing" is usually defined as "a concept of holistic, market-oriented corporate management aimed at satisfying the needs and expectations of customers and other stakeholders." And this is precisely the task we have in communication. So if we apply the term consistently, we can define content marketing as "a concept of holistic, market-oriented communication management to satisfy the (information) needs and expectations of customers and other stakeholders." Simple, right?

Alternatively, marketing is defined as "the business function whose task is to market products and services, i.e., to offer them for sale in such a way that buyers perceive this offer as desirable." And here, too, the analogy is obvious. Content marketing would therefore be "the corporate function whose task is to market messages and information, i.e., to offer them for use in such a way that users perceive this offer as desirable." It is precisely in "perceiving it as desirable" that the solution to the problems we face today, both strategically and tactically, lies:

There is a market for content. Companies need to develop content that is 'market-driven'.
Mirko Lange

TV viewers zap away. Internet users are installing ad blockers, Facebook is controlling the visibility of posts according to user acceptance and Google is restructuring its algorithm to measure whether users actually use the content they find - for example, whether they stay on the website for a long time and continue to browse or bounce back.

So how can we make use of the findings of classic marketing for our content marketing? Simply by applying them analogously! And it helps if we understand that there is also a "market" for content - and that this market is currently changing radically, also and above all through social media. Because there are the same mechanisms of supply and demand as in the "real markets". At the moment, we simply have a huge oversupply and demand has not increased or has only increased slightly. And what happens in such markets?

Content marketing means applying the methods of (product) marketing to content
Mirko Lange

Prices are falling! Publishers know this all too well. Nobody wants to pay for content anymore! You need to understand that as a content provider, you are facing insane competition. And you are a "content provider"! Because "advertising" and "PR" are also content! What else could they be? So you should think about how you can remain competitive in this market. Because if nobody notices your content anymore, you have a huge problem.

So why not try it out with the findings of classic marketing: you also need "product management" for your content. This is the "content strategy". So you need to think about what "products" (= content) the market wants and how the product (= content) needs to be designed. And just as you determine the shape, color, packaging, functions, range, etc. for a "product", you must also determine the formats, the story, the appeal, the staging and so on for content. These are all elements of a content strategy.

If companies managed their products the same way they manage their content, they would have gone bankrupt long ago.
Mirko Lange

And if you look at modern product management, products are increasingly being developed into "solutions." And that also applies to content: content is especially good when it solves a problem. Of course, you can always write whatever comes to mind or whatever someone from some department wants you to write. True to the motto: "My house, my yacht, my car." But that's not "market-oriented." Here, you don't worry about whether users perceive the offer as "desirable." A company that would conduct its product marketing in such a way that it simply produces the products that come to mind would have no chance on the market today. So why should that work with content?

You also have a distribution policy in content marketing. So you need to consider which channels you want to use to distribute your product (= content). What is the main channel? What are the supplementary channels? How do the distribution channels interact? How can you distribute the content directly ("owned media") and indirectly ("earned media")? And are there any channel conflicts? This should not be underestimated. If you now distribute your content yourself via social media, what do your "distribution partners" say about this – and here I mean the "press," even if they'll give me a hard time for calling them that. But the problem is exactly the same. And distribution policy also includes the topic , topic because search engines are a distribution channel. And it doesn't stop at "online" or even "social media." Because you distribute "content" across many channels – including print products and catalogs. In classic marketing, this is now called "omni-channel." And the same applies to content. Your content must be accessible to interested parties at all times and via all conceivable channels.

And yes. There is also a "pricing policy". You have to consider what you get back for your product (= content). With content, this is rarely money (but it can be), but it is attention, and/or traffic and/or leads and/or reputation or even a "pay with a tweet" or a "fangate" etc. etc. The "revenue opportunities" of "content" are manifold. These are all questions of pricing policy. And depending on the revenue you receive, you must then also determine the "production price". So how much can and should you invest in content? In traditional marketing, it's usually the other way around, where you first look at how much it costs to produce the product and then set the sales price. But this is of course an interplay. If your product is so expensive to produce that you can't achieve the price on the market, then you need to think about how you can reduce your production costs.

And, of course, you also need "product promotion" or "communication policy" in content marketing! At first glance, this sounds counterintuitive: content is communication, so why do I need communication for communication? But that is precisely the new media reality. And the reason is the market! The reason is the enormous oversupply! Just as you have to communicate a product, you now also have to communicate content. It is naive to believe that viral videos, for example, spread all by themselves! They are almost always "seeded," meaning that companies pay money for them to be distributed.

If you don't promote your content, you will soon be ignored.
Mirko Lange

So you have to "advertise" the content: Facebook Page Post Promotions, Google Adwords, SEA, etc., etc. On Facebook, companies will soon be unable to do anything without advertising because Facebook is constantly reducing the technical reach of posts. This can even go so far that you advertise your blog in trade journals. No joke. We are planning exactly that for our client Thomas Krenn.

For some years now, voices in traditional marketing have been saying that the "4 Ps" are not enough. And there are many different suggestions as to how they can be supplemented. Especially against the backdrop of the new media reality, these "new Ps" are becoming particularly relevant for content marketing.

• "People": That's the whole topic ," "authenticity," "ambassadors," etc.
• "Participation": How can I let others participate in my content? This is the whole topic of "interactive content", e.g. that I don't write an article, but distribute the content via a hangout or a webinar where people can ask questions. But of course also comments on the blog etc. .
• "Purpose": What "meaning" do I create with my content?
• "Processes" - Well, and of course you also need to think about processes. Especially when it comes to (strategic) content marketing. Because content marketing is a long-distance run, not a sprint. You need topic planning, editorial planning and production planning and you need to coordinate a lot of people. You also need processes. But I'll write something about that in another blog post.

Incidentally, content is just like products: the worse a product is, the more you have to invest in advertising. We are facing the same situation in communication. Facebook is showing us the way forward. Facebook isn't just reducing its reach because it wants to make money. There's another reason entirely! It needs to limit what it offers. That's because the range of content is growing rapidly. More and more companies are posting more and more information on Facebook. And that presents Facebook with a very simple problem: all that content no longer fits into its users' timelines!

Either produce really good content or pay a lot more to get people to notice it.
Mirko Lange

But here too, thanks to the Edge Rank, posts that are "perceived as desirable" by users will also make it into users' timelines without advertising, or at least with significantly less advertising. But if you have poor product management (first P), you will have to pay more (fourth P). You can think about where to invest more. By the way, the same applies to Google. You can decide whether you want to blow money every month on Google Adwords without any lasting effect or whether you want to invest in content and then appear organically at the top. Or both. That's probably the smartest thing to do. So have fun!