Content marketing - the battle for your mind

If you’re a marketer with a few grey hairs you’ll be aware of the marketing classic by Ries & Trout Positioning the Battle for your mind.

It’s one book that in the ever evolving world of marketing has some truths that still ring true and can be a good jumping off point when creating your content marketing strategy.

Reis & Trout talked about the fact, that with the barrage of information we are fed, our minds need to filter it somehow. So as a way to cope we automatically rank brands and place them on a METAPHORICAL ladder. 

What this means today,  is the brand with the most effective content marketing strategy, will take the top spot on the audiences ladder, meaning they will engage with the brand on their social feeds, which in turn is going to relegate competitors to lower rungs.

The key thing that still resonates from POSITIONING is if you want to be noticed in what has become a highly crowded social feed your content marketing strategy needs to stand out against all other brands in your competitive set - otherwise consumers will simply forget about you.

Be the first in the fish pond:

The first in consumers minds rings true when it comes to content marketing strategies.

The brand that comes out with a first from a content perspective and executes it with tenacity, will enjoy a competitive advantage. The other advantage is you can shape the customers perception of the brand by introducing a completely new line of content that is fresh, relevant and taps into their lifestyle or adds value by informing them in a compelling way.

This is why it’s important with millennial focussed brands to take the story into platforms such as Tik Tok in innovative ways, and why it’s important for every brand to create content that resonates their brand purpose in a way that has cultural context, ..... away from the pack.

Once you have defined an effective content marketing approach ....STICK TO IT.

By developing your content marketing position for the long term, you will create more cut through, higher recall, sales and advocacy. This is a challenge with the high turnover of teams members in marketing and content roles for brands. It helps to have a content marketing agency that can help the business not abandon the content marketing positioning that brought the business success in the first place.

Finally, to be successful today you must touch base with reality and the only reality that counts is what is already in the prospects mind. If you are a challenger brand in a competitive category your content marketing strategy needs to find a niche that plugs into consumers minds, not ride on the coattails with similar content to the leading brands.

It’s far from rocket science - but it does need a commitment to position your content marketing strategy to be different and the courage to look at the competitive set and if yours looks like me-too content, revisit your content marketing strategy to reframe the conversation.

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