I had a frustrating moment yesterday.

It was one of those times when I realized how far most businesses are from delivering amazing marketing on a continual basis.

It started with a conversation about content marketing.

I was chatting with a business owner about their company, and part of their service is delivering content to their customers as a retention program to keep them happy. But that’s a small part of their business. And they mentioned it as if it were simple.

Like adding 1 + 2.

When I hear someone saying, “We’ll deliver relevant content,” I can’t help thinking that’s like saying, “We’ll deliver great customer service.”

It’s easy to say.

Just “create high quality content that your customers will love, and be relevant.” 

It’s extremely difficult to do.

Things are about to get messy.

Really messy.

Especially in content marketing.

A lot will happen in 2014, and understanding these 3 content marketing trends will help you stay ahead of the game and ensure you get more customers than your competition.

1. Creating Content That Converts

Soon it won’t be enough to create “great” content – by that we mean quality, relevant content delivered on a consistent basis.

That will be important.

But it will become the price to play the game.

It’s easy to want to jump on the latest bandwagon – especially when the promises are so alluring. Get more leads, more customers, and save time.

Before you do – recent surveys found that although many people do have success with marketing automation, the results often don’t justify the investment and people who buy it rarely use it fully.

Why?

Probably because of a lack of education and understanding around what tools are appropriate for your particular circumstances. It is not a question of one size fits all, no matter how much the Marketing Automation vendors (and we’re one!) try to convince you otherwise.

Part of the problem is vocabulary. 

Different companies use the same terminology to mean different things. For example, Act|On calls itself a marketing automation platform (and it is), however it is also an outbound-only automation platform. Hubspot also calls itself a marketing automation platform, however it’s an inbound-only automation platform. They both call themselves marketing automation platforms, yet they are almost opposites in philosophy, and how they work to bring you new customers. 

To further complicate things, there are providers who are neither inbound or outbound, and simply rely on you having an existing steady stream of leads that they’ll help you nurture and score so you or your sales team can be more efficient by only engaging with those most interested in your product or service.

So, what exactly is Marketing Automation?

I’m a terrible artist, however, I’ve drawn up a few ‘funnels’ so you can see how this might work given an inbound model and an outbound model. Click to see the larger version.

I was trying to phone my father last Thursday.

I couldn’t get through.

The lines were down because a pickup truck had snapped the telephone wire connecting to their house. Their internet and tv was also offline.

I finally reached my father when he went to a coffee shop. He told me that Telus, their telecom provider, couldn’t come by the house for 2 days.

And no, we don’t live in the country. We live in the heart of an urban Canadian city.

Waiting 2 days for your phone and internet would be a pain for most people. And considering my dad runs an international business from his home office (and is on the phone at all hours of the night), this was a real problem.

What did Telus do? 

Writing an epic blog post is a lot of work.

Most of the time, it’s worth it.

But there are days when you’re not feeling up to the challenge.

We’ve all been there.

Don’t worry about it. 

On the days when you don’t have the time, energy or resources to write a masterpiece, you can still share something that’s relevant and engaging with your readers.

Here are 4 tricks to writing a blog post without doing any work.

I have a confession to make.

I love content marketing.

It’s one of the best ways for small businesses to attract customers.

But…

There are 3 misconceptions about content marketing that keep coming up, and if you’re going to blog about your business or use content marketing to attract customers, you should know about them.

Let’s dive right in.

The jig is up.

Forget about work and making calls – you’re spending 2 of every 10 minutes at your computer on social networks, and 3 of every 10 minutes on your phone.  

It’s not just you.

It’s your customers.

Together, we spend 121.8 billion minutes on social, every month. That’s a lot of time!

What does that mean for your small business?

This is where people want you to help them. This is where they want customer service. And it’s one of the biggest and easiest opportunities for you to capitalize on.

And no, you don’t need a huge team or budget to do it. In fact, we’re going to look at the 2 biggest things you can do to delight your customers and deliver remarkable experiences, in less than 5 minutes a day.

Alright, it’s time to learn how to hack customer service on social media.

We don’t often blog about new features we add to Spokal, but I thought we’d make an exception for this one. 

 It’s a significant step forward to increase reach and distribution through Social Media – while keeping it all seamlessly tied to your overall content marketing strategy.

Now, not only can you write SEO optimized blog posts, drag and drop attributed Flickr images and Tweets into your posts right from within Spokal, but you can customize what gets published to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (or even Buffer). 

You can also auto-schedule multiple tweets for each new piece of content using a simple, yet powerful auto-scheduler function. 

You can customize each Tweet or post before it goes out, re-schedule it, remove it or add new ones all from the super simple drag and drop calendar. See all you self-promotional tweets at a glance. 

No thanks.

I’m not ready.

I’m like the rest of the people who land on your website – 97% of us don’t want to buy something today.

But 70% of us will buy something similar to what you sell in the next 2 years.

The goal of content marketing is simple: capture that 70% so people buy from you, not your competition.

By creating and sharing content your customers love, you can start building a relationship with them. And when they’re ready to buy – either today, tomorrow or 2 years from now – you’ll be top of mind.

Here’s the problem.