The Publishing Model For Marketing

Publishers use the editorial model. Simply put, publishers are constantly acquiring and thinking about content. The story is their lifeblood. What about your company? Have you struggled recently to get out your latest e-mail blast, scrambled to pull together the material for the webinar you’re hosting in three weeks?

Publishers produce a product every month, every two weeks, often every day. Think of your hometown newspaper, for example. Publishers think of more than just events – they have a continuous process in place to keep important information flowing.

How can you get your message out using the publishing model? You can use a message map – a guide for our structured and targeted communications.

First, you capture the attention of your prospect with relevant and appetizing information.

Second, after you have their attention, you educate them.

Third, you engage them by fulfilling their needs.

And that’s the most important part – fulfilling their needs with the solutions offered by your products and services. You give customers what they really want and, in the process, you’ve educated and enlightened them.

Good messages must be delivered with speed to your customer. Businesses don’t have the luxury of waiting three months to create and deliver content. In today’s speedy world, your message needs to stand out and be sent as soon as it’s needed. Marketing automation, a sales tool that tracks data and allows your marketers to hold meaningful “conversations” with your customers, can help you manage that process.

What if you don’t get your message right in the first place? Publishers don’t worry about that. As they learn more information, the story evolves. You can do the same with your own marketing efforts. Your story may evolve to the point that it’s published in a foreign language – after all you do want to reach a global market.

Publishers also work with templates to solve communication challenges. If your website is fed by a content management system, you’re already doing this. The website becomes the template for the information that’s fed into the management system. In that way, businesses are able to produce and change their messages in a dynamic and often proactive way.

The publishing model may seem radical to businesses that hand out product brochures, contact potential customers through phone banks or send out an occasional e-mail.

But think about how technology has changed our lives and where we’re headed. The world is hungry for instant information and if your business can provide relevant and targeted content, it will be miles ahead of competitors who are still knocking on doors.