Today I had brunch with a good friend of my sister, and also a dear friend of mine, Clara. She's from Seattle, a graduate from Kellogg, and has funny stories about the Midwest. She's awesome.
You see, before Clara went to business school and before she started working at Deloitte, she too studied trees and puppies in undergrad. While these majors don't carry over into the "real world" as well as say finance or computer science, they're rewarding in their own right. Aside from being really interesting and cute, my undergrad education has taught me several fundamental principles that have helped me immensely with my job search and research.
Just a minor amendment to what I said earlier- I didn't study trees and puppies, not formally at least. I studied psychology and sociology. When choosing my major, I knew I was good with numbers and that I loved people. And luckily, I still do (the degree isn't exactly refundable).
I love learning about people, what they do, where they live, what they eat, who they choose as friends, and of course the big "why" that lies behind all of these types of decisions. Why do people do what they do? I like to think that marketing takes that question one step further and asks, "And how do we get them to do more of what we want them to do?"
That sounds creepy and manipulative, which in some ways, it can be. However, more recent trends in marketing can really add value to a customer's interaction with a product or service. For this reason, I am a huge fan of white papers and e-books. They allow a company to provide valuable advice to existing and potential customers, while establishing the brand as a trusted resource.
White papers are generally meant to address a specific topic or issue, aiding the decision-makers of a business or tech audience. They allow a company to provide expert advice, and should in no way resemble a sales pitch. People don't trust someone who "wants to help," and who also sounds like a sleazy/greasy used car salesman.
E-books are "like a hip younger sibling to the nerdy white paper" (Scott, 143). The subject can be less directly related to the company, and more focused on just being interesting and buzz-worthy. That is, if white papers go for depth of reader interest, then e-books go for breadth of readership.
White papers and e-books are just two of the many ways a company can become the go-to expert on a topic. Webinars, blogs, and A/V content are also great tools to use as part of an integrated content strategy. For instance, after completing Hubspot's Inbound Marketing University webinars, I continue to visit the Hubspot blog on the regular to learn about new trends in SEO/SEM.
I learned most of what I know about white papers and e-books from the atypical page-turner, by David Meerman Scott, titled The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It's like the Sparknotes for anything you could ever ask about SEM. And in the day and age of the internet, Sparknotes really falls into a moral grey area of working harder vs. working smarter, right?
In any case, Scott's book is an amazing resource for working smarter. So I will reiterate the most important part of his message about white papers and e-books: content itself isn't enough- it must be valuable and interesting. Useless/boring/deceitful/insert-adjective-describing-your-ex content is worse than no content at all. Customers won't choose brands and products they do not trust.
Trusted advice is invaluable. This I can say from all the emails, phone chats, lunches, brunches, and coffees I've had with experts, many of whom I now value as friends. They've been generous with their advice, and acted as mentors during a rather uncertain time, which I appreciate wholeheartedly. And I'm sure if any of them ever approach me down the line, and have dramatically changed career paths, I will very happily buy AVON products from them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is lead generation which I will save for another day.
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