Professional services firms churn out huge amounts of content. It forms the back bone of many content marketing strategies - and they are on the whole successful.
But a lot of content is like the three minute pop song - consumed, possibly enjoyed, and then immediately forgotten.
How can professional services firms help their content stand out - and give it life beyond that moment?
One way, which I have seen used to great success, is the cartoon. A one-off cartoon that reflects the theme or story.
A cartoon captures the humour of a moment, sharing an 'in joke' with a group of clients. It can demonstrate a deeper understanding of a particular issue.
They need not be expensive. Professional cartoonists are well used to working with big business and can typically create artwork for a few hundred pounds.
And the best bit? The artwork can be given away to a favoured client, to staff, or auctioned off raising money for a charity.
There cannot be many pieces of branded content that are likely to hung on a wall!
One of the biggest issues with content marketing today is the fire hose approach. You can't break through the clutter by adding to it. Rather than looking for mass appeal, the trick is to find things that are directly meaningful to the audience you're going after. This speaks to the power of niche content marketing. When you know your audience well enough, you can find inside jokes that not everyone will get -- and that's the point.
http://www.inc.com/bill-carmody/marketing-cartoons-in-content-marketing.html
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