Its title was good but not great.
The headline wasn’t so compelling that it would stop you in your tracks. But something about it made me want to start reading and open the cover.
Most of it was read in coffee shops near my home. I had plenty of time as I was between jobs.
But it made a big promise.
If you created great engaging content online then you would attract leads and sales.
The term used to describe that was “inbound marketing”
The book?
“The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerman-Scott
As a sales and marketing professional it seemed to make a lot of sense. I certainly liked the idea of attracting customers rather than chasing them.
Over my career I had used newspaper advertising, radio ads, cold calling, fax broadcasting and even door knocking to grow sales.
But this outbound marketing often meant that you had to pay gatekeepers to get your business and brand in front of an audience.
The media moguls had the distribution and access to the customers that wanted to buy your products.
But things had changed.
The Internet had emerged and websites, search engines and online publishing were becoming mainstream.
New tools and platforms
But the real kick-starter to make it easy to publish and get attention?
That was the fast emerging social media networks supercharged by the rise of mobile.
It was a perfect storm but I didn’t know it at the time.
I was so intrigued by the discovery and its potential that I started a blog on the topic. In essence it was an experiment.
It was the start of a journey to see if David’s premise stacked up.
Could it deliver? Would it go beyond a good idea to a global trend?
The big questions
The passion project started and content creation commenced.
But one big question was “would my amateur articles attract an audience?”
The other burning questions?
- Can you grow revenue from content…
