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Whether you're a marketing professional or have taken a marketing role, creating good content is a challenging task. One has to consider the target market, the product itself, resources/budget, and staying on or even enhancing the brand. Many companies don't produce much content except for a website. Most though have resources who put a good amount of content for their market together. The serious ones, the markets leaders, think past just having content and strategically position themselves by differentiating themselves.
It's curious that with all the education and training across marketing departments today, most still churn out reused and/or unimaginative content. Original content isn't easy. I think it mostly speaks to the limited time and budgets in not looking past just getting the work done. Perhaps it has to do with all the different mediums and content distribution opportunities available today, which makes it difficult for all the messages to be integrated and managed well. But even with all today's obstacles, producing content that doesn't help you stand out is a recipe for failure.
Most industries today are mature. But I have yet to work with a client that doesn't offer some positive, unique differentiators over their competitors, even in a very crowded field. Through some evaluation, it's relatively easy to find some unique traits that greatly benefit your organization's target market. It's up to you to identify those differences and showcase them to the world. And stay consistent as your business evolves.
For video, it's not enough to just utilize video in your marketing operations. It's not even enough for you to produce them with the right, targeted viewers in mind. Your market is filled with competitors who produce similar content. Some industries are even filled with video companies offering templated videos for content. The result are similar marketing videos with just different logos and slightly different offers. There was a time when consumers would react positively just to know you had videos. But that time has surely past, and your brand with similar-looking videos is being damaged.
For organizations of a particular size, such as those with product managers, differentiators have already been determined. That's a big advantage. Videos can and should illustrate those strategic differences. The challenge there is integrating that product's message with the organization's other products and services as well as its brand. We find that both the determination as well as the integration of differentiators requires ideas and options.
If you're someone who has worked with the same products and services for a while, we find that other perspectives help. That might be fellow employees, colleagues, target consumers, or shareholders. One differentiator we bring is a seasoned, outside perspective. This is the ability to view you as another entity in the field. We can see and develop ideas around highlighting your differences and showcasing them to the world. Internal resources (ie your employees), although having their organizations' best interest in mind, are often vested in a way that is less objective.
As you continue to build your ever-important content, make sure that you stand out from the crowd.
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The Idea Studio is a video production agency that helps organizations navigate out of the sea of sameness by understanding and translating your brand uniquely. We look forward to helping you on your next project!