David Meerman Scott | Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration

10 Content Marketing Books to Help Sell the C-Level

Posted on 12. Jan, 2012 by Joe Pulizzi in Ann Handley, Blog, brian solis, CC Chapman, content marketing, David Meerman Scott, jay baer, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Just ended a pretty impressive Content Marketing Institute webinar hosted by Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing for Eloqua and Rebecca Lieb, Analyst for Altimeter. During the Q&A session, Joe talked about how to sell content marketing to the C-level through some amazing books. Below are some recommendations from Joe (and some that I would recommend as well) for the marketing pro that needs more content marketing budget.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR

I consider this David Meerman Scott book mandatory reading for all marketers. This best seller, now published in over 25 languages, clearly states the case for why we need to think about marketing differently. A big part of that…the creation of valuable, relevant and compelling content that positions you as the expert in your industry.

Get Content Get Customers

Yes, forgive me…this is my book written with my co-author Newt Barrett. This was the first book that really talked about the content marketing industry as we know it today and how to actually handle the changing rules (as DM Scott describes above). The first half of the book tells you the why of content marketing…the second half is chock full of online, print and integrated case studies.

Content Rules

Where Get Content Get Customers leaves off, Content Rules ramps it up a notch, with clear instruction and motivation on everything from content strategy to newsletter creation to blogs and social media…with some amazing case studies along the way. Really like the practical tips in this book, like how to develop a publishing schedule and ideas on “reimagining” your content across different platforms.

And, it couldn’t have been written by two better people: Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sell

This incredible resource from Ardath Albee is one I recommend to marketers very focused on the B2B industry. Ardath details the complex sales cycle that most B2B marketing executives deal with and the important the role that content serves in each of those stages. Do you have a long sales cycle with multiple client touch points? If so, this book can’t lose.

Managing Content Marketing

Sorry, guilty as charged…mine again. This time, Robert Rose leads the charge. Simply put, if you are a marketer trying to actually develop a content marketing practice within your organization, this book will help you with the structure and process. This is not a book for the beginner, but for the believer that wants to take the next step.

Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher

I love Rebecca Lieb’s writing style…and on my favorite topic no less. The best part about this book is the amount of real-world examples that will show you the true impact of content marketing on the organization, and on customers themselves (PS: I wrote the foreword).

The Best Books for Specific Content Needs

For agencies trying to sell services in this new content marketing world: The Marketing Agency Blueprint by Paul Roetzer

For content marketing on a small business budget: Launch by Mike Stelzner

For selling social media into the organization: The NOW Revolution by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund and The End of Business as Usual from Brian Solis.

Oh, and by the way, Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman, Ardath Albee, Robert Rose, Paul Roetzer, Mike Stelzner and Jay Baer are all speaking at Content Marketing World 2012.

It’s amazing that just a few years ago, there were NO books on this topic, and now we have 10 amazing books. Did I miss any that you would recommend?

The original post is titled 10 Content Marketing Books to Help Sell the C-Level , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .

The Five Most Engaging Podcasts of the Year

Posted on 30. Dec, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, chris brogan, David Meerman Scott, Derek SIvers, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

The Five Most Engaging Podcasts of the Year

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

marketing podcast I’ve been recording podcast interviews since some time in 2005 and it’s one of my favorite things to do. The show has opened some pretty cool doors and allowed me to meet some very cool people.

This year I met the likes of Harvey MacKay, Stephen Pressfield, Eric Reis, Derek Sivers, Kevin Kelly and Hugh MacLeod through my podcast and reconnected with old friends such as Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Peter Shankman and Scott Ginsberg.

The following five episodes make up what you my readers called my most engaging shows of the year.

1) Anything You Want

This week’s guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby and author of Anything You Want 40 Lessons (When you buy any version of the book you can grab 200 musical downloads as a gift from Derek too!)

2) The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR

My good friend David Meerman Scott stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast recently to talk about the release of the 3rd Edition of his mega best selling book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. This book changed the way many people think about marketing and has remained on many a “must read” list since it was first released.

3) 5 Google Plus Tips and Chris Brogan

For this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I grabbed a few minutes with Chris Brogan. Chris is the founder of Human Business Works, writes and speaks on all things related to social media and is a documented Google Plus fanboy.

4) 5 Types of Content That Every Business Must Employ

The creation and distribution of content has become such a significant aspect of effective marketing that it requires a high place in the strategy conversation in most every business.

Some might go as far as to suggest content marketing has become the most effective way to build a business.

5) Understanding the Most Fundamental Shift in Marketing

When I want to make marketing extremely easy to understand, I sit small business owners down in front of the above graphic and have them fill in some process, touchpoint, campaign, product of service in each of the seven blanks. The idea behind this graphic I call the Marketing Hourglass is that marketing is no longer a hunt and close business, it’s a be found, build trust, nurture, wow and refer business.

Is Newsjacking a Legitimate Tactic

Posted on 14. Nov, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, David Meerman Scott, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Is Newsjacking a Legitimate Tactic

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

My friend David Meerman Scott just released an all digital book called Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage.

newsjacking The idea behind this very quick read is to involve your brand in some breaking news story using real time tools to garner some of the publicity by being a part.

Here’s my take – this book is not for everyone. In fact, many people should not read it because the tactics Scott talks about require a great deal of strategy, subtlety and grace to pull off effectively. There are many pitfalls to newsjacking done wrong and I suspect many people will misuse Scott’s message and means.

Scott gets how to do this like few do and he’s studied both the good and bad, but make no mistake this is both a powerful and legitimate tactic only for those who use great restraint and know how to strategize on the fly – if that’s you – you need this book.

The Muppets and Content Marketing: 3 Things You May Be Missing

Posted on 03. Nov, 2011 by Joe Pulizzi in Blog, case studies, content marketing, content strategy, David Meerman Scott, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

The Muppets are back! The new Muppets Movie starring Jason Segel comes out this Thanksgiving.

You might now know this, but the Muppets’ comeback has been a long time brewing…and, of course, content marketing is at the heart of the efforts.

As corporate marketers, we can learn a lot from their recent efforts to get back on the map. As we know, content marketing can be very complex, and we often forget to do those things that are most important. Let’s take a look.

Expanding Your Net

Since announcing the new movie back in 2008, various Muppets have been seen on SNL, Nightline, and many others. This has driven awareness, not only about the movie, but that the Muppets are indeed back to forgotten audiences and even new audiences from around the globe.

What should you do? Guest blogging, guest webinars, blog commenting and speaking at partner events is necessary for your content marketing efforts to work. Think of this as activating your content. Showing your thought leadership expertise to outside audiences is critical. And regardless of what other pundits say, you really have to market your content marketing.

Larger Content Packages

In the Content Marketing Institute’s most recent study (to be out shortly), 65% of businesses have a blog. That’s great, right? The problem is, we get so fixated on regular, SEO-driven content that we forget about the larger content packages that will make a significant impact on your customers and prospects.

In 2009, the Muppets released The Diva Code: Miss Piggy on Life, Love and 10,000 Idiotic Things that ~~Men~~ Frogs Do to raving reviews. This was an excellent strategy to a specific buyer persona, Moms with small kids.

Where’s your big content package? It could be a research report, a book, an executive guide, a series of short novels…whatever. Point is that, depending on the buying cycle, larger content packages, such as a book, can make all the difference in moving people through the content marketing funnel (more on the content marketing funnel in my new book – Managing Content Marketing). If you are positioning yourself as the leading expert in a certain niche area, you must have a piece of content that defines you and your business. Unfortunately, most businesses just don’t do this, relying on the smaller bytes of content.

Laser Focus on Your Expertise Area

The Muppets are all about parodies. They came back with a vengeance in this area with their rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody leveraging YouTube (now at over 24 million views).

What are you the leading expert in the world at? You need to put your stick in the ground and clearly take a leadership position on and around your expertise area. The best content marketers in the world focus on a key phrase or idea and hammer that home. We use content marketing. Hubspot has inbound marketing. David Meerman Scott is all about “Real-Time” and/or “New Rules”. GoToMeeting uses Workshifting.

What’s your content mission? Are you laser focused on it, or are you distracted with all those SEO keywords you are chasing?

Don’t Get Distracted

This is not rocket science folks…but in my experience, most businesses don’t do these three simple things. Make sure as you plan for 2012, you make sure you are sharing the wealth (use outside media channels with your content), reimagine your content into packages for different persona groups and get laser-focused on your core content mission, just like a trade magazine would.

The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR

Posted on 20. Sep, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, David Meerman Scott, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with David Meerman Scott (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)

My good friend David Meerman Scott stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast recently to talk about the release of the 3rd Edition of his mega best selling book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. This book changed the way many people think about marketing and has remained on many a “must read” list since it was first released.

The first edition came out in 2006, right at the edge of the social media explosion, so naturally version two included the addition of social media.

So, what’s changed in the last few years enough to warrant a third edition?

The Third Edition, features completely updated case studies and examples also includes a very useful Marketing and PR Strategy Plan template that will help people get started using a step-by-step approach to social media.

In addition there’s a new chapter on social media measurement and ROI tracking. David is staunch promoter of the “The Power of Free.” and that chapter should be required reading for all marketers. The book also includes a discussion on the use of Real-Time tactics made available by the real time nature of news and events reported online. The case studies in this vein are extremely interesting and feature some very creative marketing thinking.

The biggest addition to the book, however, is the inclusion of a section on mobile. Mobile is last year’s social and marketer need to understand both the new tools and new behavior that comes with building a business in a world gone increasingly mobile.

You can listen to the show by subscribing the feed in iTunes or a variety of other free services such as Google Listen (Use this RSS feed) or you can buy the Duct Tape Marketing iPhone app. (iTunes link – Cost is $2.99) or

The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR

Posted on 07. Sep, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, David Meerman Scott, interviews, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media books, social media marketing

Video production, editing, titling by my friends at Candidio. If you need your raw video footage tidied up good, fast, reasonably priced, they are the guys.

—–

Jay: Hey everybody, it’s Jay Baer from Convince & Convert, joined today by a very special guest, Mr. David Meerman Scott, author of the bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR. The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR (affiliate)

David, how are you, good sir?

David: Hi. I’m good, Jay. How are you? Glad to see you have the third
edition there, too.

Jay: I do. I’ve got the most recent. It is the new, new, ” alt=”” /> Marketing and PR.”

David: Yeah. It’s kind of crazy. I agree with you. It’s kind of crazy.

When I wrote the first edition, I was writing in 2006. That was
before Twitter, “BT.” Now it’s like way back in the Dark Ages. I
thought I had some good ideas. There were a few people doing the
sorts of things that I was talking about, but I thought I was
sort of a little bit niche-y. Lo and behold, there were entire
conferences and thousands of books and tons of people who
specialize in this new form of marketing. It’s pretty exciting
to have been very, very early in seeing the trend.

Jay: People call this a modern business classic. You’ve
heard people say this. It’s like “Good to Great” or something
like that. As an author myself, that’s got to be an amazing and
an interesting feeling for you. You didn’t set out to write a
modern business classic. It just sort of worked out.

David: No, it just sort of worked out. I guess what it teaches me is
to trust your gut. When I wrote this, it was a couple of years
after getting sacked. I got fired. I was Vice President of
Marketing. . .

Jay: They weren’t ready for the new rules. They were ready for the old
rules.

David: Exactly. I was Vice President of Marketing at a company called
NewsEdge, which was acquired by Thomson Corporation. As part of
the acquisition, they decided, “This guy’s got some radical
ideas. It’s not going to work over here.” So they sent me along
on my way.

But that was a great thing because number one, they sent me
along on my way in a really crappy job market. That was the
beginning of 2002. If you recall that period of time, that was
right after 9/11, and it was really, really tough. I had
essentially no choice because there were no jobs. There were no
VP Marketing jobs available in ’02. I didn’t really have much of
a choice except to write and speak and jump up and down about
these ideas that I felt pretty strongly about, the idea that on
the web you are already published. Put out great content, and
you’re great. Put it out crappy, and you’re crappy. It seemed to
resonate fairly early when it came out, but there was so much
push-back back in ’07 when the first edition came out.

It is kind of cool that people are calling it a modern business
classic. I think what’s most cool for me though is the book is
out in 25 different languages.

Jay: Wow.

David: And we’ve sold a quarter of a million copies of the book in
English. It’s just an amazing number of people out there that
have the ideas.

Jay: And the fact that you wrote it as your fallback plan, right? It’s
such a genius story. It’s like Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country,”
right? It’s like, “I don’t have a job. I am going to write a
best-selling book.” That is truly fantastic.

David: You know what? I was fired three times in my career, and every
time that I was fired I ended up with something better. I don’t
want to wish being fired on anybody, but there is a lot to be
said for having somebody force you into thinking about what
you’re going to do next.

Jay: Good counsel. To think about it as you said, you’ve done three revisions of this book, and fewer than five years have elapsed.

David: Right.

Jay: The game has changed immeasurably, as I say all the time. Marketing has changed more in the last 5 years than in the 50 years preceding it, and there’s no question about that. It’s crazy, and some of these people who, including us, I wasn’t raised on a computer. All of a sudden, you’re like, ‘What happened? Where was the memo’? All of a sudden, everything that we thought was true isn’t true, and vice versa.

David: But the good thing is that you wrote the memo. You and I and people like us are the ones that are writing the memos. We’re the ones that are saying, ‘Here’s how you do this thing’.

To me, that’s really, really exciting. I kind of every once in a while say, ‘Wow, how did I end up here? This is kind of cool’. And thanks again to the people who decided they wanted to sack me way back when.

Jay: That’s right.

David: It’s interesting how quickly it moves. The first edition didn’t include Twitter because it literally didn’t exist. Facebook was only for students when I wrote the first edition. As soon as the book came out, Facebook opened up for people who were not students, who did not have an .edu email address. All of a sudden, the book is obsolete. It comes out, and the next day it’s obsolete. Then the second edition comes out, and all of a sudden things like foursquare and other GPS components that are used for mobile marketing, iPhone apps and stuff, all of a sudden they’re really important for marketing. My second edition hits the shelves, and I’m like, ‘Goddamnit, I’m missing that’.

And wouldn’t you know it, practically to the week that the third edition comes out, woo-hoo, we’re finally current. And guess what? Google+.

Jay: Exactly. Well, it’s hard because in comparison to blogging or things like that, the time horizon of book publishing is pretty tough. You have to give them a manuscript months, literally months, before the book appears, and months is a long time in our business. So it’s almost impossible.

David: Months is a long time. The book officially publishes this week, although it started to ship from Amazon and it was available on Kindle a couple of weeks ago. But Google+ was the first or second week of July or something like that. I forget exactly. Oh great, this wonderful Google+ thing the whole planet is talking about, and this new book that’s supposed to be the bible of online marketing doesn’t even include it.

Jay: You can’t win them all. That’s why you’ve got to have a fourth edition.

David: You know what? Now, it’s going to be every two years in August.

I’ve got a cycle, and the reason for August is really important. It’s because again, I’m dumbfounded that the book is used in literally hundreds, approaching 1,000 different universities around the world as a textbook, and they’re on the cycle. The U.S. academic cycle begins in early September, so having a new edition come out every other year for the academic cycle means it comes out in August. So I’m now on a regular cycle to have it come out every other August for the reason of that academic cycle.

Jay: That makes sense.

Because there’s always pressures to be in more places, do you feel like the new rules are easier to follow for big businesses or for small businesses?

David: That’s an interesting question. I actually think it’s easier for small, just because they have more willingness to implement them, and they have less people with the baggage of what “old marketing”. . . I shouldn’t say “old marketing.” I don’t want to imply that things that are offline are old, or things that are offline are wrong. They’re not. It’s totally cool to do television commercials if they work for you. It’s totally cool to have yellow page ads if they work for you. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. But if they’re not working, you shouldn’t have them. I’m not implying that it’s either/or.

I’ve found that small businesses, entrepreneurial organizations, start-ups generally have a heck of a lot easier time implementing the ideas because they carry less baggage than some of the bigger companies do.

Jay: What’s one of your favorite new stories that you included in this version?

David: In this version? One of my favorite stories these days is a story . . . it’s about real-time, too, because I’m a big fan of real-time. I had a book come out on that topic, Real-Time Marketing and PR. The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR (affiliate) It’s a story about how Joe Payne, who is the CEO of

Jay: They have to think about it, and how are we going to handle this, and hem and haw.

David: And let’s run it by the agencies, and let’s get the approvals. Let’s make sure. Let’s be careful, and let’s edit, and all that stuff. It worked because it was real-time. It worked because it was thoughtful information. It was content, and it was valuable information. Bang! They put it out there. And again, I’m just dumbfounded at one blog post and a million dollars in revenue. I’d love to have one of those blog posts.

Jay: No kidding, right? I’m writing three a week, and I still don’t have a million dollars in revenue from any of them.

David: The ones I’m writing are worth a dollar apiece. Sooner or later, we’ll get there.

Jay: That’s fantastic. You mentioned blogging, both in that example and when we first started talking. Blogging pays so many dividends on the marketing side, from a storytelling perspective, from a search engine optimization perspective, from a humanization perspective, but yet all of the studies that you see show that still there’s a lot of companies in every category that still are not blogging. Why is that? Why are people not understanding that this is probably, if you had to pick a way to spend your time, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or something else, blogging is probably the most efficient use of your time.

David: Partly I think it’s that people already have a preconceived notion of what blogging is. I think we, the group of people like you and me that advise companies on this stuff, we have some semantic problems. One semantic problem is the term “blogging.” It just feels frivolous.

I like to call it “real-time content creation.” There may be other ways to describe it. That’s one way I describe it. The other phrase that makes us sound frivolous and silly is “social media.” When I talk to a CEO who doesn’t know much about social media, I say, “Hey, let’s talk about social media. What is your company doing?” He’s like, “Give me a break. I don’t Twitter. Who cares what I had for lunch? Facebook is for kids. We don’t do this stuff. We’re a big important company.” But if I say to him, “Hey, let’s talk about communicating in real-time to your marketplace. Let’s have a discussion about that.” Then it’s, “Oh great, let’s go to dinner. I want to talk about that. That’s something really important.”

So I think we have a semantic problem, and I think it’s partly the word ‘blogging’ and partly the term ‘social media’. People already think that they know what that means, and they dismiss it. If you talk about the very same thing but in different language, it becomes different. It becomes more real, more interesting.

I’ve noticed this many times. You ask someone, “Hey, do you read blogs?” A lot of people just say, “No, I don’t read blogs. I don’t have time to read blogs.” Yet everyone goes to search engines. You and I know, based I’m sure on your search results for your content and your blog and mine certainly, I’m getting hundreds and hundreds of hits from Google every single day on my blog. I know for a fact that many of the people who are hitting my blog with search engines would be the same people that would tell me they don’t read blogs.

Jay: Right. That really is an excellent point, and in social media in particular, it’s a difficult phrase because it’s become a catch-all for so many things, whether it’s location or video or content marketing. Everybody just calls it “social media,” and so it’s lost all explanatory or descriptive value in large measure, which makes it hard.

I’m delighted that the third edition is out. Probably as soon as this video comes out, it will be out. So we’ll make sure we link that up. It is The New Rules of Marketing & PR. The New New New Rules of Marketing and PR (affiliate). If you think you’ve read it in the past, check out this new version. There’s a bunch of cool new stuff in there, good stories and a lot of updates on new tools and opportunities.

The man, the myth, the legend, David Meerman Scott joins us. Thanks so much for your time, as always.

David: Thanks so much, Jay. I really appreciate it. It was really fun talking to you.

Thursday Guest Stars

Posted on 19. May, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Bob Burg, David Meerman Scott, Joseph Jaffe, Keith Ferrazzi, NSThursday, rohit bhargava, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Week, Sonia Simone

Thursday Guest Stars

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Here are your guest contributors for Thursday’s edition of the Duct Tape Marketing Small Business Week iPad Giveaway.

Read each of the five posts that follow and click our entry form link to match the guest star with their post.

Keith Ferrazzi
Keith Ferrazzi is the author of Never Eat Alone and the founder of the Relationship Masters Academy, an online training program for networking that offers the structure and support to put Keith’s bestselling books into action in your life for unparalleled career success and satisfaction. Go here to learn more!

Joseph Jaffe

Joseph Jaffe is President of jaffe, LLC. His popular blog and audio podcast, “Jaffe Juice”, provides daily and weekly commentary respectively on all things new marketing. His latest book, “Flip the Funnel: How to use existing customers to gain new ones,” presents a powerful hypothesis that retention can become the new acquisition through the strategic incorporation and elevation of customer service, customer experience and customer initiated word-of-mouth, content creation and incentive-based referrals.

David Meerman Scott

David is the author of 7 books, Real-Time Marketing & PR , is his newest addition to the collection. His blog – Web Ink Now – is ranked by AdAge Power 150 as a top worldwide marketing blog. David has presented at hundreds of industry conferences and events and the marketing programs he has developed are responsible for selling over one billion in products and services worldwide.

Bob Burg

Bob Burg’s national bestseller, The Go-Giver, has been heralded as a new business classic. Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve and how well they serve them. Find out more information about Bob Burg here.

Rohit Bhargava

Rohit is a founding member of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team, the world’s largest global network of social media strategists. His personal marketing blog called Influential Marketing has been recognized as one of the top 25 marketing blogs in the world and was featured in the Wall Street Journal. He also teaches global marketing at Georgetown University.

Sonia Simone

Sonia Simone is the senior editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Copyblogger Media, a company with a suite of valued marketing and training products and more than 55,000 customers. Copyblogger Media empowers online writers and content producers to command attention, create engagement, and influence people as powerful players in the new media revolution.

How Do I Get More Leads in the Top of the Funnel 1

Posted on 19. May, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Bob Burg, David Meerman Scott, Joseph Jaffee, Keith Ferrazi, NSThursday, rohit bhargava, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Week, Sonia Simone

How Do I Get More Leads in the Top of the Funnel 1

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

This post is one in a series of five guest posts authored by the super star bloggers pictured below. As part of a celebration of National Small Business Week we are asking readers to match all five guests posts up with the contributing blogger to be entered for a chance to win an iPad2. Read all five posts in today’s series and come back each day this week for five new posts in this great educational series and another chance to win.

Match the guest post with the guest stars for a chance to win a free iPad by clicking here

How Do I Get More Leads in the Top of the Funnel 1

Say NO to squeezing your buyers. You have a choice.

When you want to get more “leads” into the top of your sales funnel, you have the option of not requiring people to register to get the valuable content that your company creates (an ebook or white paper perhaps).

Here are the three options for offering valuable information:

1. Requiring an email address (and other personal information) prior to your buyers being permitted to download content. With a gate, each person downloading becomes a valuable sales lead. This is a very typical yet flawed approach.

2. Making the content totally free with no registration required. Value comes from many more people consuming and spreading your content.

3. Implementing a hybrid scheme. This takes a leap of faith but typically pays off for those who try this controversial approach.

The vast majority of marketers choose option 1 and require a form up front to get leads. You must resist this because:

- Registration is a holdover from direct mail days (when a business reply card was the way to fulfill a white paper request). Is a direct mail technique right for today’s hyper-connected web?

- Requiring registration greatly reduces the number of people who download something. One of my ebooks has been downloaded close to one million times. With a registration requirement, I’m convinced it would be only a few thousand.

- Because bloggers do not like to send their readers to something that could cause them to get onto unwanted lists, when there is a registration requirement, very few (if any) bloggers will talk it up and you get little or no inbound links.

- When lots of people link to your stuff, you rise in the search results. For example, The MailerMailer Email Marketing Metrics Report is number one for their important phrase email marketing metrics as a result of free content. With a squeeze page, you’re lucky to get into the first 20 pages on Google for a phrase like “email marketing metrics”.

But you want leads, right? So for you option 2 (just making the content free) may not work.

That’s why when asked about this religious discussion in my live presentations, I also offer a third option, which is a hybrid.

I suggest the first offer be totally free (such as an ebook). Then within the ebook, have a secondary offer that requires registration that you can use to capture leads. A secondary offer might be a Webinar or free trial or something else of value.

This hybrid approach will both spread your ideas and generate leads!

Read the rest of today’s mystery posts here