Give your potential customers content to read.

I just received an invitation to attend an American Marketing Association (AMA) Lunchian/networking event in Albany NY this thursday the 9th on the topic of “Custom Publishing: The Marriage of Journalism and Commerce“, with Michael Winkleman as the speaker.

The interesting thing about the invite are these 2 paragraphs that give some interesting stats on both how companies are now allocating more resources towards content creations, and how consumers are tending to trust companies that have quality content:

Branded content – also known as custom publishing – has grown at a faster rate than any other corporate marketing strategy. Adweek reports that the average corporate marketing department now allocates 24% of its budget to custom publishing, representing the third straight year of double-digit growth. In 2006, spending per company surpassed the $1 million mark for the first time. As a result, custom publishing is now larger than consumer magazine publishing, and comparable in size to radio and network TV.

A study conducted by Roper Public Affairs market research firm says that most consumers prefer receiving information from companies through editorial content rather than ads. In fact, 85% said they prefer custom publications to ads, and 75% felt better informed after reading them. The reason? Custom publications are reader-driven, focused directly on their readers’ need to know. More than 60% said custom pubs made them feel closer to the sponsoring company, and 75% said they believe the effort shows an interest in building good relationships with customers.

Just some more great reasons/stats on why creating quality content can help in your overall sales.

Jim can’t help but add a plug for We Build Pages content creation services:
We just updated and improved our own content creation services. If you need quality content, now’s a great time to sign up….we’ll be raising the prices in a few weeks.