In defense of BIG!
America's a big place - like - really big - you could lose my small island from the north sea inside a single state - a few times!
Big used to be good but then, things changed.
Image by Linh Nguyen - click for larger version - it's pretty awesome!
When the internet arrived, size became less advantageous than speed, flexibility, accessibility and hell even relateability (if that's even a word!) The playing field got leveled a little and small business owners started punching well above their weight.
The last decade saw an explosion in promotional material as everyone competed for attention in a massively distributed and always connected world. Smart hucksters gamed the algorithm, marketing became untrustworthy, Spam became a verb and everyone struggled to get their message out in compelling bite size pieces.
Awesome huh!?
We're still there - the frequency model is still the primary traffic driver, particularly if you're starting out, however, there's a shift taking place and as with everything in life it involves the pendulum swinging back the other way.
There's a school of thought (and some data) that posits that if you tracked the efficacy of one big piece of content against multiple small pieces of content - produced from the same human being in the same amount of time, the big content will convert better than the multiple pieces of small content. What do you think about that?
This is what I think
I think people are looking for quality, they're looking for value, they're looking for something that doesn't waste their time and that rewards their attention. I think it's really hard to produce good quality short form content over time and that most small business owners are too busy running their operations to be able to devote their time and attention to this kind of marketing.
I think there's a need for frequency marketing and I think it can be outsourced and managed just like any aspect of your business - we've proved this in a number of clients.
I think the production of longer form or "Big" content, call it an eBook, a white paper, a slideshow, an info-graphic, a video, whatever the form, that is produced with your full attention and focus, that has real value and actually helps your customers and clients, is going to become an essential part of your marketing.
So what should you do?
Get in touch here and lets chat.
Image Credit: Linh Nguyen
Written while listening to this:
