Here’s a weird thought (expressed as eleven quasi-rhetorical questions):
What if one of the core premises of content marketing is wrong?
What if the idea that we must always suppress our product messages in favour of altruistic, prospect-helping, issue-exploring stories was a bit… naïve?
What if we admitted that this ‘altruism’ was always a bit… disingenuous—that our hidden sales agenda wasn’t very well hidden after all?
What if the marketing pendulum is starting to swing back?
What if it becomes okay again to talk about our products and services right up front, at the top of the funnel, not just at the bottom?
What if we realised that the ‘content apartheid’ that imagined a massive Trumpian wall separating promotional content from ‘real content marketing’ is just as imaginary (though nowhere near as ridiculous) as the Trumpian wall itself?
What if we saw that, if we believe in our products, then telling people about those products is being helpful and does add value?
What if it’s okay to be promotional again? (As well as helpful, and thought leadery?).
What if we noticed that a lot of really, really successful companies (like, um, Apple) have been doing this for a long time?
How might our content marketing programs change?
How quickly would the sky fall?
For some thoughts about what this kind of content might look like, see the badly-named Irresistible Content for Immovable Prospects slideshare.