A search for the business itself turned up no website, and a search for the owner turned up a bare bones LinkedIn profile and no solid information.

Perhaps the business is new. But if their main business is supposedly ecommerce…how are their customers finding them?

It used to be suspicious if a word you heard couldn’t be found in the dictionary — generally that meant that it wasn’t real, and couldn’t be trusted. Maybe the same is becoming true with not being found online.

When I work with clients, though, I’m always a little “worried” when their business model requires too much educating of consumers about why they should want what the business has to sell. Comments like “then (the customer) don’t understand our value proposition” seems to me like code for “we (the business owners) don’t understand what’s important to our market.”

I realize that there are times when businesses do need to educate consumers, particularly with new and innovative products/services that clients may not yet be familiar with. But, generally I think businesses are more effective and need to invest less time, effort and angst if they can identify unmet needs and then fill them. It’s the “old school” approach, but I think it still works. And, I think content delivery models can take the same approach.

What unmet needs for information exist that represent some form of tangible value to the consumer (meaning that the same type of content is not readily available elsewhere at less–or no–cost)? There are some people out there who are still quite successful at selling content–there are thousands (millions?) more, though, that are struggling to come up with the “magic formula.” Too often, I’m afraid, they think that formula relies more on their marketing efforts than the nature of the content they have to offer in the first place!

Which is another point – does the success of a content marketing strategy depend on what stage the customer is at? If they don’t know they need your product, will content marketing help to ‘push’ that message? Versus…if they are looking specifically for your product and comparing (inbound, or ‘pull’), will content marketing make you the preferred choice among competitors? Just a thought…

Perhaps my own tendancy to ruthlessly filter mail is showing here. (Was anyone else shocked by that stat?)

On the flipside, it is interesting to see that only 59% thought the discs more secure than an email. In the university setting email security is becoming a problem. Too much spam, too much junk mail. It is breeding a new generation of email users who aren’t afraid to hit that delete button without a second though.

Interesting post!