The stock market is not the economy

mlns='> Beat projections by bucking popular trends [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 12.2.22 Connect With CMI  [How To Repurpose Video Content for Bigger and Better Results]( Engaging videos lead to powerful results. But crafting quality video takes significant effort. Repurposing lets you stretch the same ingredients across many platforms to satisfy different appetites. Try these ideas to turn your videos into a menu of epic content. [Read more]( By Amy Woods More of the week's best stuff: - [CMI News: Black Friday Sales Leave More Questions Than Answers in Their Wake]( by Robert Rose - [How To Make a Better Workspace for Your Content Marketing Team [Tools]]( Shane Barker - [25+ New, Newly Updated, and Timeless Books Content Marketers Love]( Ann Gynn - [7 Tricks To Smash Writer's Block, Imposter Syndrome, and Other Content Fears]( Lesley Vos - [How a 'Purple Audience' Approach Leads to a Better Long-Term Content Strategy [Rose-Colored Glasses]]( Robert Rose  The stock market is not the economy When the stock market is up, it doesn’t always follow that the economy is great. Conversely, when the stock market crashes, it doesn’t always mean the economy is bad. That’s as true today as it was 25 years ago when I first got into marketing. And it’s a great reminder to avoid basing business decisions on faulty connections. Over the years, I’ve learned an adjacent lesson about content and audiences: Popularity isn’t a sign of differentiation. People don’t necessarily regard what is popular among online audiences or the media as high quality – or even true. If you successfully chase trends and feed popular content to audiences, you have not necessarily differentiated your content. On the other hand, differentiating by taking a contrarian or highly niche view of what’s popular doesn’t always work either. How do you blend popularity and differentiation? In their 2004 book, [Blue Ocean Strategy]( W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne explain red and blue ocean strategies for marketing. Red oceans are crowded markets where popular products abound and cutthroat sales and marketing strategies rule. Blue oceans are undiscovered markets with little or no competition, where businesses can create new customers or die alone. In strategic content marketing, most businesses focus on the red oceans – offering short-term, hyper-focus feeding. They look to drive traffic, engagement, and conversions by getting the most people possible to consume their content. So, a red-ocean strategy focuses on topics and content that have proven popular with audiences. But this strategy makes it difficult to differentiate the content from everyone else’s. This myopic view of content often prohibits testing the other side – investing in a blue-ocean mindset to find and create new audiences with less-popular content. I recently worked with a financial technology company that provides short-term loans to small businesses experiencing a cash-flow crunch. It’s as sales driven as any team I’ve seen. When they started, they put much of their marketing and content efforts into a blue-ocean strategy, targeting small businesses that will need a loan within a month. Here's where it gets interesting. Five years ago, this company wasn’t the only one to recognize the massive opportunity in fast, easily accessible, short-term lending. A red ocean of new customers who needed these loans surged in a relatively robust economy (with historically low interest rates). The value of these loans [grew from $121 million in 2013 to just over $2 billion in 2018](. And competition for this audience’s attention grew, too. As short-term, low-funnel content on accessible lending saturated the market, this strategy became less and less successful because so many fintech companies pursued it. My client’s team knew they couldn’t only count on this red-ocean audience for new business. They recognized the need to invest time in building a new audience – larger, more established, long-term borrowers. This audience wouldn’t produce immediate lead generation. But the company wanted to diversify its product line and better support the new audience’s loan-related needs. The genius of this strategy was teaching, targeting, and building demand for new ideas from a niche within the red audience. Put simply: They created a purple audience by targeting a blue audience within the red one. The blue audience the team targeted consisted of fast-growing smaller businesses that would soon evolve into established, long-term borrowers. These businesses might want to know the benefits of the short-term availability of cash. The team focused the new learning content platform on teaching companies that don’t need a loan now about the benefits of having a solution at the ready when they do. The purple audiences took time to develop. But when those audience members entered the red ocean, my client company stayed top of mind because it had bucked the popular trends and offered completely different content. Choosing to invest in cultivating a purple audience requires some thought. In [Rose-Colored Glasses]( this week, I outline three triggers that can prompt you to decide it’s the right time to pursue a different audience hue. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the red-ocean/blue-ocean approach – or any lingering questions you have about pursuing it. Send me [an email](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com?subject=Rose-Colored%20Glasses) or leave a comment on [the article page](. As a marketer, you should always be thinking about new audiences. How might you address them with content that may not be widely popular now but can help them better prepare for what you believe is coming tomorrow? That’s a better question to answer for long-term content marketing success. Until then, remember: It’s your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute Do you have colleagues or friends who would benefit from Robert's weekly updates? If so, please invite them to [subscribe]( here.   Sponsored Content Did You Know It Takes Less Than 15 Minutes To Build an Online Store? In 15 minutes or less, Jason Falls (entrepreneur, podcaster, influencer, and digital marketing expert) can walk you through every step of setting up your online business website on Squarespace/Wix. Watch the easiest site-building tutorial on YouTube. [Go to video]( [»](   5 Tools to Make a Big Impact With a Small Content Marketing Budget With the right free or low-cost tools, cash-strapped content teams can still make a BIG marketing splash. [Click here to learn how to produce great content with little to no money. »](  15 Metrics for Content Success You Can’t Ignore In this information-packed discussion, Brian Kavanaugh shares the 15 metrics he recommends you track as part of the content creation lifecycle. Listen in as he shares the data points you should measure to track success during the three stages - creation, management, and distribution. [Watch now »](   More from CMI Accelerate Your Revenue With Content in 2023 Join us on Wednesday, December 14, for ContentRev Summit, where you’ll learn how to prove the value of content on bottom-line success. Sign up for this free online event and gain strategies for creating digital experiences that convert, accelerating revenue with content analytics, building a syndication operation, and more. [Register free »](   Advertise With Content Marketing Institute We know many of you provide solutions and services to help content marketers and creators do their jobs more effectively. If that sounds like your business, why not partner with CMI to amplify your brand awareness, showcase your thought leadership, and connect with leaders in the content community. Let’s chat about CMI’s digital media programs to close out your 2022 strong and give 2023 a boost in the right direction. 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