I read in the October 12, 2009 AdAge that Procter & Gamble’s quarterly beauty magazine Rouge is ramping up to hit 11 million US households this year. This coupon-rich publication joins other custom, company pubs such as Kraft’s Food & Family, in pushing info, ads and offers directly to their target audiences in a magazine format. Of course these companies are still allocating ad dollars to TV, radio and print—just less. Their strategy is to “own” the magazine, not just run ads in it.

B2B marketers can get the same great “bang for the buck” by publishing a custom magazine, perhaps in place of traditional customer newsletters. The trick is to keep the editorial content informational, reader-focused, useful and unbiased. Design needs to be reader-friendly, image conscious and grabby—just like the consumer pubs on the newsstand. Well-placed page or spread ads, coupons and offers can be sprinkled throughout.

A good example is Costco Connection, a magazine published for business and consumer members of Costco. It provides information, highlights new products and keeps members informed with a variety of useful information. The design could improve, but the content is reader-worthy.

Is your company doing a custom publication? What content do you like to see most in B2B custom pubs?

Nothing makes my blood boil like seeing an article in a mainstream, national daily newspaper riddled with errors and typos.

I recently ran across an article about the new BCS rankings, in which Stanford jumped into the top 25. Although my precious Sun Devils have no chance of cracking the top 25, or even a D-level bowl berth, I am certainly a supporter of the Pac-10 conference (plus, my alter-ego is a fan of Oregon Ducks), so I was keenly interested in this particular article.

What caught me off guard were the two typos and a grievous error that plagued this particular article. I mean, this is a national online source of news!

As you can see, ‘stay’ and ‘the’ are misspelled in this article. In addition, the article states ‘Ohio outlasted a game Iowa squad in overtime….” Huh? Should it be ‘a great Iowa squad’ or ‘a tame Iowa squad?’

This made my mind wander about the reasons behind this and the implications to B2B publishers and marketers—and for our society at large. Is this due to print and online publications cutting staff so much that they only have hack writers and no proofreaders? Do people not value spelling and grammar anymore? Are people so quick to get things online that they forego the traditional QC process? Am I being too harsh?

BTW, those aren’t rhetorical questions. Please answer them for me!

I love alliteration! Can’t you tell by my terse title? But enough about literary devices. Oh, wait. That’s exactly what I want to blog about, compelling content, so let’s proceed.

I’m a big believer in content marketing, especially in B2B communications. Populating your website and other marketing communications vehicles with relevant, insightful, compelling content about your industry, technologies or services is an excellent way to attract prospective purchasers.

However, the content doesn’t just have to be compelling. It also has to be entertaining, inspiring, attention-getting, etc. Here are a few tips to help you create compelling content that will attract new customers to your business.

Make it actionable: The more practical information you can impart that your audiences can put into real-world practice right away, the better.

Look around: Keep an eye on what’s happening around you, in addition to other industries, then build your messages.

Tell Stories: People are fed up with industry jargon and promotional pitches. Tell stories that your prospects can relate to.

Go with problem/solution content: Content that’s written in a solutions-oriented bent is more likely to be picked up by search engines when your target audiences are browsing the web.

Are you utilizing content marketing to promote your business? How do you keep coming up with compelling content? Do you have a cool alliteration that you can wow me with?

The Big Carl vs. the Big Mac. Mac vs. PC. Feuds between consumer products can be entertaining. They can influence consumer behavior by making an emotional appeal about what one product offers over another. While this tactic can be successful in B2C, when I hear the term ‘competition’ in B2B marketing, I tend to cringe.

The reason is that some B2B organizations take the idea of competition too literally. Marketing isn’t a boxing match. Your focus should not be on exchanging blows with your competitors. Bad mouthing other businesses doesn’t add value to your product or to the process your customers use to make buying decisions. Instead, B2B marketers should focus on creating rationale that provides support to customers and prospects when they are considering a purchase.

Competition is still a good thing. But, learn from what your competition is doing and leverage that information to create effective strategies that uniquely connect with your B2B customers and prospects. Give them the information they need to make a sound decision.

The objective should be to craft messages that customers value—save the fight song for your annual sales meeting.

What famous marketing feuds do you remember? How have you used competitive research to steer your B2B MarComm strategies?