Chapter 9 CRM and Content: Two Ingredients for Early Startup Success Chapter 10 Filling the Funnel with Content Marketing By Amanda Nelson Amanda has honed her content marketing expertise at numerous startups, including Radian6 and the AppExchange partner Ringlead, before settling into her role as the manager of content marketing and community at Salesforce for the AppExchange. Picking up on the chord that Greg struck in the previous chapter, Amanda uses her experience as a content marketing expert to help us understand how to get started with a sound content marketing strategy, as well as outlining common tactics that should be used across your target audience for lead generation. Gone are the days of old-school interruption marketing, or forcing your target audience to watch a commercial, read a billboard, or close a popup window. The balance of power has shifted to the customer. Smart brands have embraced that shift, and now focus their marketing energies on producing content their community freely and gladly bookmarks, downloads, and shares. Content marketing is driven by one big idea: If you produce and share engaging, useful content, your community is more likely to become customers, remain customers, and send you more customers. With effective content marketing, you will: • Create stronger customer relationships with your brand by showing them you are honestly trying to help them, instead of just shilling your product. • Empower repeat customers to become brand ambassadors. • Educate customers, leading to fewer customer service issues. • Earn a reputation as the thought leader in your industry. • Increase traffic to your website through higher SEO rankings, inbound links, and social shares.