15 Jul Articles Contribute Tremendous Value to a Marketing Effort

Just the other day another contributed article by our client Delta Computer Systems was published on a trade magazine’s website. We’ve assisted in the writing and arranged for the publication of, on average, at least one magazine article per month for Delta for more than a dozen years. Why does Delta feel that making this level of commitment to content development is worth the effort (and cost)? Several reasons:

1. Articles help hone and articulate the company’s messages. Whenever we develop an article, we start by understanding what we want to say, and organize the article source material around that. In Delta’s case, they want to be known as the independent company with the most powerful, flexible and easy-to-use electro-hydraulic motion controllers, and the company that provides the best technical support in the industry. This positioning is reinforced in each article.
2. Articles help reduce the perception of risk for prospective customers. We publish a lot of case studies to show prospects in certain vertical industries that other people in those industries are reaching their design goals by using Delta, thus reducing the perceived risk of new customers in using Delta products.
3. Articles contribute to establishing technical expertise for the whole team. Delta’s articles are co-written by many of its customer-facing people, who are listed as the article authors. This builds technical credibility for not only the company, but the individual people that prospective customers interface with on a daily basis. In a broader sense, it underscores Delta’s commitment to educating the marketplace on best practices in motion system design. Publication also builds morale of the authors cited.
4. Case study articles build and reinforce positive relationships with the customers involved. Another advantage of chronicling customers’ positive experiences in case study articles is that it helps solidify the relationships between Delta and these customers. The typical article not only puts Delta in a positive light, it also portrays its customer in a positive light, as the ultimate conclusion of each article focuses on the benefit that the customer has obtained by using Delta’s products.
5. Article development enables tremendous content leverage. Once an article has been researched, the info can be used many ways. Sometimes we’ll produce more than one article on a particular design for different publications, giving us a broader audience for a single story. For example, we have arranged for the application described in the article web-linked above to be chronicled in one other major control industry publication. When an article runs, Delta is diligent in communicating a link to the article in the company’s quarterly newsletter, and in putting the link on its website. In the case of a series of seventeen tutorial articles which we produced over a period of a few years in Hydraulics and Pneumatics magazine, Delta collected the articles in a reprint book which has been the company’s most popular piece of sales collateral. For certain opportunities, we have also abstracted portions of published articles to make blog posts to enhance the technical credibility of Delta subject matter experts.