There is a brand new book out called Government Marketing Best Practices 2.0, available on Amazon. I’m proud to say that I contributed a chapter in the book, along with a number of other government marketing experts.
Credit for the book goes to long-time government marketing expert and consultant Mark Amtower. Mark has written the original version years ago and knew it needed to be updated. He leveraged members of our weekly GovCon Ideation call and a few other B2G experts and assigned us each a chapter.
Mark describes the book this way:
Government Marketing Best Practices 2.0 is a collaborative effort among several leading government marketing experts. It is designed to provide both the novice and experienced GovCon marketer with strategies, tactics and tips to develop and execute successful marketing plans in the vast public sector arena. It will help all who read it to become better public sector marketers and to level up their game.
My chapter is titled “The Importance of Content Creation – Owned Media.” Here are the other chapters and authors – a veritable who’s who in the B2G space:
- Annual Strategic Planning: Stephanie Geiger
- Corporate Branding: Eileen Cassidy Rivera
- Thought Leadership in GovCon: Mark Amtower
- PR for GovCon: Joyce Bosc
- Association Involvement: Katie Helwig
- Positioning Your Digital Footprint for Growth: Janet Waring
- Events: Stephanie Geiger
- Webinars: Sheri Ascencio
- Developing a Marketing Campaign: Stacey Piper
- Email Marketing: Stacey Piper
- Pre-Programmatic Marketing: Why it Matters When you Are Trying to Win Government Proposals: Carl Dickson
- Marketing to the Intel Community: Larry Letow
- Creating Buzz and Building Relationships Through Events: Chelsea Meggitt
- LinkedIn and Social Selling: Mark Amtower
In my chapter I practice what I preach and try to answer the “Why?” question – why is this information important for the reader/visitor? I cover the many benefits of producing quality content – supporting organic SEO, powering the customer journey/sales funnel, supporting earned media efforts and giving some key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring effectiveness. The chapter focuses on owned media in particular because it holds the most potential for differentiating from competitors long before prospects make contact directly.
Publication of the book was made possible by Government Market Press and Government Marketing University, which is a subsidiary of GovExec. On November 30th GovExec held a “Meet the Authors” event hosted at the headquarters of Maximus in Tysons Corner. It was fun to connect and network with my fellow contributors and answer questions from the audience. Connie Sayers, Chief Revenue Officer for GovExec acted as moderator.
One point I made during the panel discussion was how the blog post has become the ‘Rodney Dangerfield’ of government marketing content. It tends to get no respect at all. This is probably due to many companies putting out blog posts that are a far cry from high-quality.
But there is a disconnect I first pointed out last year when I participated in a panel looking at a public sector marketing study conducted by Market Connections. While blog posts are rank poorly by public sector decison-makers, the organic search results of potential vendors are ranked highly. Organic SEO depends heavily on producing a regular cadence of owned media, including blog posts.
As of this publishing date the book is available for the special early-bird price of $5. That price will go up soon. So if you need the perfect stocking stuffer for anyone involved in B2G you won’t find it anywhere. My thanks to my fellow contributors and to Mark and Connie. And watch for more titles coming from Government Market Press.
Merry New Year!
