Savvy companies are on a new mission to send quality messages that cut through the noise of a busy and crowded marketplace. Their quest: to deliver custom communications to targeted clients.

The concept is described as content marketing. It involves researching customers’ challenges and learning how to help them be more productive. It means if you want to sell a product, you need to identify the target markets – and grasp people who need your product.

“Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left,” says Seth Godin, marketing guru and author of Seth’s Meatball Sundae Book Tour. During a 2008 teleseminar with Joe Pulizzi (founder and chief content officer of blog.Junta42), Godin said that the new marketing is about giving your customers the resources to trust you. “They [your customers] become a
fan of yours because you teach them something that makes them feel better about the world.”

Today’s new marketing is an even bigger revolution than the industrial revolution because people only need access to ideas, not access to large amounts of capital.

Here are five key points about content marketing from the seminar, as summarized by Pulizzi:

• Understand that the old way of marketing is talking consistently at customers. New marketing is about connecting with customers.
• Attract the chosen few. Traditional marketing was about the number of hits, calls, etc. you could generate; new marketing is about who’s doing the calling or visiting your Web site. If 12 people are coming to your blog, but they are the right 12 people with large amounts of buying power, that’s what matters.
• Develop great content for your audience. If your product solves their problems, they’ll talk about it and tell others.
• Figure out what information your audience desperately needs (e-books, blog, surveys, white papers, etc.) This is the heart of new marketing.
• Tell an authentic story by living an authentic life (i.e., Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ CEO, really does love coffee). In the new marketing world, you can’t fake it. You have to share your passion.

Pulizzi says the future of marketing is not about tempting customers or conning them into buying more; it’s about communicating a message that says, “Regardless of whether you buy from me or not, you need this information. Enjoy!”

Annette C. Silva, who lives in Seaford, Del., is Hook PR Group’s business development coordinator.