Book Review

Cashing In with Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers

For most product marketers, the website is someone else’s job. So why review this book here? Because Cashing In with Content, by David Meerman Scott, is not about graphics, search engine marketing, or the latest web technology. It’s about the quality of the information that defines high-performance websites—the compelling, original content that builds the company’s reputation as a trusted resource or drives visitors to the next step in the buying process. Product managers who want to convert web visitors into prospective buyers and repeat customers will find plenty of useful ideas in this engaging and practical handbook.

David Meerman Scott evaluated over 1,000 websites and selected just 20 case study examples for the book, observing that the majority of sites fail to impact the company’s strategic or revenue goals. Sure, the site may look pretty. Some may even win design awards. But the information that could affect market attitudes and buying decisions is either missing or hard to find, leaving a fortune in new and repeat business on the table. Cashing In with Content is a simple but thorough presentation of the practices that differentiate interesting, actionable websites from all others.

Notably, Scott’s selection of content-rich sites covers a wide range of consumer-oriented e-commerce companies, traditional business-to-business corporations and several non-profit and political organizations. Some of the companies are well-known—Howard Dean’s site is one example—while others are emerging businesses that use the web as a strategic tool in their battle against larger, more established competitors. Aware that technology marketers can learn from marketing practices outside of the industry, Scott even looks at the success of rock band Aerosmith’s site and Alloy.com, which caters to teenage girls. Each case story offers fresh insights into how to organize content to move people to do something: buy, subscribe, apply, join or contribute.

What is surprising and especially useful about Scott’s work is that all of the stories converge into a simple set of best practices. Presented as actionable ideas extracted from the case studies, his practices can be applied individually or collectively, either incrementally or as a comprehensive set of ideas for a major release of the site.

This book is a must-read for anyone who has apologized for their site and explained the problem away as someone else’s job. It prescribes a course of action that is perfectly suited for the role of product manager as market expert, focusing on the importance of quality content and leaving the problems of color, graphics and technology to others.

Reviewed by Adele Revella, Instructor,
Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing

Buy the book from Amazon.