Before we get into the real heart of this blog, I'd like to come clean. Think of this as a confession, a marketing mea culpa, of sorts. And here it is:

We coach our clients through a lot of best practices, and we encourage our potential clients to do the same, whether they utilize our foodservice marketing solutions or not. Those best practices include creating remarkable content and using that content to generate leads, create awareness, and to educate people about the problems they encounter, as well as some solutions to those challenges.

We talk about the need to blog, how it's critical for bringing net new visitors to your website as they search Google for the very solutions you provide. After all, if you're not creating the content that's being found, who is? The answer is your competitors.

We stress the importance of creating video and interactive content that goes well beyond words on a page. With video, you can put a face to your marketing efforts, and I mean that literally. Some of the most valuable content you can produce will highlight your people. From reps spotlighting their new corporate chef to factories featuring the people on the line who are doing the building, this type of content is successful.

And we stress the bottom line, that creating content is critical. It's one of if not the most important aspect of any marketing strategy, between blogging and video and all the other formats available to us as marketers. So what is my confession?

Our team at TMC Digital Media has struggled with doing this, too.

Now, we certainly have good, noble reasons for saying this. In reality, we've been so focused on our clients and developing remarkable content strategies for them, we've failed to carve time to do these very same things for ourselves. But that's no excuse.

Doing the right things is a choice. You have to make content creation a priority in order to make it effective. And if anyone knows the importance of creating content, as well as how challenging it can be to carve that time, it's TMC Digital Media. In essence, we struggle with the same things as everyone else. There's just not enough time in the day.

So what's the one true thing about successful foodservice marketing?

It's simple. It starts with a commitment to doing it.

Whether it's hiring an agency like us to help, bringing a dedicated staff member onboard, or even doing it yourself (nobody in your company should be above creating content from time to time), dedicating resources to creating valuable content that educates your buyers is a choice.

Make that choice. Make it every quarter if you have to. Reevaluate your content output. That's what we're doing here at TMC, and that's what we encourage you to do, as well.

Start with the basics of Inbound Marketing. Check out our Inbound Marketing Cookbook to embark on your own content creation journey.