Credit for pioneering content marketing generally goes to Deere & Company, which launched its magazine The Furrow in 1896. Over 100 years later, The Furrow is still one of the very best in the field, with a circulation of over 1.5 million worldwide, six editors, and nine regional editions in the United States (three in Canada).

The Furrow’s history offers several important lessons to the modern marketer. First, The Furrow works as a marketing tool in large part because its articles don’t push John Deere products. They offer straight news on trends in agriculture, developments in crop science, and innovations in weed control. Check out, for example, “Cover Crop Craze”(PDF), which surveys what farmers are planting to retain nutrients in their soils after harvest; “Living with less water” (PDF), which explores how they’re adjusting to dwindling water supplies; or “Space-Aged War on Weeds” (PDF), which details how robots, lasers, and computerized maps may come to replace herbicides in the near future.

Second, John Deere uses potential customers’ interest in The Furrow to generate sales leads. You can’t subscribe to The Furrow through John Deere headquarters. The only way to get it is to put in a request with your local John Deere dealer, and people who want the latest news on farming trends and developments are likely to be excellent prospects for buying farm equipment.

Finally, John Deere launched The Furrow at just the right time to take advantage of a leap forward in communications: in 1896 the United States Postal Service (then the Post Office Department) started delivering mail to rural areas for free. (Before then farmers had to travel long distances to pick up their mail at a post office, or else pay a private delivery service.)

Today, of course, we’re experiencing leaps in communications technology every five years or so. The last leap brought marketers the ability to reach customers whenever they sat down to check their email or surf the Web; it appears the next leap will make it possible to reach them wherever they are at any time, on their iPhones or the equivalent. Mail delivery spawned junk mail, email brought spam, and surely portable technology will have marketing intrusions equally as unwanted and annoying. The marketers who stand out will be those who follow the example of The Furrow and draw in their customers with information they actually want and can’t get anywhere else.

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