Blog

By Jennifer Evans, Marketing Futurist

Content marketing is an interesting beast on the marketing landscape. On the one hand, branded content is not exactly new – 93% of marketers are using content marketing as a tactic this year, according to Brafton, and for a relatively new discipline that’s a huge adoption number. Marketers will say that the new beast is not a new beast: branded content has been around since the time of the Greeks and the patrons of the arts, and after all that’s what the LCBO and Loblaws have been doing for decades.

A debate exists at the heart of the nascent content marketing industry as you read this: the difference between content strategy and content marketing. It’s in this debate that we can see what’s different about historical branded content programs and the new strategic content marketing:

• It’s on demand
• It’s not a one-off or a campaign; it really is a dialogue – If only because the audience can talk back now, en masse, and every marketer now needs to focus this into their planning. Dialogue means ongoing, and while this doesn’t mean that your enterprise tech start up needs people staffing Twitter 24/7, it does mean that your marketing is now continuous, and planning needs to be focused around narratives as opposed to just product promotion today. Content marketers must constantly ask themselves: How does this factor into the lives of information-saturated consumers?
• There’s an incredible amount of competition for attention – Excellent content is now table stakes. Utility, promotion, shareability matter. The new goal is microviral: connecting to people who have a need when they need it, mainly by referral via a shared piece of content, and word-of-mouth.
• It’s measurable – Content engagement data, like conversation data, is a powerful tool for audience insight. Marketers who link and mine content performance data and actions on content can learn a lot about their audiences and then apply that knowledge in subsequent content production efforts. And by capturing actions on content assets, marketers can start to get a holistic view of what drives action on digital platforms, and not just what they are saying in social.

So maybe the new beast is a new beast after all.

And it is a beast. Early forays into content marketing are highlighting the operational challenges of evolving from websites (centralized) to media properties and Twitter accounts (distributed): producing quality content that both serves business marketing needs but is also relevant and addresses customer information needs (how do I decide what fridge I buy next?) or desired experiences (after seeing that incredible space jump, I might be inclined to pick up a can of Red Bull).

Understanding what data to pay attention to in a sea of dashboards and metrics is also a challenge involving a lot of labour, but one that can solve the relevancy problem. Companies need to put systems of feedback integration and program adjustment into place to generate content that customers want, and become agile marketers if they want to take full advantage of the customer intimacy and data insights that content marketing can offer.

How does a marketing and advertising organization get at this value? It’s still very early days for systematic content marketing ‘engines’, although some organizations like SAP are doing very advanced work here. The keys are strategy and feedback. The Holy Grail is a streamlined process including research, strategy, production, deployment, data capture, analysis, and iteration:

1. Audience digital behavior map – Ideally this should be an engagement framework that identifies where the audience is most digitally active and what they are doing on each platform so content and calls to action can be structured based on what is already working.
2. Corporate alignment and content strategy development (paid and organic) – After reviewing basic audience information needs, these must be aligned to corporate goals, schedules and timelines. Only then can content that both addresses customer needs and delivers on business goals be created and disseminated.
3. Goal setting – Setting 3 goals for the program overall and 3 goals for each asset or content campaign (one learning, two business outcomes) is an achievable and manageable starting point
4. Content + media/ channel planning – What content/creative is going on which platform? Iteration and measurement can be mapped by product line or by audience for up to twelve months.
5. Once this is established, programs can move into cycles or campaigns that get progressively smarter and more effective and move into an always-improving and adjusting content marketing cycle:
• Editorial production and deployment
• Data capture (ongoing; monthly review and quarterly adjustment )
• Review
• Iteration

This type of systematic approach can generate immense value for an organization beyond the marketing value. But it is an investment and a new way of operating; evaluating first if you are ready for this type of approach is critical.

About Jen Evans
Jen Evans is a B2B digital strategist, the creator and co-founder of @squeezecmm @digifieldwork and @sequentiagroup, past chair of the Information Technology Association of Canada (@itac_online), a former tech columnist for the Globe and Mail who made Canada’s Profit Hot 50 two years in a row, and a curious marketing technologist.