P
eople have been telling stories since
the dawn of time. We are hard‐
wired to understand information
that way. The Internet has leveled the
playing field for content creators, allowing
anyone the opportunity to create and
distribute almost any kind of content. We
live in an age of great opportunity where
marketers have more power than ever to
tell stories through content.
However, while it is easier than ever to
simply publish content, it seems harder
than ever to make meaningful content
that effectively generates business by
organically connecting with the right
people at the right time, in the right
way, with the right message to advance
your business goals. Truly great content
marketing communicates effectively,
builds a community, and moves leads
closer to being customers. Sharing stories
through text, videos, photos, podcasts and
memes can be a powerful force to induce
sales, retain customers, communicate a
brand, or even promote a cause.
The goal might be to bring customers into
a store, rally people to an event, or attract
visitors to a website via a search engine.
Great online content will achieve these
goals through ranking on search engines,
drawing links from other websites, and
generating inbound traffic.
The saying is true that with great power
comes great responsibility. For marketers,
that responsibility is to tell the right story
to the right people and organize content
around business objectives. The challenge
is not only to get good content out there,
but also to make your “it” the right “it,”
and to create and share it in a way that
cuts through the fluff and makes an
impact on your bottom line.
The Age of Execution and
Information Density
It used to be enough to just be online
and publishing content. It meant you
were ahead of the curve. Five years ago
everyone was talking about the value of
starting a blog, sharing content socially,
and optimizing that content to be found
by search engines. These days that’s all
common practice. If you’re not doing
those things on some level, you are behind
the curve.
The age of experimentation for its own
sake is over. It is now the age of execution.
While it is easier than ever to simply
publish content, it seems harder than
ever to make meaningful content that
effectively generates business by organ-
ically connecting with the right people
at the right time, in the right way, with
the right message to advance your busi-
ness goals. Truly great content market-
ing communicates effectively, builds
a community, and moves leads clos-
er to being customers. Sharing stories
through text, videos, photos, podcasts
and memes can be a powerful force to
induce sales, retain customers, com-
municate a brand, or even promote a
cause.
Creating and sharing content for its own
sake, or throwing content at a Twitter or
Facebook wall to see what sticks, aren’t
good enough anymore. With so much
content being created, the new challenge
is to make sure that the content you create
is engaging enough for the intended
audience, speaks to the right audience,
and effectively reaches that audience.
I had an opportunity to deliver a
presentation on Content Marketing and
Brand Building session at the Simon
Page Master Class earlier in the month.
As I ran through the ten most important
trends in digital marketing, I couldn’t help
but read the surprise on the faces of the
audience as I mentioned the penultimate
trend: Information Density.
According to a recent survey by Tamba,
86% of B2B and 77% of B2C marketers
are using content marketing. Last year,
an average of 32% or 28%? of marketing
budgets in North America was paid for
content. The amount being spent is also
going up by an average 51% year on year,
and only 3% are looking to cut it. It looks
like the growing investment in content
is happening for a good reason - it gets
results. The most effective marketers are
spending more than twice as much on
content (as a percentage of their budgets)
compared to their counterparts.
Tried Approach
State-of-the-art
Qualitative research suite
Obviously, this approach poses certain
challenges to any industry in the long run.
After all, if every marketer is investing in
large amounts of content, that means far
more competition for increasingly limited
attention.
A farmer doesn’t scatter seeds on a field
at random. He picks the right season,
prepares the ground, fertilizes, and only
then does he plant his crop. What’s more,
he plants what he knows will do well in
the specific climate - there’s no point
trying to produce bananas in Scotland, or
grow strawberries in the snow!
Selling online means catering to a
complex set of social groups and online
communities. Not ‘getting’ community
rules and hierarchies can result in
marketing disasters. So, how do we
influence in today’s digital utopia? First of
all, marketers need to connect with their
‘why’ more. Rather than spending tons of
money on flashy, but ultimately empty,
campaigns, marketers need to get granular
with their targeting and spend less to have
more impact.
The titanic eruption of web-based
content creates a scenario I characterize
as “Content Shock,” a time when the
overwhelming amount of information in
a business niche radically drives up the
Tried Approach Focus Group Suite offers the perfect QUALITATIVE
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