CMO’s First Aid Guide To Dealing With The ‘Content Shock’

The demand for content is insatiable and new delivery channels seem to appear every day. How do you choose the right one while staying relevant and focused?

Marketing consultancy Smart Insights recently conducted a poll into how over 1,500 British brands are hoping to transform their digital marketing investments in 2016. The results revealed that content marketing is topping the charts as the strategy with the greatest commercial impact on business this year.

But with this revelation comes some compelling cause for concern. The results show that 46% of marketing teams operate without a specific content marketing strategy in place, 43% of brands are unsure of how to measure content marketing ROI, and 36% claim that, overall, their content marketing investment and integration is “inconsistent” and “insufficient.”

As teams become more stretched across emerging channels, how can CMOs ensure content marketing success? This top line guide was compiled using research from both Smart Insights and Outbrain’s own content labs to help CMOs strategise and optimise their team’s content marketing efforts, by improving cost-effectiveness, boosting engagement, measuring performance, and ultimately boosting ROI.

The Content Form Guide

There is an ever-expanding array of content formats to choose from and what works for you depends on many variables. If budgets are squeezed, we would suggest using highly effective but less expensive options such as blogs, which can be the ultimate manifestation of company culture, allowing you to showcase your personality, products, and philosophy. Blogs are an ROI-rich platform for thought leadership, and any brand can use them to offer informed comment to the industry conversation. They also drive traffic, especially when posts are SEO-optimised—although this should be an additional, not decisive, factor when putting pen to paper. Perhaps most importantly, blogging can ultimately enhance existing lead generation at little to no extra cost.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are weightier investments that use the latest technology to engage consumers, allowing for innovative and immersive one-of-a-kind brand experiences which may be costly but might fuse perfectly with your business goals. A fitting example is the soon-to-be widespread adoption of virtual reality (VR), which allows for heart-stoppingly lifelike storytelling—so it is little surprise that the format is a favourite of the charity sector. Charities aiming to connect with viewers on a deeply emotional level are using VR films, and to great effect. Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit dedicated to building schools and providing school materials in Ghana, created a 90-second VR campaign that resulted in $1.9 million in donations. While the upfront production costs were fairly pricey, for the brand it ended up paying off many times over.

The chart below, courtesy of Smart Insights, should help guide your marketing team to the right decision when it comes to choosing formats:

The Opportune Moment

Content marketing was initially considered a creative solution to drive website traffic, albeit one without any impact on sales. We now know this is not the case: a full-funnel content marketing strategy can entice prospects along the customer journey and, ultimately, increase revenue.

According to Outbrain research, the time it takes from a consumer’s first interaction with branded content to their first purchase from that brand is typically between six and 30 days, with high variance. That means engaging content must be in place from the moment a consumer first discovers your brand to the moment they decide to buy. But the top of the sales funnel is often neglected in content marketing strategies, because sales are more commonly—and wrongfully—attributed to last click channels. But every click counts. When we executed an internal case study, the hypothetical campaign targeted engaged and non-engaged consumers, and the results demonstrated an impressive 50% reduction in cost per acquisition when users were already engaged.

Engage consumers early on with great content that builds brand awareness and admiration. Think long-form video, mobile-optimised content, clear call to actions (CTAs) and content landing pages—all of these are ad blocker-proof and good for the bottom line.

The Breadcrumb Trail

The report from Smart Insights highlights that while content marketing is an area of ever-growing interest and investment for CMOs, only 10% have introduced continuous optimisation strategies and most (26%) only optimise their content marketing strategies “intermittently.”

Optimisation processes are crucial, but they needn’t be a headache. Measurement has undergone as much change as the media itself, and we now find ourselves with more metrics than ever. Our current favourite for analysing content performance are heat maps. They come in many forms and can track consumer interaction with content to a highly accurate degree—such as how far they scroll down, the pathway of their mouse, and where they click.

Let’s take scroll maps as an example. If the majority of users are failing to scroll past a certain point on that article you wrote, it is evident that amendments are necessary at that exact point. Ensure the writing style, topic, and structure are as relevant and engaging as they can be from the beginning to that point onwards, make certain that the user experience is respected throughout, and add media occasionally to keep your readers scrolling.

Finding meaningful, actionable insights does become ever-more complicated as the ecosystem grows and shifts, but pushing your team to test the latest methods is crucial. Heat maps may not be for you, but constantly reviewing the way you evaluate is crucial to working your content marketing as hard as possible.

Conclusion

Only through trial and error can a marketing team condense and streamline the way they execute and assess their content marketing, as everyone has a unique approach for a unique goal. But optimisation strategies must be in place so that you and your content marketer are both detail-oriented and looking at the bigger picture.

Many brands are experiencing “content shock” from the sudden insatiable demand for content, as the proliferation of emerging channels continues. This only makes it more difficult to continue creating and delivering engaging and relevant content to a high standard. Our recommendation would be to attend to the basics first—formats and metrics—and the rest will come with ease.