Better Content Marketing to Reach Today’s Customer

Con­tent mar­ket­ing should be an impor­tant ele­ment in any brand’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. For many con­sumers, ads just aren’t the way to reach them any­more; rather, these same peo­ple are always look­ing for rel­e­vant and use­ful con­tent. This cre­ates count­less oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to fill the void and reach poten­tial cus­tomers with con­tent that helps them solve a prob­lem they’re fac­ing. Con­tent mar­ket­ing is not with­out its chal­lenges, how­ev­er, as brands face pres­sure to cre­ate more and bet­ter con­tent quick­er than they ever have before. Many of our CMO.com con­trib­u­tors have touched on some of these chal­lenges to pro­vide some prac­ti­cal tips for brands to cre­ate bet­ter con­tent faster.

Anto­nia Faulkn­er, mar­ket­ing direc­tor for Out­brain Europe, shared the results of a recent Smart Insights poll that found con­tent mar­ket­ing as the top way 1,500 British brands hope to trans­form their dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing invest­ments in 2016. How­ev­er, the results also showed that 46 per­cent of mar­ket­ing teams are oper­at­ing with­out a spe­cif­ic con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy in place and 43 per­cent of teams lack the knowl­edge to prop­er­ly mea­sure con­tent mar­ket­ing ROI. Faulkn­er out­lined a top-line guide to con­tent mar­ket­ing suc­cess that will “help CMOs strate­gise and opti­mise their team’s con­tent mar­ket­ing efforts, by improv­ing cost-effec­tive­ness, boost­ing engage­ment, mea­sur­ing per­for­mance, and ulti­mate­ly boost­ing ROI.”

Although in its ear­ly stages, Face­book Live is becom­ing an impor­tant plat­form for users, and the impli­ca­tions for mar­keters can’t be missed. Sean Kin­mont, the cre­ative direc­tor for 23red, shared that live video has the poten­tial to bring brands clos­er than ever to their cus­tomers. He went on to say, “The risks are in ensur­ing that the reach jus­ti­fies the invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy and logis­tics.” Jamie Toward, man­ag­ing part­ner for con­tent at Kar­mara­ma, echoed Kinmont’s belief that live video cre­ates a lot of poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands but the risks are still significant.

Mary Firth, con­tent lead at Accen­ture Inter­ac­tive, dis­cussed the chal­lenges CMOs are fac­ing in today’s always-on mar­ket­ing land­scape. Mar­keters are hav­ing to cre­ate more and bet­ter con­tent quick­er than ever before and all with a “relent­less­ly sta­t­ic bud­get.” Firth offered some tips for CMOs to cre­ate a con­tent stream that com­bines “inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships with chan­nel own­ers, con­tent pro­duc­ers, and influencers.”

Bran­don Wilkins, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Bron­to Europe, shared about how to turn cus­tomers who mere­ly browse your web­site and leave with­out mak­ing a pur­chase into com­mit­ted buy­ers. Among oth­er strate­gies, con­tent mar­ket­ing plays an impor­tant role in browse recov­ery. Wilkins encour­aged brands to fol­low up with browsers with rel­e­vant mes­sages that add val­ue so they’ll be more like­ly to become buyers.

Lee Odd­en, CEO of TopRank Mar­ket­ing, shared some insight into how B2B com­pa­nies can pro­vide more rel­e­vant answers to cus­tomers through bet­ter con­tent. The chal­lenge that many mar­keters face is falling under the pres­sure to cre­ate more con­tent, which often results in cre­at­ing con­tent that doesn’t res­onate. Instead, mar­keters should be tak­ing advan­tage of the ways infor­ma­tion access has evolved and utilise data insights gained from mul­ti­ple chan­nels to cre­ate con­tent that is rel­e­vant and help­ful to poten­tial customers.

We invite to engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com, and please let us know what you think.