CMO talks to marketing leaders from Tourism Australia, Qantas, Samsung, Pitney Bowes and more about their content marketing tactics, and how you can ensure your storytelling succeeds
Content marketing is the hot area of investment for marketers both in the B2B and B2C space. According to research by ADMA and the Content Marketing Institute, 96 per cent of Australian marketers are engaged in producing content, allocating an average of 25 per cent of their total marketing budget to these efforts.
But is there a right way of approaching curation, production and distribution to ensure relevance and effectiveness with your target customer group? If the industry commentary is anything to be believed, there are plenty of marketers out there who still don’t know how to get it right.
Disturbingly, analyst firm, Altimeter Group, found many fail in their quest to gain truly effective results from their efforts. Equally, the Corporate Executive Board recently told CMO that many B2B content marketing strategies aren’t working because the marketers behind them aren’t challenging the way customers think or committing to innovative content.
In light of these challenges, we asked CMOs and content producing experts to share their views and experience with content marketing in an increasingly fragmented and real-time world, and their dos and don’ts when it comes to telling a story.
For David Newberry, group marketing officer at customer management software provider, Pitney Bowes, marketing comes down to three things: Understanding customers by tapping into data and information about that individual; interacting with them via appropriate channels of communication; and creating an emotional, personal bond through content.
“Content is really the third leg of the stool, and it always has been,” he said. “It has become more important because of the sheer number of messages available today, and because of the fragmentation of channels.”
Some industry pundits claim the average American is supposed to send 3000 messages a day. So what can you do to cut through?
“People now will only consume or pay attention to content if it is saying something that’s going to be of interest and importance to them,” Newberry said. “The second thing is making sure it’s relevant and again, aligning that message to an individual who you know is likely to be interested in it.
“It comes down to the opt-out piece, and there are three elements to that: The people who will respond positively to that content; those who will ultimately ignore it; and those who will negatively respond to that content – in other words, will opt out or take a negative view.
“With content marketing, marketers have to now recognise it’s not just about getting a positive response, it’s also about understanding that you can also get a negative response, and understanding the implications of that to the business, because they could be huge.”
Newberry said the days of marketers treating digital marketing as a broadcast medium, or relying on batch and blast emails of content, are gone. “It’s also about trying to treat the consumer as an individual, and in real-time. That’s really the challenge of marketing now – it’s all about a one-to-one interaction,” he said. “The more you can put in place to drive your ability to do that, the more likely it is you won’t get a negative reaction.”
The marketing team at Intrepid knows a thing or two about content marketing. Recently, the global travel company partnered with The Perennial Plate on a content strategy to draw attention to its new grassroots food adventures. As well as more than 3 million views, the operator has been able to access the food community, a previously unknown audience.
“The Perennial Plate has a very respectable audience size but they also distribute videos through The Huffington Post, Vimeo and Serious Eats,” global PR and social media manager, Eliza Anderson, said.
“Its work has secured traditional media coverage in top tier publications and we have signed a distribution partnership with YouTube channel, Tastemade. This ensures we are amplifying the reach of our content and getting better bang for our buck.”
A surprising bonus was that these activities represented less than 1 per cent of the company’s total annual marketing budget, proving content marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, Anderson said.
“We needed to develop this relationship in order to support the launch of our new range of authentic, grassroots food adventures that, one year on are selling well, getting great feedback from customers and that we’ll expand next year,” she said.
“If you can hit that sweet spot where you’re getting great content generated and securing solid distribution channels, then I think you are winning. At Intrepid, we have a great team of creative people but they are stretched thin and so we have looked to get our blogger relationships to work for us in terms of both generating and distributing engaging content.”
As a way of managing how it crafts and measures content marketing, Intrepid has devised its very own acronym: ABCD.
“There are two parts to content marketing – telling a great story and ensuring it gets consumed,” Anderson continued. “Make sure you consider both the generation and distribution of each piece of content. Before you begin, you really need to understand what you are wanting to drive – brand support, website visits, or sales.”
Marketers also need to be clear about what content they need to deliver for their brand. “It will help keep you focused and will ensure you are making the right decisions,” Anderson said. “There’s so many great stories to be told but if they aren’t supporting your business objectives, then leave them to someone else to tell. Stick with what will help you achieve your business objectives.”
As the Web becomes more about watching and participating than reading, Tourism Australia CMO, Nick Baker, believes the way brands tell stories and promote engagement becomes a far more important part of the marketing mix.
“Content marketing is about being able to tell stories that inspire and inform people at the same time,” he said. What many organisations fail to recognise, however, is that no content should be produced or curated in isolation.
In addition, while a highly emotive piece of content might work for an emotionally suggestive brand, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the same strategy should be used for a B2B product or service.
“If it’s not relevant, or not a clear call to action, it’s a wasted effort,” Baker claimed. “There must be a business reason and business context if you’re going to do it at all. There are organisations out there that say content must be engaging, but if it’s not integrated with the rest of your plan, it’s just content.”
When asked for his top dos and don’ts on content marketing strategy, Baker stressed that content marketing is not a vanity project. One key is to ensure any content you produce is highly shareable.
“Resist the temptation to do all of your content on your own platforms,” he advised. “Putting branded content on YouTube not only makes the content more reachable and shareable, it also helps with curation and syndication.
“What’s the reason to share and care about that content? If you don’t know how to distribute it, don’t do it.”
These strategies underline a raft of activities undertaken by Tourism Australia, one of which is its YouTube channel. This features hundreds of videos created in-house, along with co-created and industry-focused content. Consumers can use the content library to search for elements relevant to them, as well as mash up different videos to suit their own taste and needs, Baker said.
Another of Tourism Australia’s recent content-led campaigns, ‘Trip in a minute’, saw backpackers produce one-minute videos of their Australian travels to share their insights and experiences with wider audiences. The videos generated hundreds of thousands of views, and also provided the tourism organisation with valuable research into the current most popular destinations with travellers, Baker said.
The most successful recent campaign was ‘Making Tracks’, which paired up international musicians from YouTube’s symphony orchestra with Australian musicians to produce tunes together based on their journeys around Australia. The winning track, ‘It’s like love’, was so compelling, Tourism Australia is now using it on its wider television advertising campaigns.
“Content is not just about long form video; it’s also photos, and how you share these with your audience,” Baker added. “We get a thousand photos per day through our Facebook and Instagram social channels, and each is a piece of content in its own right.
“If you link and share these things people do, you’re also gleaning valuable insights into what things people do, and what they want to see more of.”
Next up: NRMA, Qantas, Samsung and GE Capital
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