Adopting the right content marketing principles

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) founder, Joe Pulizzi, is one of the world’s leading experts on effective content marketing. In light of CMO’s recent look into how 7 marketing leaders are conducting their own content marketing efforts, we asked Pulizzi to give us his views on where organisations and going right, and where they’re going wrong.

For him, the number one stumbling block for Australian organisations engaging in sub-par content marketing tactics is the lack of thought behind their efforts.

“Even though the majority of Australian brands are engaging in content marketing, well over half do not have a formal content strategy,” he pointed out. “That means the majority of brands are creating and distributing content without knowing why they are doing it, or what the outcome should be for the reader. This is a major challenge to overcome.”

Currently across Asia-Pacific, the United Kingdom and North America, three of every $10 is spent on content creation and distribution, with smaller companies outlaying more as a percentage. While he doesn’t believe there is an optimum amount, Pulizzi did expect this figure to rise to as much as half of total marketing budgets in the future.

“Simply put, most organisations are still overweight in paid media,” he claimed. “What we are seeing right now is a correction in the marketplace from an overleveraging of paid media to owned media. That said... savvy content marketers should be leveraging paid media to effectively market their content.”

Pulizzi identified three areas marketers should look at when creating and distributing content: Is it driving sales; is it saving costs; or is it creating happier customers? “From there, we choose our objectives, whether these be customer retention, demand generation, cross-sell, up-sell, general awareness,” he said. “And from there, the metrics that help us tell the measurement story.

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“The problem right now is that most marketers are looking at metrics as objectives [for example, counting followers or looking at Web traffic]. What we want to focus on is Return on Objective (ROO).

"What is the overall objective of the content marketing program and then what metrics can we use to show return on that objective?”

Pulizzi also outlined the principles of epic content marketing as way for CMOs to improve their storytelling game:

1. Does the content fill a significant need to your audience?
2. Are you communicating consistently (or setting it up as just a campaign)?
3. Are you communicating in an authentic voice (like a human being)?
4. Do you have a meaningful point of view with your content?
5. The content should be devoid of sales speak.
6. Is the content best of breed? Is the content of higher quality than any other content focusing on that niche?

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