Content marketing
Marketing in the past used to send one-way messages to consumers. That all changed. Major brands understand that content marketing leads to unprecedented two-way conversations and relationships between the brand and the audience.
And what's the ultimate goal of brands? To create a connection with their current consumers and their potential consumers.
Content marketing took on a dominant role because it's very useful for all the functions of modern marketing teams. Content is one of the best tools around to gain confidence, develop the brand, generate traffic on the website and find good potential customers, and all the things in between. Content marketing IS marketing, and brands that conceive content as a core element of any effective marketing approach will succeed.
If we add to this the fact that we live in a world in which a huge amount of content is available with a click, a swipe or a 'Hi Alexa', content is definitely the king, the Elvis of marketing:
▸ It’s available to everyone at any time.
▸ It’s the best way to generate engagement and connections with potential consumers who we want to convert and to reinforce them with people who already buy from us.
Each company has its specific goals, so no single content strategy works in the same way as another. However, there are general goals that are shared: the generation of potential clients, the improvement of positioning and SEO and the increase in industry leadership.
The 2019 report by the Content Marketing Institute in association with MarketingProfs publishes some figures that shed plenty of light on the suitability of having a content marketing strategy:
of organisations consider that content marketing helps them improve brand positioning.
believe that it helps educate their audiences.
##68%
of advertisers say that brand content generates trust and increases lead generation. 96% of companies believe that they generate more confidence thanks to their content marketing strategy.
of companies confirmed that the area of greatest growth has been content creation. As a trend, leading brands are looking to increase their content marketing budgets by close to 55%.
of the companies report that they now have a serious commitment in terms of content marketing.
Given these figures, do you still think that your brand is allergic/intolerant to content? If the answer is no and you think that what your brand needs is to create a content-first marketing strategy, then this is what we're going to propose to you:
Do you not have a content creator uniform? Well, you can start looking for one (you're not going to find it in any old Kwik-E-Mart), put it on and store the "advertiser brand" in the wardrobe for a while with a little camphor.
Make sure you know your buyers in and out. If you succeed, it will be much easier to locate insights on which you can build your connection with your buyers. This also makes it much easier to strike a chord with engagement.
You need to know where you are, in what media, platforms and devices, and develop a strategy that encompasses all this to share the content in the most appropriate way. It's not about sharing the same thing everywhere, but about adapting and complementing it in the different media. You need to know everything about how the target audience of your brand behaves in the different media, which means you can send out the right content for them.
If you want to create content that tells things and become that elixir that everyone's talking about, i.e. if you want to be a great storyteller, the first thing you need is a great story to tell. So now you can start engineering a narrative and developing another first: brand first. It's better to take two steps back and concentrate on building your brand first.
Major brands have always considered themselves experts in their areas of action and were convinced that communicating this expertise to consumers through advertising was essential for building the brand.
Build your brand first
Now the emphasis is on creating great content. It's not enough to say what we do or how well we do it, but to say 'what we are' and 'what we have in common' and then convey this by creating the narrative we were talking about.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others. Groucho Marx.
Unearth or create brand values from nothing: these are the values that must be conveyed and implanted in your audience's brain through your narrative. Those values shouldn't form an endless list, but a few key points around your positioning, the added value you bring to the consumer and what it represents to you. Think about them, meditate them and try to state them in few attributes.
Storytelling is pure emotion using a technique with extraordinary power: it's an extremely effective tool in terms of creating engagement if your brand knows how to use it properly. However, it's vital for us to turn to emotion in a genuine and sincere way, because the line that separates you from the feeling of manipulation or lack of intelligence is very thin and easily crossed. Users will turn their back on you in a nanosecond if they think that you can take advantage of their sensitivity, but if you do it right, the connection they establish with your brand is difficult to break.
Distribute your content smartly. Distribution will still be the key to success.
Even the best content is useless if nobody sees it. As the saturation of the connected world and the real world continues to increase, content distribution will remain a key component of any acceptable content marketing strategy.
If content is "the King", its distribution is "King Kong". To make a "content first" strategy effective, you need to keep going after creating amazing content, trying to maximise distribution and expand reach in order to impact the right audience.
Storytelling is pure emotion using a technique with extraordinary power
Distribution is
King Kong
It's important to stay up to date on social media trends, but social media is just the tip of the iceberg of distribution. Email marketing helps, but brands have to go even further to find out the right distribution channels for their specific audiences. Can you include physical copies of content with certain products? Or maybe a chat is the best way to share your message with your audience?
Companies must apply creativity and enthusiasm so that their content reaches the right people. Passive distribution - or, what's worse, last-minute distribution when you realise that nobody is interacting with your content - is not enough.
If your biggest aspiration to communicate your brand on social media, for example, is to get the maximum number of followers, you're contradicting all trends and you'll have to resit your content marketing exam. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 81% of marketing professionals in companies and businesses focus on their content fostering their community's loyalty. Of course, nobody gets upset that more and more people join their community. But there's a premise that we shouldn't forget: it's better to have 1,000 followers who respond, engage and share, than 100,000 ghost followers.
That said and now that the why is clear, it's time to focus on the how.
When writing a post or an article for the corporate blog or making a video or an infographic, we should always pursue quality. Offer the user content that is relevant and has a positive memory. No less important: quality content means that it can be displayed correctly on different screens. Otherwise, we'll not be offering all the quality possible and positioning on search engines will also be more difficult.
Writing a lot or adding a few more minutes to a video doesn't necessarily mean that the content is better created or transmitted. First of all, we have to ask ourselves what information the user may need and then we'll see what the best way is to give it out.
Content has to be unique; plagiarism doesn't come into play. We add value and make our content something that surprises our users. And making unique content doesn't have a mystery if you know yourself as a brand: start by putting your stamp on each content, your most controversial and personal "I", your reflections, your ideas, your stories. Let's not forget that content is just like storytelling.
Content marketing and the user
go hand in hand
Let's talk to people and not at them. All our content must be 100% focused on adding value to our users. How? With examples, by writing just the right amount, by writing only about what you know, by solving users' doubts, by responding to comments, etc. Just a little reminder: traditional marketing talks at people, content marketing talks with them.
In this environment, differentiation is paramount because it's the anchor we cling to in order to create content that in the user awakens the desire to share.
Great content is useful, generating reflection and providing clues, examples or tips that help you put into practice what you've learnt from the content as soon as you finish reading it. We also take into account the usability of the content we provide to users and invite them to talk about it. But let's also listen to them because they're a source of information that's worth its weight in gold.
Catching the attention of our audience requires much more than a well-written post, an excellently shot video or a perfectly framed photo. The Internet is full, crowded, flooded and invaded by EVERYTHING. We need creativity so that what we say reaches the target we're looking for and doesn't end up diluted in these swathes of information. Let's be creative in form, content and formats. We shouldn't be monothematic.
Let's not be here, there and everywhere. Let's plan. Let's smartly dose out content and the degree of 'abuse' of users' interest.
Everything we do is pointless if we can't measure it afterwards. Metrics and analytics are essential tools to draw conclusions that allow us to fine-tune the strategy and give more importance to the content that delivers better results.
Content marketing is a crucial element in the strategy of companies. Brands are spending more time and resources on content.
However, this trend isn't just triggering a change of activity in marketing strategies, but it's also having an impact on how this content is created and its quality. One of the problems that the market is experiencing is that there's more and more 'zombie content'. In other words, brands have realised the importance of content and that they need to create it, but they're churning out the same content over and over again. The Internet is being flooded with the same type of options and the same type of information that's repeated in a loop and makes brands sound unoriginal. Why's there so much zombie content? Because, on the one hand, the content marketing industry itself is becoming saturated (there's too much out there and too much is becoming too bad) and, on the other hand, because a lot of content of this style is being sold (too many chefs in the kitchen are putting the name 'content' to anything).
Not only is this worrying, but it's also something that slashes the effectiveness of the content strategy itself. Consumers want to receive content, but they don't want to receive the same information again and again that some brands are spewing out on a recurring basis.
Storytelling vs. Strategy
We believe that in order to combat this zombie apocalypse we have to focus on:
Brands have to be able to continue surprising the consumer and keeping them in suspense. They have to be able to connect with them and to surprise them, making their content look completely different and not the same old thing that everyone's doing.
Consumers are at that point where they're receiving so much information from brands that it has ceased to be innovative or surprising purely because of its very existence. Either you do something really striking, incredible or attractive or you can't connect with consumers.
Or in other words: content for content's sake doesn't make any sense. According to some studies, 60% of brands still don't have a clear and organised content strategy, despite the fact that more and more money is being spent on content. A lot of money is being devoted to something that companies aren't sure about.
We advocate a solid content strategy and doing things for a reason.
