Content Marketing is Growing Up. Are You?
By Matt Clyde
At the recent Digital Summit Phoenix, Matthew Clyde outlined the latest trends and best practices with four key areas where content marketing is growing up. Here are the key take away insights from the session Matthew delivered.
“But content marketing isn’t living up to its potential. Nine out of 10 businesses are involved with content marketing in some capacity, but only 30% say they’re successful at it.”
The solution: content marketing needs to grow up. As Mashable recently put it, “content Marketing has matured & content itself is the fuel that powers the entire modern marketing engine. Brands MUST NOW put content at the center of the holistic customer experience they provide — every channel, every time, every customer.”
Marketing Automation
Planning content marketing and automation go together like peanut butter and jelly. Marketing automation platforms like Eloqua allow marketers to set objectives, created detailed personas and document the consumer’s journey through the purchase path. The engine of the marketing machine is content. When content addresses pain points and provides real value to the consumer, it drives consumers from awareness to purchase.
Visual Impact
Making a visual impact on the consumer is critical. Ari Kepnes, a Content Strategist, notes that, “Brands will need to experiment with just about any form of digital storytelling as the competition for attention time only gets fiercer.”
How can marketers make an impact? First, be bold, yet human; emotions drive action. If a marketer can make the consumer care, consumers will naturally share the content to raise awareness. Second, be agile; new technologies like 360°cameras are rolled out each week and marketers cannot afford to be left behind. Third, be ready; live streaming options like Periscope and Facebook live allow every event to be seen as a live event.
360 video, use your mouse or phone to look around.
Sensory Engagement
In order to appeal to the widest audience, content must involve as many senses as possible. While video has been (and still is) the rage, more innovative brands are experimenting with new technology like virtual reality and wearables. These pieces of sensory-focused content drive more engagement and interaction with the brand while using multiple senses to relate with customers on an emotional level.
Data Driven
Data isn’t just how we analyze content marketing; data is content itself. A singular piece of data can be repurposed and made into many different pieces of content, including blog posts, video pre-roll ads, social media posts, infographics and more. However, this is not a new approach.
Marketers have been using and analyzing data for decades. But today there is more pressure to extract and deliver clear, meaningful data and distribute it to consumers indigestible engaging ways.
Content marketing is here to say. In fact, it’s growing up right in front of our eyes. Amanda Todorovich, content marketing director at the Cleveland Clinic, sees the future of content marketing as “shifting from simply creating ‘more’ content to serving the ‘right’ content; hyper-relevant content delivered instantly to them wherever they are engaging.” Marketing automation, visualization, sensory technology and data are, and will continue to be, the driving forces behind the maturing of content marketing.