Content: The New Strategic Marketing Communications Imperative


Altimeter Group, a research advisory firm in San Matteo, CA, recently released a report “Content: The New Marketing Equation,” which makes the case for why organizations must rebalance their marketing strategies in order to incorporate more content marketing.  We, at Bliss, wholeheartedly agree. Increasingly, marketing strategies are focused on enticing users/future customers to engage with your brand, view your website or find you on social media platforms – to do this effectively you need intelligent, interesting and relevant content – not just product promotions, sales messages and gimmicks.

The Content Marketing Institute’s Christine Dunn interviewed Rebecca Lieb, analyst with Altimeter and author of the report to talk about the research. Here are a few of my major takeaways:

“Content Marketing is Social Media and So Much More”

One of the primary reasons for content marketing is to build organic search engine optimization (for many, a big driver of new business leads) – yet in her research, Lieb found that some marketers seem to believe that social media is the entirety of content marketing. But while content in the digital sphere (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn discussions, Facebook, etc) is a big piece of that pie, it’s so much more than that – it also must include your website, whitepapers, webinars and articles.

“No Form of Marketing is Free”

Often, because companies aren’t shelling out big bucks to buy ad space, they think of content marketing as “free” or “low cost.” This mindset can be dangerous, because the reality is, content marketing requires a significant resource investment to actually produce the content in the form of personnel, technology, outside providers and staff education or training. It won’t be successful or meaningful otherwise.

“Content is About Telling Stories and Stories Are Not in Marketing”

Altimeter’s research found that to be effective, a content marketing strategy must have two elements:

1)      It must have high-level commitment, strategic underpinning, appropriate staffing and resource commitment and company dedication

2)      It must not reside solely in the marketing department

Just like a news organization goes about news gathering, content marketing is about finding the stories throughout the entirety of an organization – product areas, customer service, etc – and amplifying the ones that should be told on a continual basis. It’s hard work, but that’s what makes the content sing.

Who do you think has a successful content marketing strategy?

 

To Connect with Katherine:

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Email: katherine@blisspr.com
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