Content as Value Creation Tool potx

content as value creation tool How content marketing can help your brand create lifelong consumer value. FEBRUARY, 2013 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Content marketing is all the rage. In a distracted world, where consumers are bombarded with advertising and overwhelmed by media and device choices, brands are searching for a new ways to connect—ideally over the long term. And many marketers are turning to content with varying degrees of success. What does it mean for a brand to engage in content? What, exactly, is content anyway? What value is it to brands? Do brands have the right to compete against publishing companies? How do brands know whether or not their content is driving business results? This whitepaper will touch on all of these topics. But, if there’s one thing to remember, one cardinal rule for brands to follow when starting a content marketing program it is this: Content is often categorized as art or commodity, but for marketers, that misses the point. First and foremost, it needs to be thought of as a tool for driving discovery, engagement and trial. And, like all tools it has a purpose—to provide value to the consumer. On that score, content can always be optimized to provide ever more consumer value, which translates into ever more brand value. Written by Craig J. Heimbuch—award-winning journalist and author, best-selling ghostwriter and Senior Content Strategist at Barefoot Proximity—this whitepaper provides a framework for brands looking to stand out by creating lasting, even lifelong relationships with consumers via content. 3 CONTENT marketing The Path to Lasting Value All brands seek to connect and bond with consumers. And most brands rely heavily on advertising to help achieve this. But has there ever been a brand that has bonded deeply with consumers by just advertising its products’ utility? Has an ad campaign alone ever done the really hard work to create that special bond? Probably not. Sure, there are those campaigns that strike a deep chord with people, but in general it’s not the things a brand says in its advertising that make the difference. Rather, it’s the qualities the brand embodies through content—which includes but certainly goes well beyond the bounds of advertising—that create real and lasting value. And the world we live in makes this both harder and easier to do than ever. Think about it: We live in an iPhone culture. Access to information is relatively standardized—TV, radio, podcast, website, social media, print, etc. But the technology that allows us to be connected makes it easy to create (you might even say ) a unique experience just for yourself. We all have an iPhone—and an iPod, iPad, desktop 4 and laptop—but the chances that the media on any two are exactly the same is pretty slim. Such media commonality no longer exists. And herein lie challenges and opportunities. The new content paradigm requires a fresh, consumer-first approach, and content can be a key asset in developing lifelong consumer relationships in this ever-changing world. This is particularly so if your content seeks first and foremost to help and inspire consumers and aims to sell something second. Focus on the former and the odds of the latter happening rise exponentially. 5 CONTENT AS TOOL Defining content is both simple and complex. Literally, it’s the words, pictures, videos or sounds that your user experiences when they come to your platform. That’s the easy definition. The harder one doesn’t so much describe content, but the opportunity it affords, which is a more difficult to speak to so succinctly, but necessary to cover. The content opportunity for marketers begins at a very important intersection where a person’s desire for specific knowledge, insight and experiences meets a brand’s ability to serve them up. That service—and it is a service—is rendered through expertise, voice, format, function and genuine authority, all of which make content valuable. You have probably heard brands, agencies and media companies talk about content and noticed some differences between those who create it and those who procure it. The former views content as art. The latter as a commodity. The former believes they are creating something of lasting aesthetic value. The latter believes they are buying words in bulk, much the same way that a company buys paperclips. Both points of view are sort of right, and sort of wrong. More to the point, they’re both missing the point. Digital content can be art or commodity, but it’s better thought of as a tool. And this tool’s primary purpose is to create value for the consumer and the brand through a conversion of some sort, be that from uninterested to interested, from unregistered to registered, from no purchase to purchase. As such, with the right approach regarding performance, the digital content tool can, like most tools, be calibrated, refined and optimized to create more value for both the consumer and the brand. Content IS A TOOL Depending on host of circumstances, content may or may not be art. It may or may not be a commodity. But it most definitely is a tool and should be thought of that way. Content is a value creation tool. 6 THE MUTUAL EXCHANGE OF VALUE The Internet was created for communication, but it spawned a mass proliferation of choices, overwhelming most with the range of options. (It is estimated that the amount of information created from the beginning of civilization to 2003 is now created every three days online.) The economy has moved from one based on goods and services to something else entirely. An information economy, which is really an attention economy. And it’s a buyer’s market, not a seller’s, as is evidenced by the millions of websites, blogs, videos, news outlets and lifestyle sites all multiplying faster than Tribbles of Star Trek lore. Information of virtually any and all types is but a Google search, a link or a ‘liked’ item away. But what if reaching consumers wasn’t just about having a product to sell and trying to find the right size, placement and creative approach for a banner ad? What if it were about taking what you know about your consumers—their lives, passions, interests, curiosities and problems—and serving their needs? What if brands focused on developing lifelong relationships based on a mutual exchange of value? Content IS A CHOICE Unlike traditional push marketing—TV, radio, print and online ad campaigns—the effectiveness of content begins and ends with consumer choice. In order for content to be impactful, content needs to be relevant to her life, it needs to help her, be about her, entertain her or provide insight into her life. 7 These are the right questions for those intrigued by content marketing to be asking. For marketers, content is, or at least should be, a service for consumers, not a ploy. Content wins when it moves beyond the aforementioned metaphor of an intersection to one of a traffic circle, where a mutual exchange of value between the consumer and the brand spins in something of an always-fluid, harmonious cycle. Don’t forget the foundational belief underlying this entire whitepaper: content has, or at least should have, a ton of value for the consumer, which means that they’re willing to give something in exchange. It’s worth noting that approximately 60% of all shared content has a specific brand message in it. Brands clearly aren’t an impediment to content value. To the contrary. Consumers derive value from the information, entertainment and community that a brand provides through its content. In turn, brands derive value from consumer actions, whether those be on the platform (registering and providing data), on social media (championing a brand) or, of course, action at the digital or brick-and-mortar store shelf (purchase). Content IS A CONVERSATION What you publish is what you say, but like any good conversation, the most important thing you can do is listen. A content program needs a solid plan for collecting and studying analytics and user input. Those learnings should be used to optimize existing content and influence future creation. And your analytics strategy should be mapped to your desired business results. If you want more sales - and who doesn’t - what consumer actions can be measured and mapped to your path to purchase? At Barefoot Proximity, we call this analytical strategy Content Efficacy. What if it were about taking what you know about your consumers— their lives, passions, interests, curiosities and problems 8 Content Marketers vS Brands as Publishers Time was, publishing was defined by the person in control of the printing press, the one who bought ink by the barrel and paper by the forest. It was Guttenberg’s gift to Hearst and Pulitzer. But Steve Jobs and Bill Gates took it away by putting the printing press in every pocket, every messenger bag and on every desktop in the world. It’s a natural thought for marketers—afraid of declining shares in the attention economy—to pursue the “Brands as Publishers” model. However, few brands truly manage to do this well. One notable exception is American Express and their highly regarded Food + Wine and Travel + Leisure magazines. But most brands that pursue a publishing model find it to be beyond their budgets and, frankly, their abilities, too, without some rather sweeping changes. It also distracts from their primary business objectives. This is why the content marketer model is, generally speaking, more inviting and promising for a broader range of brands. Content marketers, like any other marketers worth their salt, tie their activities to KPI’s related to the core business. How will starting a company blog or Content IS CURRENCY Content is the best means of getting as close as possible to consumers by providing non-product value to their lives. A brand’s expertise in areas beyond the shelf can provide value beyond product claims. It is value given to the consumer with the hope that she will appreciate it—and pass it on to her friends. 9 Participation and Optimization Publishers value exposure, content marketers value participation and conversion. It’s not enough to know that your content is enlightening users, but encouraging them to take action – sharing,returning, opting-in and, ultimately, purchasing. This is why optimization for content marketers is so vital. It’s not enough to press “publish” in your Content Management System. In fact, your only part of the way through the process when you do push that button. The real work begins by measuring the level of participation and conversion that piece of content is causing and optimizing against those desired actions. If the first step is conception and creation, the second step publishing, steps three to five are related to analysis and optimization. content marketing platform enhance our database, create deeper consumer engagement or move more pallets? Those are the questions you should ask at the start. Not whether or not you should try to compete with the glossy magazines speaking to your key demographic. Content marketing isn’t about trying to duplicate a traditional publishing experience, it’s about creating a user experience that engenders trust, that serves a consumer’s need for information and satisfies her curiosity in such a way that she bonds with your brand. It’s about having the right information presented in the right way at the right time. And it’s about creating an experience that encourages discovery and exploration, which enhances value for her. 10 CONTENT IS NOT A CAMPAIGN Obviously, relying only on the perfect ad campaign to build this new, sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship is problematic. Not only are campaigns fickle in terms of length of duration, but they are designed to pique curiosity, not satisfy it. Once a consumer has tried a product, or decided not to, then what? What additional value can they gain from the campaign? Content is not—and should not—be made subject to such temporary limitations. Content, the always-on, always-searchable currency of the attention economy creates an always- on opportunity to move from speech to conversation, from the hard sell to the often more effective softer sell. “The moment of truth” for any campaign is often defined by store-shelf decisions, when a potential consumer becomes a customer. But the moment of truth for content often happens much earlier—and far away from the store shelf. It happens in the Google search bar, on a Facebook feed, a Twitter timeline, a Pinterest board or in an e-mail from a friend with a link embedded. Content IS A PROCESS There’s no such thing as a perfect piece of content. That’s the whole idea. So long as the consumer relationship can be strengthened, the ability of content to bolster that relationship can be improved. It requires always-on analysis, constant optimization, and diligence in continuing to find meaningful opportunities to create value for her. [...]... daily value, rather than going for the occasional big splash 12 QUALITY VS QUANTITY The question that always comes up when brand managers decide to pursue a content marketing strategy is this: How much content do we need? There are no hard rules as it relates to content volume There is no formula that states X-number of pieces of content published everyday = Y conversion rate Every content strategy has... those purchasing and selling this duplicative content like a low-cost solution to a content problem But then the Panda update was released As a result, content farm articles dropped precipitously in Google’s search ranks (One content farm saw its downstream traffic decline 40% within a month and a half of the Panda update.) The content farms’ output became less valuable to the consumer (it was harder... an expensive hassle, consider the costs of not being awake at the switch In April 2011, Google released its Panda update, which, among other things, sought to curtail the authority given to content, created by content farms.” These are broad networks of loosely affiliated content creators who sold inexpensive content to brands and publishers Their content was inexpensive because it was being duplicated... was an inspirational comedian, doing just another college gig It was students who filmed it and, after the show, asked if he would mind if they put the video up on YouTube Half a billion or so views later and the Toledo-based speaker is still riding that accidental wave Yet, he’s still asked for his “secrets” of the viral video He has none No one really does Virality is as much a content strategy as. .. optimize not only our content mix, but the consumer journey on the content path to purchase Perhaps even more importantly, we can see what content is not working or is hurting conversion and remove it And the only way we can do this is by matching the value of content to the business value for the brand A Lesson in Vigilance: The Panda Update If constant maintenance and optimization of your content sounds... Brands have a unique opportunity to level the playing field—between content types, content vendors and content creators—by redefining the value of content No longer do content marketing results need to be compared on publishers’ terms (traffic and page views, mostly) Success in content marketing can now be determined by the success of the content in driving business results­ sales, opt-ins, renewals, trials…whatever... the measurement criteria, then the content formats, creators and vendors all compete to deliver results for the brand based upon tangible actions taken by consumers If content efficacy on a brand platform is defined as content s ability to achieve business goals, the Content Darwinism model affords marketers the opportunity to create competition among partners to see who can create the most value In... understand and maximize the value of content through measurement Traffic and page views are the most-often cited units of measurement when it comes to content How many people are coming to your platform? How many pages are they looking at? But, if you are a brand mounting a content marketing initiative, these two metrics alone don’t give you a clear enough understanding of your efforts’ value For instance,... platform’s content is always evolving, always improving By mapping micro (pageviews) and macro (opt-in, social following, etc ) conversions affiliated with each step along the path to purchase to individual pieces of content, we are able, thanks to our handy-dandy algorithm, to understand the business value of different pieces of content to the brands we serve For example, we can understand what content. .. brand (it wasn’t pulling consumers to their platforms) The lesson? Good content is not just about proper syntax and grammar Good content on the web is that which has the best chance of being found, admired and shared, and this requires some degree of originality versus an avalanche of the same old content found in countless other places Being vigilant in understanding search trends in the content marketplace . content as value creation tool How content marketing can help your brand create lifelong consumer value. FEBRUARY, 2013 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Content. definitely is a tool and should be thought of that way. Content is a value creation tool. 6 THE MUTUAL EXCHANGE OF VALUE The Internet was created for