MSL Chicago

This Thursday, I’ll be leading the first half of a workshop for the American Marketing Association on content marketing. Over the past several years, more clients and companies have developed or increased their investment in content marketing strategies. It’s no surprise—content is the fuel of marketing, and has even been called The King.

We’ve seen many fundamental shifts in marketing over the last decade. The ‘linear age’ where brands distributed their messaging to their audiences became the ‘social age’, where brands encouraged and welcomed their audiences to reach out to them. Today, we’re solidly in the ‘continuous age’, where brands see themselves as media companies. Businesses are curating, creating and distributing content to entice, engage and expand their reach and relationships. Many CPG and B2B companies understand this is a critical area for growth—as much the creation and distribution of products or services.

We’ve seen healthcare and financial services companies doing this with great success – creating and sharing resources, tools, calculators and subject matter expertise with their customers with the intention of driving affinity as well as product/service growth.

Red Bull also does this to great acclaim – the Red Bull games, the Flugtag, and Felix Baumgartner’s space jump—all examples of branded content, developed specifically with the purpose of marketing the brand and selling product, hand in hand.

Content marketing is a long-term commitment that can produce significant results when executed thoughtfully. Critical to that is a strategic plan, with a priority focus on business objectives and audience… but two things often neglected in the planning.

A success content marketing strategy is clearly tied to business objectives and shows ROI against those objectives. This takes commitment, both in time for planning as well as the ongoing execution. Consistency is important for content program to be successful – you can’t just dabble in distributing content and expect to see ongoing results. Too many companies dive in without a clear strategy and ties to business objectives, and when they cannot show how the program has contributed, they abandon it. Content hasn’t failed them – a lack of a strategy has.

Having an understanding of your audience – both current and target customers— is a necessary first step in developing a strategy and plan. Understanding their preferred channels and media, what they’re interested in, what drives their loyalty, their brand expectations, and their appetitive for engagement is all critical information when creating an effective content marketing strategy.

On Thursday, I’m going to focus on the challenge, approach, and key learnings of several B2B and B2C companies who are successfully using content marketing to drive different business objectives. I’ll also share our content marketing process framework and a model for developing content strategies and identifying key metrics.

If you haven’t signed up for the event, you can register through the AMA website. I look forward to hearing how different companies are leveraging content marketing to meet their business objectives. If you aren’t able to attend, please email me at laura.chavoen@mslgroup.com or ping me @chavoen.