The ANA delivered its study of how 126 brand marketers see the “GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITIES IN CONTENT MARKETING.” Hats off to my good friends at Manifest Agency for their timely summary of the report which you can find here.
As a brand-side and agency-side content marketer, three headlines peaked out above the rest. I am very bullish on the benefits of true content marketing for many brands. Great content is how we grab and keep people’s attention amidst the clutter, noise and diminishing effectiveness of so much advertising. Most brands want to deliver increased value to their customers. Valuable content is a great way to do that.
ANA Study Highlights:
Highlight #1: 52% of respondents said they have a strong commitment to content marketing while only 35% of respondents have a clear content strategy.
My POV: More strategy will lead to a greater commitment. Clearly more brands are creating content to engage customers. But many remain unconvinced that content marketing is more than how they tackle “thought leadership” (i.e. PR) or sales collateral. It is more, and a strategy will help align an organization to focus on content that matters to customers and can be measured in terms of awareness and discoverability (i.e search shelf-space), consideration and, ultimately, selection of your brand.
Some brands hesitate to embrace ‘always-on’ content marketing. They remain committed to the “marketing campaign” concept – a time-bound, near-term, goal-based approach to marketing. Campaigns are important, but not as much as they once were. Still, campaigns are what marketing organizations and the C-suite are used to. This creates inertia towards fully embracing content marketing. And it’s totally unnecessary. Modern marketers are quite capable of folding campaign concepts into their enduring content marketing programs.
Highlight #2: 63% of content marketing services are handled internally and a stable 37% is handled externally.
My POV: Over the past 7 years, I have seen dramatic shifts in the agency world. I love agencies and have had the opportunity to work with some terrific ones while at Travelers. When it comes to content marketing, few traditional agencies are capable or have the business model to really contribute. I spent more time crossing agencies off the list as partners in content as adding them. Bigger agencies may feel they have the talent but too often that is creative talent, not strategy or operations. That means they can create some great content – usually in a particular medium like video or graphic design.
The rise of content production operations (again, mostly video) from Mediamonks to Epipheo is promising. They are tackling the big challenge of producing the trifecta that old-timers used to say couldn’t be had: good, cheap and fast. When video is so important to a content strategy, getting a flow of the right content through production and up online is key.
Strategy, execution, production and operations is largely an inside job. According to the ANA – 78% of ANA members had an in-house agency in 2018, versus 58% in 2013 and 42% in 2008. At Travelers, we built a content marketing operation to find and fashion stories from colleagues across the company. The subject matter expertise was complex, and the trust we built up internally would have been difficult to hand off to a partner.
As a brand marketer, if I needed help strategically, I would look for the individual who’s done it before. Sometimes that’s within an agency, often it’s a consultant who has worked on the brand side. The era of shopping to find everything you need within a Publicis or WPP roster are waning. Every once in a while, a new agency who seems to get it pops up. Manifest Agency is a great example. Lead by a great team including my friend David Brown, they really seem to understand content marketing. They may not be unique, but they are certainly rare. And beware the traditional agency who claims they can do what groups like this can do.
Highlight #3: 59% of survey respondents reported a lack of actionable insights derived from current tracking methods to understand the effectiveness of content marketing.
My POV: You can measure content’s impact on sales. If you are using your traditional ad metrics – reach, engagement and conversion – to understand how hard your content is working, you will likely be disappointed. Content does sell just not always in that simple, direct marketing way.
We have been able to effectively measure how engagement with our content leads to significant lifts in consideration. This is true with our personal lines ("only brand or first brand I would consider:" +46pt lift for those exposed) and commercial lines (+14pt lift) customers. New, nimbler research companies like GroupRFZ make this type of research quicker and less expensive.
We have also been able to see how those exposed to our content eventually purchase. Combined, we have a reliable way to understand how content marketing can impact brand and sales. In many ways, this measurement is more reliable than how marketers measure many of their efforts.
Building an effective content marketing team that combines internal and external resources is well within reach now. Defining and executing against a content marketing strategy and then measuring results is available today.
At a time when people are ever more reliant on digital content that helps them get through their day, make decisions, run their business and generally cope, many brands should not hesitate to embrace content marketing and then bring it to scale. Make the commitment, already.
Great voices in content marketing:
Comments