From Outer Space to Sales

Have you ever wondered why the world's top energy drink staged a free fall jump from space? In 2012, Red Bull conducted the ultimate "content marketing stunt" - they dropped a famous skydiver from the stratosphere and put their name on it. Red Bull won the storytelling game that day. The stunt had little to do with their product - and everything to do with selling their values and ability to catch their customers' imaginations and spark a global conversation.

In the past, advertising-driven marketing strategies consisted of one-way brand communications. Brands remained separate from their customers, and could leave customers feeling disconnected from and misunderstood by the brands they loved.

In this traditional model, it was very difficult for brands to gain insight into what resonated in the market and what did not. Seasonal marketing campaigns were often not agile enough to adapt to market reactions even if there were clear signals that a certain message worked (or did not). Without the ability to test content or track its reception, marketing organizations lacked visibility into the other side - the customer side - of the brand conversation.

There's no excuse for this type of approach any longer. Review your own marketing strategy and think about how much each campaign has been driven by customer input.

Consider:

• Have your previous campaigns been driven by customer feedback - formal or informal?
• Do you have an analytics program in place to capture quantitative data about how interested your customers are in your message?
• Do you have a qualitative understanding of how and when your campaigns become a part of the customer's purchase journey?
• What would you do differently if you knew that certain types of content performed much better than other types of content?

The Problem With Messaging

Brands often intend to send one defined message, but audiences hear another one when it's sent through channels with no feedback loop. Pieces of the message can get lost or distorted as in a game of "telephone" when passed from consumer to consumer, however. The company can't be sure which audiences liked an ad and went to purchase their products and which people sought out other products elsewhere. When the channel involves web content, technical barriers can add steps in the chain that distort the message even further.

What can your brand do better than anyone else? That's your value proposition. Camera maker GoPro aims to make cameras that record incredible, unique footage in all types of adventure and everyday scenarios. Their cameras can be used to capture unconventional, innovative shots that then can be shared with communities online, increasing their brand's unique value. The company has built a messaging framework around this value proposition and has discovered the proper channels through which they can reach customers. They showcase vast libraries of user-generated videos on their website, Facebook Page, YouTube, and beyond to show users what they can do with their GoPros. Customers feel like they are an active part of the GoPro story, instead of interacting with the brand through one-way advertisements.

Ask yourself:

• How many layers does your marketing messaging go through before reaching its audience? Are you sure?
• Consider making a visualization so you can see where your messages are going and why.
• What value does each of these layers add?
• What value might they be unintentionally detracting from?
• How closely does the content that reaches the customer resemble the original intention of the strategist? (This concern is especially true on social media… what commentary has been added that has nothing to do with your original message?)

In recent years, traditional brand marketing and authentic content creation have converged. Instead of buying small advertising units within other media companies' properties, many brands opt to create original, owned content to more closely influence the media their customers are exposed to during the buying process. This tactic not only results in more control, insight, and agility for the brands and their marketing strategies, but customers prefer it. When brand messages merge with content rather than interrupt it, the brand message can be absorbed and recalled more easily.

• How has your mix of paid and earned media shifted over recent years?
• How do you think it has shifted amongst the leaders in your industry?
• Have you seen positive changes?

B2B

Successful B2B content marketing comes in the form of education. B2B products are usually large investments that impact several company stakeholders. The buying process starts long before a customer interacts directly with a brand. Providing the proper education and training is a key method to secure a new B2B customer.

First, the potential customer will go likely online to confer with friends, colleagues, and trusted sources of relevant information. They will often search online for answers to their questions and if your brand is able to answer those questions for them, you will have become part of their customer journey at an early stage. You will have served their specific needs at the time, which makes the message much more powerful than an interruptive message (e.g. a glaring banner ad). During this process, it is important to study what types of content become popular (most-read, most-shared, etc.) so those areas of interest can be built further over time.Dell created a customized email nurture program that led to a 35% increase in conversion rates. Each lead is sent personalized messages based on their stage in the purchase process and their specific pain points and interests. Real-time adjustments can be made based on behavior or new content to ensure that the most relevant message is sent at the time it will have the most impact.

Specialized agencies now focus solely on content creation for this purpose. The web properties they create are beginning to displace traditional PR since typical media outlets are no longer gatekeepers for information. Many industry blogs are sponsored by major vendors even if their name doesn't appear anywhere on the sites. The vendors use these satellite industry blogs to develop thought leadership independent of their corporate branding, but the educational messaging is in line with what their marketing teams want consumers to know about the market and their product. Owning the conversation at this research phase, even if it is behind the scenes, has become standard practice for large B2B marketing teams but is achievable by small businesses too.

B2C

B2C brands can achieve something similar in the form of entertainment. B2C content should be engaging and shareable. It should also be related to the brand's core business or value proposition to have the greatest impact.

GoPro and RedBull Media House are great examples of consumer brands taking content marketing to the next level. The value of the content houses for these brands could arguably rival the value of their consumer product divisions.

Why It's Worth The Effort

For both B2B and B2C brands, there are three key advantages to the more authentic content approach.

1. You can engage with the customer at the right time in the purchase process. Providing useful, relevant content can capture them at their peak of interest, like when they're searching for answers to product questions. This process inserts your brand into the customer's buying process at the time they need it, not before or after. In the busy world we live in, it is unlikely customers will be spending ample time with content related to your brand if they have no urgency at all around converting.
2. You can reach the right people. When customers self-select based on their content engagement patterns, you know with confidence that they are interested in your industry and product. Then, you can even leverage that information to influence the content of other campaigns.
3. You can reach people where they already spend time. In other, more traditional forms of marketing, you don't control the environment in which people receive your message. When you have more control over the message itself and the context in which the message appears, the audience will be more likely to respond positively to it. Even something as simple as predictive content suggestions to guide the audience through the next steps of their content discovery can help your brand control more of the conversation.

The benefits of authentic content have always been there, but only now does content distribution technology and trends in content consumption align to become the backbone of a brand's marketing strategy. Brandcast, for example, is a modern web publishing platform that lets the world's leading brands create engaging experiences with the agility that their consumers have come to expect.

Over time, trends in consumer behavior have made this transition more pronounced. It is impossible not to notice the increase in mobile, social and general internet usage. But what this means for marketing organizations is an increased burden to produce more content and keep it fresher, which also necessitates larger teams to manage it. As technology catches up to consumer trends, the change becomes an opportunity rather than a burden for brands that are quick to move and adapt to the new expectations.

• Are you taking advantage of trends in consumer behavior?
• Has the last decade of mobile, social and rise in global internet usage been a burden on your marketing organization?
• How have you been able to turn that burden into an advantage?

Strategy Development

Become a trusted voice in your industry. Act as a mini content agency that produces content that your audience wants to engage with regardless of whether they are evaluating your product or not. Embrace consumer trends that are turning marketing into a two-way conversation and use the technology at your disposal to participate in that conversation as fully as possible.

Start with the exercise listed below.

Today, customers can participate in brand conversations in unprecedented ways - their actions now provide feedback directly to marketing organizations. By simply engaging with an application, whitepaper, or other media, customers are voting on the type of engagement they want out of their brands. By paying attention to this behavior, content marketing becomes a two-way conversation and customer relationships are elevated, ultimately resulting in better returns for brands.

This section was graciously written by our friends at Brandcast.