Content is King!

“The Future Trend, getting to grips with Content Marketing”

If you’ve been in digital marketing for long enough, you’ll know that the only constant, is change.
It seems every few months, there’s a hot new App or a must-have digital tool billed as the new ‘future’ of marketing.

If professional marketers can barely keep up, it’s small wonder that consumers report experiencing cognitive dissonance — confusion and frustration brought on by over complicated and thus, often contradictory marketing messaging — when progressing down the conversion funnel.

This perhaps, is why more and more consumers are unplugging from online marketing processes and retreating into their digital silos, venturing out only when they want to make or research a purchase.

As marketers, it’s all too easy to fall in love with clever and innovative ‘process’, while losing sight of the ‘main thing’, which will always be to communicate non-invasive, behavior-driving messages to market — heck, it’s in our job description! Forward thinking marketers though, have gotten wise to the fact that perhaps the marketing ‘old heads’ knew best — content is, and will always be, king.

Businesses can on-board all the shiny automation software or analytics tools available, but without high end, quality content, it is all for nought.

The biggest companies in the world have come to realize that their consumers are drowning in a sea of generic, unoriginal marketing messages. In response to the ‘black hat’ SEO and content farm epidemic, and the ‘spray and pray’ attitude that still dominates the digital marketing field, Google, for example, has consistently reconfigured its search algorithms — PANDA, PENGUIN and BERT updates — to reward companies publishing well-written and original content.

As consumers become more digitally savvy, the ability to create and curate high traffic, brand-specific content will define marketing firms’ and departments’ success. With the digital marketing mix increasing in complexity, marketers must have clear guidelines in producing original, quality output.

CONTENT SHOULD BE INFORMATIVE AND ENGAGING.

I for one, am well put off by the ‘hard sell’. When companies invade my digital space with unsolicited marketing, my instinctual reaction is, ‘hey slow down — at least buy me a drink first!’

The accepted standard, is less than a quarter of your content should be directly related to the ‘sell’. The average consumer is subjected to between 4,000 to 10,000 marketing messages a day, every day. As you can imagine, they are jaded when it comes to being sold to and will very rarely change a purchasing decision due to a ‘hard sell’ message.

Instead of being regarded as simply one of the thousands of sellers that digital consumers must navigate through every day, content-wise marketers write to inform and engage. Audiences are searching for passive value from their brand associations, and brands that ask themselves ‘how can we help our customer’ will form sustainable, two-way relationships with their market.

LEAVE IT TO THE PROFESSIONALS.

Would you let your mechanic do your surgery? Or allow your baker to fix your car? Then why on earth would you allow non-writers to create your business’ content? In an often misguided attempt to save on costs, businesses will relegate copy work to account managers, brand associates or the digital team, failing to grasp that without the right messaging, it won’t matter how amazing their goods or services are, or how optimized their publishing is.

There’s a reason why salaries for high end content producers are increasing, especially in this disrupted economy. Creating original, ‘sticky’ content is an art-form, and writers / content producers who consistently produce quality content, are an investment worth making. If you’re content or platform isn’t getting traction, perhaps the solution is as basic as getting someone who knows what they’re doing, to create it.

IF YOU BUILD IT (RIGHT), THEY WILL COME.

Content, as discussed is of course, king. However, almost as important, is the host platform. With so many options available to consumers, it is vital that one’s websites and landing pages are attractive, user friendly and easily navigable.

By now, we all accept the bottom-line value of search optimization — driving traffic. However, the aesthetics of one’s platforms will determine whether site visitors spend any amount of time engaging and will determine whether they return. Remember, consumers spend an average of 8 seconds on a site before deciding to move on or continue reading. Your platform architecture must be consumer-orientated, and geared to make an impact.

There are specific benchmarks and best-practice approaches as reference, such as limiting the number of advertisements on-site, and resisting the urge to pepper the platform with outbound links. Keeping the site build simple and pleasing to the digital palate will go a long way to ensuring a positive customer experience and reducing bounce rate.