Scatter: The evolution of content marketing: It existed in the pre digital days, did it not? And has the digital medium enhanced the efficacy of content marketing. If yes, how?
Joe: I don’t know if it has enhanced the efficiency; it’s definitely enhanced the availability. Just about every enterprise on the planet – at least in the US- are using some form of content marketing. From an effectiveness standpoint, it’s probably not where it should be simply because, I think, a lot of brands out there think it’s about putting content out there – and by publishing it everywhere, then it’s going to work. But it’s not as easy as that, as you know. It takes consistency and a focus on the audience’s needs. You have to deliver that over a period of time and then you start to see some of the benefits of building an asset. So I think the combination of consumers having access to every piece of information they would want to get and at the same time, you have brands that are able to publish and the costs of publishing have come way down. So you think – Hey this is fantastic…this is our moment. Unfortunately, a lot of brands don’t understand just the basics of how you publish and how you build an audience. And so there’s this big learning curve as you know that we are seeing. We need a lot of education and training out there to make that happen. Yes, so, I’m excited about the future. I think that the possibilities are absolutely there. But I think that a lot of brands still have a long way to go.
Scatter:: The current content marketing scenario is clearly divided into areas (a) organizations which are more focused on content creation / aggregation e.g. Newscred AND (b) organizations that are more focused on distribution e.g. Outbrain / Taboola. Are these 2 clearly different disciplines or will these services merge to eventually offer marketers turnkey services?
Joe: Yeah, it’s really interesting; the technology scene is fascinating right now. You look at a company such as Newscred where they are looking to build a fully formed platform. It’s not just a marketplace and it’s not just content syndication. It’s now leading into, ‘how do we strategically work with our partners?’ It’s ‘how we distribute that content?’ It’s ‘how do we measure that content?’ They want it to be a one-stop shop. At the same time. let’s look at KaPost which just focuses on content collaboration. So they’re focused on that portion of it. And then you have companies that are just focusing on the analytics portion of it. I think you’re going to see that. But, at the same time, you have your bigger players. I mean now you’ve got the IBM’s of the world, you’ve got the Adobe’s, LinkedIn to an extent. You know you’ve got bigger players that are trying to buy out these different properties. And so you’re going to see a lot of startups just focused on those areas. Oracle is another one involved in all this as well. They’re starting to buy up properties. I think you’re going to have to see more M&A, because there’s too many companies out there. I mean if you’re a fan of Scott Brinker’s chiefmartec.com chart every year – the last one I saw was 1900 technology vendors in the marketing technology space. That’s too many. There’s no way that’s going to happen. So you’re going to see M&A’s happen. There’s opportunities on both sides right now, especially as the market is still pretty young to go either way. I don’t know which is the right segment. it depends on the funding and it depends on the goals. But I see both being successful. But there’s no doubt about it. There’s just no way that you can go ahead with 27 different kinds of content marketing platforms. It’s going to end up with just 4 or 5 and they might just get acquired by the marketing technology stack. And that’s what Oracle sees. They say “Oh! Okay, great. We’ve got CMS. Let’s go ahead and we’ll get marketing automation. So they go ahead and purchase that with Eloqua. And they’ll look at another company for analytics. I don’t think those companies are getting into the marketplace though. That’s very particular, as you know – where you’ve got your Scripted’s and your Contently’s that have dabbled in that area. But even Contently is interesting where they’ve gone into really looking at data – They just bought ‘docaltyics’ and they’re getting into the analytics side of that because they want to say ‘Hey. We’ve got to be a platform’. We’ve got to show the analytics side and that’s going to cause concern for NewsCred. You’ve got Track Maven in that area really looking at the analytics of social content. So it’s all over the place. It’s wild, wild west. And everyone is in a land grab to get as many customers as possible.
Scatter: The business of content marketing: Almost every brand and business (even small businesses) have a digital presence. Mobile is making massive inroads in markets such as India….What does this mean for the “business of content marketing” in the next 5 years?
Joe: Well, even in the West, it’s mobile first. I think you have to think that way. You’re not designing for desktop necessarily. If you’re doing anything at all, you’re focusing on responsive design. So that whatever you create – that one piece of content that can adjust to any type of screen. And responsive, even though it’s not perfect, it will get you 95% of the way there. It’s not going to get you to personalization, it’s not going to be adaptive. But at least it will get you most of the way there. So that’s where I think most from the technology side / the presentation side is where companies are focused on. You can make the case that everything is untethered. Even the laptop I am on now is untethered. It’s technically a mobile device even though I still look at it on a desktop screen. Still mobile. Still traveling with this. So, I think from a brand marketer perspective, you’re always thinking digital first. Now that doesn’t mean – and you know this in India as well – print is still critically important. It’s not as important as it used to be but it’s still critically important. In-person events are critically important. So you are probably leading digital first as part of the business model and then when your brand gets to a point of a minimum audience level you now are focused on creating a content brand of some kind. Let’s say you need to create a content brand; you could integrate some very highly targeted print components as well as some in-person events as part of that, if it makes sense. I don’t know if I am answering your question but there’s nobody who thinks that mobile first is not the case here in the US. It’s just making the transition over to that and getting the bigger brands which are slower to move. It’s just different from what they are normally used to doing. I’m sure you see the same in India as well.
Scatter: Branded Content, Content Marketing, Native Advertising – these terms seem to be used interchangeably. Is there a difference and is that difference big at all?
Joe: I think content marketing and branded content are just different. Content Marketing is focused on the audience’s pain points, the audience’s information needs and that’s how we go to market. And Branded Content is focused more on the story that the brand wants to tell. Mostly around product features or what the brand stands for and in usually shorter term programs. Content Marketing is about long term consistency. Branded Content – most of the branded content examples that I see, such as Dove’s Real Beauty- they created this great program. It’s a shorter term program and they do it in 3 to 6 month long chunks. It’s not that it is wrong, it’s just different from Content Marketing. And it’s about stuff that’s about them (Dove) and there is usually some product placement involved in that. You’re very, very sure that it is Dove because it’s hard to miss it. It has Dove’s brand elements as part of it. In Content Marketing, that’s not always the case. Usually, it’s about a brand Creating a content band. Like P&G would create a www.homemadesimple.com or something like that. So it’s a little bit different. I just want marketers to know that there is a whole spectrum of things that we can do. You can try and take a pure approach to content marketing. You could try to build an audience where you are functioning more like a media company or a publisher. Or you could go the Branded Content way – which is a much easier move for bigger brands to make because it is almost like the next step up from advertising. It’s not just another 30 second TVC or a big print advertising program. We’re trying to tell stories focused a little bit more on the audience and it comes out looking like branded content I don’t have a problem with it at all if it is a gateway to do more sophisticated content efforts – then I’m all for it.
Scatter: We see the newsletter as a classic case of killing the goose that lays golden eggs. Can content marketing resurrect newsletters killed by ‘advertising’?
Joe: I think email newsletters are still critical. And maybe even more critical than ever before. It’s just the fact that we have to send out email newsletters which are actually more valuable. So let’s just take ten years ago. You could consistently send promotional emails and you would get your customers or prospects to open it. You’re not getting that today. You’re not going to cut through the clutter with a sales message or with something that’s not valuable. Now, if something is truly valuable and sent consistently. Say you’re sending a weekly newsletter and is it is truly valuable, people will open it. We’ve seen it time and again. We’ve seen a lot of brands we work with get 20% – 40% open rates. That’s fantastic. And you get that consistently over time and you get to build that relationship. And then you have some brands that don’t even get over a quarter of a percent open rate because what they’re sending is not valuable. So just because you think “You can send this email” – it does not mean you should be sending this email – because it’s really not focused on the pain points of the audience. Today, there’s a lot of audiences that we can build. Obviously, we can build a lot of social audiences, but there’s not many we have the majority control over. The one that we have best control we have is the audience we get through an “opt-in email.” And we can actually communicate with that person on a consistent basis. There is not a better way to do it now. Emailers are at the top, print opt-in subscribers are second – because you can actually, to some extent, control that: when you send it, when you communicate and to whom you communicate. You can’t do that on Facebook, and you can’t do that on Twitter and other social channels, because those social channels own that relationship, not your brand.
Scatter: What’s with influencer marketing? We see brands queuing up to get their brands / taglines trend on social media platforms. Does that serve any real purpose? Our belief is that brands must earn their own influence and invest in it? Your views please?
Joe: Absolutely. I agree with you. You’re earning the right to communicate with an audience. If influencers pick up that content up and share that organically, then that’s absolutely the best way. If there is a coordinated influencer effort, I don’t like to see it on a short term basis. I don’t like to see the product pitches and we know that the paid influencers don’t have as much influence as the non-paid influencers. So, my whole take is: If you’re trying to target a particular audience and you’re trying to build up influencers, you work to do it organically, over time, as part of your strategy. And then those people become part of your advocates. Ongoing. Instead of just “Oh! This one time. We’ve got a press release going. Send it to the influencers.” They send it out. It’s just not as effective; it’s short term thinking. I like the long term thinking of organically building that influencer group over time.
Scatter: Surajit Agarwal ASKS – As a former journalist looking to branch out into content marketing the one question that keeps plaguing me is the credibility associated with articles that come from a content marketer. For example: If I was to do a piece on say Diabetes but it is sponsored by a company that markets a diabetic drug or measurement device, the article automatically loses its credibility. I have seen too many articles of dubious credibility on the internet. How does a company that wants to sponsor content ensure the credibility of its content is not compromised by its business interest?
Joe: Every company has a bias. It does not matter if you are a publisher or not, you always do. We talk about it here in the US, whether you’re MSNBC or Fox News. There’s 2 very particular types of biases you have. So companies have their biases as well. But their biases are towards products and services that they offer. As for the whole thing about whether you’re doing sponsored content, native advertising or trying to build your own channel: First of all, be transparent. Tell people – “Hey, this is who we are and this is what we stand for.” For the consumer, it all comes down to – Is the content authentic? Is it real? Is it true? Is it right? Is it helpful? You look at any of the studies around and you will see (a) some people will engage with a piece of content and will take it at face value (b) some people will see who authors it and then decide if it is tainted or okay. (c) some won’t even engage with your content. That’s why consistency is so critical. If you want to get me in the area of “Oh! It’s a brand…it’s coming from a brand – they won’t value it”… You will have to do this on a consistent basis and that’s what we’ve seen. So, if you’re John Deere and you are selling tractors and you consistently (over a 100 years) help small business farmers with their needs – they don’t care that you want to sell tractors. They will probably know you more and will trust you and be happy to get information from you. Because it is so helpful. It’s so useful. So if you start to take that position in any company people will initially say “Oh! It’s coming from that pharmaceutical company.” People know everybody is trying to sell. Consumers are not stupid. They get that. But if it is really helpful information AND you need information about that – and it’s delivered to you consistently over a period of time – then you are probably going to trust that brand that is sending you that and you are more likely to buy that product or service the brand is selling. When it comes to content marketing, I think everyone has their guard up – but that guard comes down if you deliver helpful content over time and that’s what I’ve seen.
Scatter: Avinash Jhangiani – from OMD India ASKS What content KPIs match up to business KPIs / KRAs? Bhavya from Policybazaar.com asks: How does one collect leads from content marketing?
Joe: (Laughs) Well, that’s a whole workshop we can do. My quick take on this is: What most brands do is they’ll use webinars, whitepapers, e-books…and they’ll use those as lead generation programs and they’ll then ferret them to the sales teams and do their thing in the sales process. I think that’s the wrong way to do it. What I would be focused on is building subscribers. Email subscribers that we talked about before. Now you got permission from somebody to communicate with them and you want to nurture that over time. Then when you nurture them over a period of time, those opportunities present themselves and then the leads come from the subscribers. Hardly anyone ever does this. Especially in B2B, because they want to give those leads to the sales team as often as possible, but the problem is that those people are probably not ready to buy yet. But if we can communicate with them over time and we can start to educate them in certain ways that they can begin to trust us, then they start to turn into opportunities that can actually buy something. It’s not a quick hit thing. You could change your whole mentality e.g. instead of advertising a google search term for a demo you could advertise it for an e-book. And you get that e-book and you could subscribe to ongoing communications and then you start to get involved in that and then you show the demo. It takes longer. But what we found out over a period of time is that those customers turn out to be better customers. They end up staying longer, they end up closing for more money, they end up talking more favourably about our company. Simply put, there’s lots of different ways we can measure this thing depending on what the goals are, but the holy grail of this is that once I get a subscriber database – I could take that subscriber database and match that database against the customer database from the CRM and then we could start to look at what’s different. You don’t even need technology to do this. What’s different? Do they buy more? Do they stay longer? I don’t know what the metrics are but we can show the difference between those that opt in and those that don’t. That’s been used for 100 years in custom publishing and now content marketing.
Scatter: Khyati Dharamsi A contributor to Quartz and a contributing journalist to several business publications ASKS: Most content is clichéd and undifferentiated. How can content writers and journalists break this hurdle down? Is differentiation really a BIG factor?
Joe: She is absolutely right. I would say the majority of the content out there does not tell a different story and if your brand is delivering content to an audience and it does not tell a different story- something that you can find somewhere else, anywhere else- it’s going to be very difficult for you to be successful. It’s a rampant issue and I think 95% of all companies are dealing with this now because they created an editorial calendar…whether it is around pod casts, video series or social media content that’s not different…that’s not telling a different story. Now, if you’re a publisher, you know this. You know that you have to tell a different story. You have to have journalists that are working on things that are different from the others and you have to have an editorial mission that’s absolutely different. We are not seeing that with most organizations. So the recommendation is you’re probably focusing on too broad an audience or too many audiences at the same time. And a lot of brands want to do this because they want to reach as many people as possible – but that’s not content marketing. Content marketing is about focusing on a targeted audience and reaching their needs. So, it may be the brand has a decision to make to say “Well, we’re not going to be able to reach these three different audiences with this, we’re going to reach just one. And we’re going to be the thought leader and the expert resource for this audience. And when we do that really well, we can move on to the second audience and the third audience and what not. So that’s the big issue, especially in B2B. You see in B2B companies that are trying to hit too many audiences at one time – it’s not going to be relevant. And if it’s all irrelevant, you’re not going to engage with it. And that’s what we’re seeing. We get the 10 tips for this, the things to do that – which are fine if they are focused around a particular target audience and their specific needs because you have to go niche today. And that’s this whole technology thing and being able to reach all these people. Everyone expects their answers to be met and you can reach them but you have to go real small to get there.
Scatter: Amar Trivedi from Social Media Club, Auckland & Owner of ‘Keeping Madness Alive” ASKS – While charting a content marketing plan, what is the ideal proportion of original content vis a vis shared + re-purposed content?
Joe: I don’t think there is any ideal share. I’ve seen it all over the map. I do believe that if you want to really be a thought leader of some kind and really deliver true value, you have to have some original story telling. You can’t just use 100% syndicated content. It’s very tough to do that. But if there are some areas….by the way, let’s say that you’re doing your e-newsletter and you’re doing a roundup of the top news of a certain area and that’s what you are delivering…that’s the value – so they don’t have to go searching elsewhere…it’s all in one place, then that’s something original you are doing with syndicated content. So, yeah, I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason to it, but one thing that I would say is that if you’re looking to do partnerships with influencers, you better be sharing a lot of other people’s content. Especially from those influencers. Because you can’t just take, take, take all the time. You have to give. Whereas, the far majority of the content you are sharing on your social platforms is probably not your own content. It’s probably coming from other sources.
Scatter: Bhavya has another question – How does Google Analytics work for marketers to understand content engagement? Should online commerce brands look at more specialized tools such as Omniture instead? Where should call-to-action buttons be placed in the content marketing article?
Joe: Well, I’m not an e-commerce expert, but I would like to see calls-to-action being all around the article but not necessarily in the article. I don’t want those calls-to-action going to product. I want them to go to content. Now, that said, if it’s e-commerce related and you’re talking about a brown dress and it’s about the fashions of the season and you’ve got some ways that people can click through those particular types of wardrobe… whatever…which is more like your branded content, I’d say…that’s fine. Go ahead. I mean, if that’s part of the article and it makes sense to do that and it’s not forced, then absolutely do it. But if you’re educating somebody on something, then I think that’s different. You don’t want your first step to be “to buy.” That’s a large jump that you have to make. You’re educating somebody for the first time and then “Oh! Want me to buy something? Nah! Probably not.”
There may be very rare situations where we want to get them to something of other value… so we can start engaging with them with multiple pieces of content. And then, how are we going to test that? That’s where it comes down to analytics; you have to test. Does more time on site work better for buying behaviour or less? It could be less. More time on site may be something you don’t want. Maybe they can’t find what they’re looking for and that’s why there’s more time on the site. So, what are they trying to get to, what makes the most sense? And you can follow those paths and that’s where Google Analytics or Omniture can start showing you – “Okay, here’s the path and here’s what makes most sense and that’s come from testing.” So, you really have to start testing and see your conversions, which you can do with Google Analytics or Omniture or something else. I would just make sure that you might just want to look at your question about what your click-to-action calls are and if you are really delivering more value through content – not just “buy. buy. buy” which is what you normally see.
Scatter: Dharma Rajan – A self-employed professional ASKS How is content priced? Is there a specific model from both, a creator & a marketers’ perspective?
Joe: So, basically, the question is how…if a marketer is paying for a piece of written content, how much should they pay for it? (Laughs) Well…as much as you can sell it for. That’s my answer. How’s that for exact? You know this. You’re in the industry. I’ve seen it…a penny a word and $3 a word. So that’s huge. The difference. And the more specialty content, you can charge higher and the more general the content, the lower you charge. So, I mean, I think there’s probably a better market for more specialty content. Because you could charge more, the margins are higher…what not. the problem is it’s harder to find those content creators, as you know. So there are no set guidelines…there’s lots of posts and articles out there that say “Okay – you should pay 500$ for a blog post or $20 for a blog post – I’ve seen it all across the board. There’s generally a big value difference between those. So that’s it. It just depends on how specific you need to get. If you’re going to need articles on mechanical engineering, they’re going to cost more than something about the 5 things I need to have for my party on Saturday. There’s no way you can price it and say this is the value of a word. What I would do is, if you wanted to test it out, as a marketer, you test it …you follow through the buying process. How did they convert? They went to this article. They converted. What did they do? Did they buy something? And then you can start to put an ROI based on the amount of the spend. It just takes time to do that and you have to try a little bit.
Scatter: How did content marketing and you come together?
Joe: Well, I started in publishing in 2000, 16 years ago. And I worked at a large B2B publisher and I was lucky enough to get into the ‘custom media’ department. So for that publisher, we worked on the custom content / content marketing projects specifically for large B2B companies such as Microsoft, Parker Hannifin and what not. So we worked on those e-newsletters and webinar programs and print magazines and everything. And I started to work with more CMO’s and senior level marketers…and at the same time that technology was really starting to go. You had the social platforms that started to open up, you had more and more movement in digital. I could see that there was going to be an opportunity for brands to communicate directly with their audiences. So what does that mean? How are they going to build that audience? They are going to probably do that through content creation and distribution. So I had that publishing background and at the same time I was in that group talking to marketers. And probably around 2005, I really felt that this was going to be big and that’s when I thought that maybe I’d start my own company. The biggest problem I was having was when I went into a CMO or a VP of Marketing and I started talking about custom publishing or custom media…there was no excitement there. They didn’t know what it meant. So I couldn’t just go in and start to talk to them about their problems. I had to educate them on the practice area. So it was very difficult to make anything happen. And I started to play with terms…I played with Branded Content…with Content Marketing …Customer Media which was big in Europe at that time. So I played with all these terms when I went on sales calls. And it wasn’t even close. Content Marketing, as a term, resonated the most. They (marketers) did not really know what it meant…but they went “Oh! It’s content. It’s marketing. Yes. That’s what we want to do.” And that’s when I learnt that if you do anything with marketers, you better call it marketing. Search marketing, social marketing, content marketing. (Laughs) We’re very simple people. We have to keep it very simple. In 2007, we started talking about this content marketing thing but it really took off in 2010 – right after we came out of the recession. Budgets just started to move towards that area leveraging digital specifically. So, I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, but that’s just because there are no technology barriers for marketers to publish and because the audience (our consumers) are now in complete control of the information…advertising is not as effective as it used to be. Before 1990, there were 8 ways you could communicate with your customers…Now there’s what? 1,000? There are so many hundreds of different ways that you can communicate with your audience on so many channels and what not. So that puts the control away from those who have money and it puts control into the hands of people that have the devices…that can get the information. So now, as a brand, you have to make a decision. And most smart brands…most innovative brands – they want to communicate directly with their customers. And that means they have to actually communicate things of value. And doing that sort of changes the equation from “Here’s the ad. You have to pay attention to that ad and you will go do something.” They can ignore the ad. So we’ve got to think a little bit differently.
Scatter: How did Content Marketing World come about? How has the event grown over the years? Will you look at newer emerging geographies such as India for this event in the near future?
Joe: When we started Content Marketing Institute (CMI) in 2010, it took off right away. After 3 years of me trying to figure out what the model was, we finally started listening to our subscribers and they really needed education and training. So we said “Great. Let’s start an education and training site.” We did that with CMI and then as we talk more and more about our subscribers, they basically said “Well, we want to meet with our peers. We want to network with our peers. We want to learn the stuff first-hand. And that’s where the thought was “Okay. We need to have an event.” And we were actually hoping for the first event in Cleveland, Ohio…we were hoping for around 100-150 (delegates) but we had 600 that year and we said “Good. This is something positive,” and then it’s just gone up from there pretty significantly. You know, anytime – and you know this in India as well – you get an industry together…people want to get together. They want to meet. The same thing in the content marketing industry. As for your second question, right now at CMI we are really focusing on North America and our online training component. We have not closed the door. We used to be in Sydney. We did a couple of small events in Singapore. So we have looked internationally. But we wanted to focus and solidify ourselves in North America. There was an event that just ran in Germany which was quite large. It had 1800 delegates and that’s pretty impressive. So you are starting to see this thing branch out.
Scatter: Is there a new book coming along? And why orange? We love the colour too, but we think no one carries it off as cool a manner as you do.
Joe: The new book, Content Inc., came out in September. I’m going to run with that one for a little while since it’s only six months old. And I love it, it’s my favourite book. You know, it’s my fourth book. I love it because…If you follow that model, it doesn’t take a large budget. Any company can take that model – no matter what size the brand. “Epic Content Marketing” – my previous book – is more for larger B2B or B2C organizations. It’s more complex. The thing with the ‘orange’ – it just took off. That was in 2008-09 when we picked the company colours. The company colours were orange and grey. And for whatever reason, I started wearing orange shirts…just being supportive of the company colour. And I went to one event and they asked me not to wear orange. And I didn’t because they asked me to. And I got a lot of people that came up to me in person and on social media and they asked me why I wasn’t wearing orange. And I didn’t know that that was a thing. I said “Okay. This is a pretty big thing! As of that moment, I went off the deep end with orange. Everything is orange. I’ve got an orange custom suit. My whole closet is full of orange suits. So, it’s really easy when I get up in the morning and think what I’m going to wear? Because, I don’t have a choice. It’s always orange and anytime I go speak at an event it’s usually orange. Sometimes, I wear orange shoes – sometimes an orange shirt, sometimes an orange vest. But if you can do anything to differentiate and stand out, I’m all for it. So that’s the thing I do.
Scatter: Lastly, a message to the content marketing ecosystem in India – are there any learnings from the US we can benefit from without having to reinvent the learning curve ourselves here in India?
Joe: My recommendation will be the same one that I tell brands here in the US, which is, “Just because you can publish doesn’t mean you should, and if you decide you should publish content, you need to do it right. Instead of just publishing on every social platform that your customers are on and on every kind of topic…focus…figure out the audience you’re trying to target. Focus for the most part on one content type at first. You know, you’re not the Financial Times here. You’re not going to do everything at once. So focus on one content type…Is it text? Is it audio? Is it video? One content platform. Is it your blog or website? Is it iTunes for audio, is it YouTube for video? Whatever the case is, consistently deliver. And when I say consistently, I mean consistently. I mean – you’re doing a YouTube series…a video series…you should be delivering once every Monday at the same time…or whatever the case is. Same with email. Is it distributed the same time every week or every month? And then over time, even in my last book, the shortest time of monetization of any of the key case studies we looked at was 9 months. The average was around 15-18 months. This is a long term relationship. This is an asset that you’re building. It is a not a short term thing. So if anyone would listen to this and they want to see major results in six months, I would say “Go buy advertising. Go do direct mail. Go buy a lot of search keywords or social advertising. Don’t do content marketing. Content marketing can be wonderful…it can, perhaps, be the best thing we can ever do to build a long term relationship but it does absolutely take time.”
