2015 is already turning out to be another exciting, if not challenging year for marketers. Two major consumer trends around mobile devices and social engagement are turning the traditional marketing funnel upside down. Last year, mobile web viewing matched or surpassed desktop for the first time and, simultaneously, social platforms like Facebook and Twitter started driving serious competition for Google advertising revenue.
Targeted ads, based on consumer preferences, seemed the next logical step for marketers, who eagerly placed their digital ads on socials sites, measuring success against attributes, such as views, likes or shares. Yet, ROI from such activities is not something which happens overnight and, for many, is difficult to demonstrate at all. Consumers, overwhelmed by ads, have shown signs of advertising fatigue, their apathy heightened by privacy fears and stories that Big Brother is watching. It creates the perfect storm for both search marketing and digital advertising ROI to become particularly evasive. Marketers were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explain the flat ROI or low content traffic growth as well as trying to find a new way of reaching potential customers.
The answer, as it turns out, was not something completely revolutionary for marketers. As you would expect, marketers are masters at creating good content, and the rise of the multi-screen generation, fuelled by mobile, gave content new wings to be everything to every user and at any time. If you could tap into the multiscreen social phenomenon around content sharing you could let the consumer do the hard work for your brand. Start with a few people, develop highly valuable content and watch engagement and traffic grow like wildfire. The buzz term is 'Content Marketing' but we've been doing it in other forms for many years. And, as a marketing conversion strategy it's rapidly growing in importance over traditional search marketing and digital advertising the Internet was built on.
Getting content marketing right requires three important things to be right. First, you need to understand your potential customers' preferences; what do they like, and what are they sharing? Targeting visitor personas is a critical part of deciding what content is considered valuable enough to engage and share.
Second, you have to engage your potential customers where they are. And this new consumer is a multiscreen fanatic. That means building content that works on any device at any time of the day. Good content is nothing if the user can't or won't engage with it. Finally, you need to measure and optimize your content continually. For this you need to start using analytics that specialize in content user experience, multiscreen capability and user context across key engagement KPIs like traffic, conversion and importantly bounce. Knowing what content is not working either on your social properties, in ad networks or on your website is as important as knowing what is converting so you can optimize content to ensure for maximum user experience and ultimately engagement.
I believe quick and powerful insights lead to quick action. Marketers should be able to see what referrer content is driving the highest traffic from social properties, advertising campaigns and organic search all in one place and quickly understand which multiscreen user patterns are driving good or bad engagement metrics from in-bound and onsite content. Knowing who your visitors are, the context of their user engagement and the type of device they are connecting with will enable you to optimize and excel at content marketing.
Good luck with it, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on your content marketing journey and where it is taking your brand today.