2015 - DMNews.commedia.dmnews.com/documents/107/contentmarketingeg_26508.pdf · CONTENT MARKETING 2015 ESSENTIAL GUIDE n7 Global Content Marketing Do’s and Don’ts How Video Puts

CONTENT MARKETING

2015E SS E NTI AL GUIDE

n 7 Global Content Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

n How Video Puts Marketing in Motion

n Content Marketing Strategies to Keep—and to Abandon

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4 HOTLIST4 ways to ensure that salespeople use the content that marketers create for them. by Michele Meyer

6 GLOBALCONTENTMARKETINGDO’SANDDON’TSToo few marketers consider how their content will translate, literally and figuratively, in other languages and locations. by Eric Krell

9 VIDEOPUTSMARKETINGINMOTION Popular among consumers for everything from education to entertainment, video should also be a content marketing staple. by Jason Compton

12 TRENDROUNDUP Content marketing strategies to keep—and to abandon. by Ginger Conlon

16 PARTINGSHOT The Art of Content Marketing [Infographic]

TableofContents

+DATAENTRY25% U.S. millennials who speak a language besides English in their homes page 8

65% Content marketers who don’t know the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S. page 8

54% Online video ads of 30 seconds or less page 15

58% B2B purchases influenced by video content marketing page 15

4 6

9

TOC|EssentialGuidetoContentMarketing2015

2 | March 2015 | dmnews.com

AdryannaSutherlandPresident, gyro Cincinnati

“Brands must stop emphasiz-ing quantity over quality.” 12

Mapping out a content marketing strategy may seem daunt-

ing. Don’t let it intimidate you, though. Think about con-

tent marketing planning like you think about campaign

planning and you’ll realize that you’re much more prepared to har-

ness all that content marketing offers than you thought.

Here, a primer to ensure that your core content marketing ele-

ments are in place.

Why… are you producing this content?“Start with the end in mind” may seem obvious, but without specific,

measurable goals you won’t be able to track whether you’ve been suc-

cessful in driving desired customer behaviors. These goals may be at-

tracting and converting prospects, building engagement or advocacy,

or retaining customers—as long as they align with your overarching

marketing objectives and strategy. Each goal needs a success mea-

sure. For example, encourage X percent of visitors to view instruc-

tional videos and then drive Z percent of those viewers to purchase.

Who… do you want to reach?Use specific types of content for express customer and prospect segments at key points in their pur-

chase or life cycles (e.g., in response to specific actions) via a relevant mix of channels. For instance, you

may want to use top-of-the-funnel content to attract prospects who resemble your current high-value

customers. Keeping that target prospect group in mind will help you better select what content to serve

via which channels, and when.

What… content will you use to reach them—and your goals?Don’t always default to the written word. Consider video, in-person and online events, and even online

communities, which are often brimming with user-generated content. Content formats and topics should

not only match your goals, but also your customers’ preferences. In terms of topic sources, look to

customers and prospects, salespeople and service reps, discussion groups, and subject matter experts.

Consider a mix of content that’s entertaining, informative, and educational. Determining what types of

content will interest and engage your customers and prospects takes testing and learning—just like run-

ning any other type of marketing campaign.

When… in their lifecycle will you provide content?Inextricably linked from your content marketing objectives are the timings for reaching your customers

and prospects with content. If you’re aiming to move specific target segments of prospects through the

sales funnel, you’ll likely want to present content based on specific behavioral cues that show, for exam-

ple, level of interest or extent of prior research. If you’re aiming to retain customers, you’ll likely present

one type of content during onboarding and another prior to, say, a contract renewal. The goal is to avoid

“random acts of content marketing” and instead be purposeful.

Where… will you reach customers and prospects?Be where your customers and prospects are, but present content where it makes the most sense. If you have

a visual product, you may prefer Instagram over tweeting or blogging. If your customers and prospects enjoy

live events, these may be a better option than webcasts. Similar to determining the right types of content,

selecting the right channels requires a mix of feedback, observation, and research: Where are your custom-

ers and prospects currently getting their content? Where are they most receptive to specific content types?

How… will you support your efforts?Just because you’re writing a cool and pithy blog doesn’t mean that your customers know about it or, if

they do, will make the effort to find and read it. Market your content the way you market your company’s

products and services. Use email or social to direct customers to content on your website or support new

content with online ads for a one-two punch. Getting attention for your content is the first step in getting

customers and prospects to engage with and respond to it. n

EDITORIALEditor-in-Chief, Ginger Conlon [email protected] 646-638-6184

Senior Editor Al Urbanski

Senior Editor Natasha D. Smith

Associate Editor Elyse Dupré

Digital Content Coordinator Perry Simpson

Contributing Writers Jason Compton Eric Krell Michele Meyer

ART AND PRODUCTIONArt Director James Jarnot

Associate Managing EditorAndrew Corselli

Senior Production Manager Michelle Zuhlke

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Sales/Editorial Assistant Heather Freitag

Circulation Marketing Manager Tracey Harilall

CORPORATEChairman/CEO Lee Maniscalco

Chief Operations Officer John Crewe

EVP Julia Hood

VP, Digital – Business Group Keith O’Brien

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Content Marketing 101

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Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | EDITOR’S NOTE

dmnews.com | March 2015 | 3

4 ways to ensure that salespeople use the content that marketers create for them.

H0T LIST | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015


CONTENT MARKETING THAT SELLS

By Michele Meyer

That slick brochure, detailed whitepaper, and tip-packed PowerPoint that the marketing team painstakingly crafted for its sales colleagues?

Most likely nobody read them. Just one of 10 marketing materials are read—despite a voracious thirst for knowl-edge that leads salespeople to devote 30 hours monthly to hunting for or creating their own materials, accord-ing to the American Marketing Association.

It’s time for marketers to stop wasting time and effort—theirs and their sales team’s—and implement these four paths to irresistible sales-targeted content:

1. Team up with your sellers from the startMarketers should ask sales reps what they need and in what form, and then keep them looped in throughout the creation process. The easier marketers make it for salespeople to share their thoughts, the more successful they’ll be in creating content that salespeople will use, says Brian Cleary, chief strategy officer at bigtincan, which creates mobile engagement programs.

“Millennials are very comfortable with social collabo-ration, plus its incredible feedback,” Cleary cites as an example of one way to elicit input from salespeople. “You get access to knowledge that otherwise might be locked in people’s laptops and heads.”

Auction.com, an online real estate marketplace, turned to bigtincan’s platform when it realized its top perform-ers’ techniques weren’t filtering down to the overall workforce of 900 spread across 18 states. Now auction-eers can see in real time which marketing materials their colleagues used and how, and get instant updates from operational managers. As important, the marketers who created the materials can see that information, as well, and use it to inform what other materials they’ll create.

Results: Eighty-five percent of Auction.com’s employ-ees share on its content hub, leading to a 20% drop in escalations and a 30% decline in emails to managers.

2. Don’t sell products; solve problems Top sales performers address what prospects care about: resolving their challenges. Content that marketers create for salespeople to use needs to support those efforts.

Indeed, Motorola Solutions found that pitchy instead of educational marketing materials led to low usage of its ex-tensive videos, brochures, and PowerPoint presentations touting its latest products. The company also learned that salespeople were interested in materials that would inform and prepare them for client engagements, not just collateral they could leave behind or send links to.

“We’d failed to appreciate that content is more than a conduit of marketing,” says Gary Van Prooyen, senior director of North American marketing for the data com-munications and telecommunications equipment provid-er. “The sales team has its own needs: selling solutions to

customers’ burdens, not ‘gee-whiz’ features.” Corporate Visions, a sales training consultant, helped

Motorola create situation-based one-pagers and cue-card decks that guide salespeople step-by-step through the sales process for specific solutions and scenarios.

Results: Reps were 47 times more likely to view the new kits than other marketing content; 94% of the reps deem the kits practical and 75% call them “critical to success.” Indeed, the solution-targeted tools led to $1.675 million in closed deals and an estimated $7 million in new opportuni-ties, Van Prooyen says. “The new kits paid out in spades.”

3. Keep it fresh—and top-of-mindNo surprise here: Marketers should be continuously pro-ducing content salespeople can use. “By being live with fresh content demands, you give salespeople what they need,” says Dela Quist, CEO at Alchemy Worx, an email content marketing company. Otherwise, he says, sales-people may download what they need on a given day from their company’s site or intranet, “come back in three days, find nothing new—and never return.”

Along with producing a stream of fresh content, market-ers should ensure that salespeople not only know that new content is available, but also know what it is. An email newsletter sent to the sales team that includes the latest tips and updates is one way to keep salespeople engaged and in the know. “We’ve found that our most popular content is the content we promote the most,” Quist says.

The newsletter should be well-crafted yet succinct, “fo-cused on the quickest, yet most intelligent ways to the deal,” Quist says. And it should be timed daily, weekly, or monthly, as preferred by the recipients. “Salespeople only use it if they love it.”

Results: Alchemy Worx’s own sales team heads first to the newsletter and only then to its archives.

4. Show, don’t just tellContent for salespeople doesn’t always need to be content they can share with customers. Sometimes marketers can use content to help salespeople improve their skill-set or encourage them to buy in to adopting a new tool. For example, including videos of top sales performers using new technology can help adoption rates soar.

“It’s far more powerful—and practical—to see one of their own use technology seamlessly, rather than just read about it,” says Janelle Johnson, director of demand gen at Act-On Software, a marketing automation platform. This worked well with the ROI calculator the company introduced in April. “The top producers could walk their peers through with real-life examples of how they’d used the tool in the field, and how effective it was,” Johnson says.

Results: Within weeks, the adoption rate rose to 60% of reps. A briefly broken link thwarting access to the tool un-derscored its value, Johnson says: “We were flooded with requests to fix it, which is a telling sign they rely on it.” n

Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | H0T LIST


Millenni-als are very comfortable with social collabora-tion, plus its incredible feedback. You get access to knowledge that other-wise might be locked in people’s laptops and heads.

Brian Cleary bigtincan

GLOBAL | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015

Found in Translation: 7 Global Content Marketing

Do’s and Don’ts

Too few marketers consider how their content will translate, literally and figuratively,

in other languages and locations.


Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | GLOBAL

By Eric Krell

When it comes to lessons in translating marketing content, who can forget the tale of the Nova debacle?

In what was purported to be a classic market-ing blunder, General Motors (GM) introduced its Chevy Nova to the Mexico market several decades ago without any consideration of how the automo-bile’s name translated. “Nova,” as anyone with a little Spanish knows, translates to “doesn’t go.” Who on earth would buy a product designed to get you from point A to point B with that name? Nary a soul, the story goes: The Nova’s Mexico sales fizzled and GM halted its massive marketing effort and then rebrand-ed the car with a new name, to a highly skeptical buying public.

Today, translation savvy is becoming more and more important as more companies translate their marketing messages—and especially their content—into multiple languages. “Today’s marketers are being forced to adapt their approaches to meet the demanding needs associated with the rise of global-ization,” says Paige O’Neill, CMO of software and services translation company SDL. The change is not a smooth one so far: A majority of U.S.-based companies (65%) dedicate less than 5% of their bud-gets to reach non-English-speaking customers and prospects outside the U.S., according to a survey by translation technology company Smartling.

Content-marketing translations need to demon-strate cultural awareness if they are to succeed.

The process starts with crafting the right market-ing message in one’s native tongue. “Your business case is your business case, and that should translate globally,” says Glen Springer, president of marketing automation and content management firm Gabriel Sales. “The anchor sales story you tell doesn’t really change and neither does the business case. That’s where you need to start.”

From there, marketing-translation experts say, it helps to adhere to the following do’s while side-step-ping several don’ts:

DO enlist experts—and create style guidesAs part of its effort to reach more Spanish-speaking healthcare-insurance buyers in the U.S., Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), the country’s largest customer-owned health insurer, invested sig-nificant resources to adapt its marketing messages. This adaptation extends beyond basic English-to-Spanish translation; the approach includes detailed

market and behavioral research, changes in how marketing is delivered (e.g., more via cell phone than via email), and the acquisition of new market-ing talent. In 2013 HCSC hired Director, Demo-graphic Market Segments Carlos Garcia partly due to his impressive record connecting with the U.S. Hispanic market in the cell phone industry. Garcia has also hired translation experts. “The most im-portant lesson for any organization starting out in this space is to rely on the experts,” he notes. “Lit-eral Spanish translations have proved ineffective.”

HCSC created a Center of Translation/Adaptation Excellence whose mission is to ensure that the es-sence of its English marketing message is adapted to Spanish. “It is never a word-for-word literal transla-tion,” Garcia says. “To be successful, we created a glossary of terms and a style guide to ensure that we are consistent in how we communicate in Spanish.”

DON’T neglect qualityNataly Kelly, vice president of marketing at Smar-tling, describes subpar quality as “one of the big-gest translation pitfalls that should be avoided.” Some marketing organizations, in their rush to get content translated quickly and cost-effectively, give short shrift to the accuracy of the translation they ultimately deliver to customers and prospects. “Poor translations tell customers you don’t really care about their experience, which can lead to lost sales and brand damage,” Kelly explains. “Quality is king, and content marketers must choose their translation resources wisely.” Expert human trans-lation is the best way to ensure high-quality mul-tilingual content; it is also more time-consuming and expensive than computer-generated translation tools (and more expensive compared to translations performed by bilingual employees or volunteers).

DON’T translate everythingTranslate strategically regarding languages, chan-nels, and methods. “Just because your customer base speaks 30 different languages doesn’t mean you have to translate content into all of them,” says Kelly, who recommends limiting translation to priority languages that deliver the most ROI. U.S. companies that sell do-mestically only, for example, should consider translat-ing content into Spanish; U.S. businesses that also sell in Canada should consider French translation. Trans-lation management technology can simplify, stream-line, and reduce costs associated with the creation, management, and delivery of multilingual content;

3 CONTENT-TRANSLATION ACTION ITEMSNataly Kelly, vice president of marketing at Smartling, recommends that content marketers consider the following steps when evaluating which content to translate.

1) Use the 80/20 rule. “A lot of marketers think that they have to translate everything; they don’t,” Kelly says. “Use the 80/20 rule to start, and stay focused on translating and localizing only the critical content that really drives business.” Also, consider starting translation efforts with mobile apps, where the amount of text to be translated is fairly limited and therefore quicker and less expensive to translate.

2) Limit translation to select languages. Compa-nies that sell in numerous countries should consider factors such as revenue (by country/language), customers (by country/language), and the inten-sity of competition in each global location.

3) Let technology do the heavy lifting. “Long gone are the days of traditional, manual translation with hundreds of spreadsheets of content in need of translation and end-less back and forth with translators,” Kelly says. “Today, content marketers can have the best of both worlds: high-quality, ac-curate human translations paired with translation process automation that enables companies to de-liver multilingual content in weeks rather than months or years.”

consider using this technology in tandem with human translation experts who can spot subtler language and cultural nuances.

DO collaborate, early and “glocally”When Amway created a campaign celebrating the 80th anniversary of its Nutrilite supplement brand last year, the world’s largest direct-selling company rolled out content in a “glocal” manner, according to Kanan Banerjee, Amway’s vice president, global nutrition marketing. “The biggest challenge is com-ing up with global content that is also personalized to ensure nothing is lost in translation across loca-tions, languages, and cultures,” Banerjee explains. “In our experience the best content is that which is glocal in nature.” The key to achieving that glocal-ity—which treats the global marketing campaign as an “umbrella” under which local marketing teams adapt content to local languages and cultural prefer-ences—is involving local marketing experts early in the campaign design process, Banerjee adds.

DO get visualIn a blog post on international holiday shopping, Adobe’s Loni Stark promotes the translation-friend-ly nature of visual images. “One way to protect against botched translations and misunderstand-ings is to use the universal language of pictures,” writes Stark, director of product marketing for Adobe Experience Manager. “In India, for example, a huge portion of the population shops online and browses on smartphones. But bear in mind there are dozens of languages and thousands of dialects in use throughout the country. That’s a lot of oppor-tunity for even the most careful marketers to get it wrong. To communicate effectively to these mobile masses, marketers are moving away from text al-together and speaking in images.” Banerjee agrees, noting that Nutrilite marketing content embraces a “cinematic approach to video and a photojournal-ism approach to still assets.”

DON’T ignore cultural translationPhotographs and videos may translate more easily,

but they’re not without their own pitfalls. A cam-paign for a comfy office chair that shows a man-ager kicking back with her feet on her desk may be well-received in the U.S. but turn off prospec-tive customers in Japan. SDL’s O’Neill says that “not keeping up with and incorporating cultural or industry-specific nuances and idioms” marks a common content-marketing translation pitfall. Lo-cal language and cultural experts can help spot and correct cultural shortcomings.

DO the basics once you’ve translatedOnce content is translated it should be monitored for effectiveness, as well as for accuracy. “With the right marketing automation platform in place it’s easy to measure what story and pieces of content resonate and produce the most, and you can focus your re-sources on amplifying what works,” Gabriel Sales’ Springer says. Those insights also can help market-ers prioritize their investments in translations, Smar-tling’s Kelly adds.

Given the increasingly global nature of business and changing domestic demographics, there’s little doubt that many marketing organizations will be spending more on content-translation in the coming years. One of the best translation investments is lin-guistic and cultural intelligence.

A sharp translator would never have fallen for the urban myth of Chevy Nova’s stalled launch in Mexico (or other Latin American countries as vari-ous versions have it). First, while “no va” literally translates to “it doesn’t go,” Spanish speakers would not use that phrase to describe a car; instead they likely would say, “no funciona.” Second, “nova” and “no va” are pronounced differently in Spanish; as the rumor-debunking site Snopes points out, English speakers wouldn’t think twice about a dining table brand named “Notable.” Third, a gasoline with the name has been sold in Mexico for decades.

That said, the Chevy Nova narrative serves as an instructive lesson to content marketers due to its staying power, which is a vivid reminder of the importance of intelligent linguistic and cultural translations. n

GLOBAL | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015


25%➜ U.S. millennials who speak a language besides English in their homes-SDL

65%➜ Content marketers who don’t know the number (53 million) of Spanish-language speakers in the U.S.-Smartling

65%➜ U.S.-based marketing func-tions that use fewer than 5% of their budget to reach non-English-speaking customers outside the U.S.-Smartling

72%➜ Online consumers in eight countries who would be more likely to buy a product with information in their own language-Common Sense Advisory

56%➜ Consumers who say that the ability to obtain product information in their own language is a more important purchase determinant than price-Common Sense Advisory

Poor transla-tions tell cus-tomers you don’t really care about their experi-ence, which can lead to lost sales and brand dam-age. Quality is king, and content mar-keters must choose their translation resources wisely.

Nataly Kelly Smartling

VIDEO PUTS MARKETING IN MOTION Popular among consumers for everything

from education to entertainment, video should also be a content marketing staple.

Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | VIDEO


54% ➜ Online video ads of 30 seconds or less -Videology

26%➜ Compound annual growth rate of video advertising through 2017 -Forrester

10%➜ Lower view-completion rate for mobile viewers compared to desktop users -Videology

119%➜ Increase in average order size for customers who watch 10+ videos compared to those who watch one video -Liveclicker

58%➜ B2B purchases influenced by video content marketing -Demand Gen Report

By Jason Compton

Reluctant to incorporate video into your content marketing efforts? It may be time to examine your intimacy issues. “Video is by far the most emotional medium, yet businesses

are afraid to take advantage,” says Chris Savage, cofounder of video hosting platform Wistia. “Video makes it easy to be authen-tic and connect.”

Shunning video will put you behind the curve. According to a Social Media Examiner survey, 73% of marketers are increasing investment in original video. From blink-and-you’ll-miss-them video loops made popular by services like Vine and Coub, to feature-length produc-tions that inform and educate, video connects with prospects on an immediate and visceral level.

Here’s how to weave video into the marketing mix without busting the budget.

Video saves the dayThe right video campaign, it seems, can make or break a business. Jamie Shanks, CEO of training firm Sales For Life, credits video with saving his company. When the firm’s original model as a sales recruiter went sour in 2011, Shanks reinvented it around sales train-ing. But he had few references to build from. He gambled short-term revenue on a content marketing strategy, hoping that a rapidly grow-ing testimonial base would convince others to sign on.

Working with SAVO, Sales For Life designed digital postcards that combine video, infographics, and call-to-action screens in a single mi-crosite. “I would give away training for free in exchange for a video testimonial, with sales leaders sharing real, tactical reasons for using my business,” he says.

Rather than simply hoping to be discovered in organic search or incorporating the videos in a drip campaign, the company directly promoted the videos to partners and competitors of testimonial customers. The strategy worked and the firm f lourished with the new model.

Today, Sales For Life credits half of its revenue to content market-ing. With a sales cycle that can last a year or more, it’s impossible to pin success on any single item. But virtually every published content item—from blog posts to landing pages—includes at least one video, and testimonial videos continue to play a huge role. Shanks says he’s not afraid to ask customers to participate, even though their success will be used to entice a rival to learn the same sales techniques. “They’re not stupid, they know we’re going to show it to their competitors, that’s just part of our ecosystem,” he says. “Now it’s in our contract: Upon the success of our program you’re going to make a video with us, because that’s what got you in the front door.”

Visuals on a budgetWhen a single Super Bowl ad can cost more than $1 million to pro-duce, it’s easy to regard video as out of reach for all but the largest war chest. But modern technology and a little creativity make slick results entirely possible on a more modest budget.

Clothier ModCloth publishes videos on its product pages to demon-strate real-world fit and to help consumers find the right look. That’s a large undertaking for a vendor with a wide variety of inventory, so ModCloth works lean. Amateur, unretouched models show off the clothes in videos shot by a one-man crew in a conference room that has been converted to a studio.

The models and clothes may change, but the look and feel of the videos stay consistent. That means no extra time and expense tear-ing down and setting up again in exotic locales, or green-screening models against different backdrops. “If they’re watching the video, they know the ModCloth brand, so we want them to know what they’re going to get when they fire up a video from a product page,” says Andrew Witchey, ModCloth merchandise video manager. “We want the video to just be about the product, and helping visitors de-cide if it’s a beneficial purchase for them.”

ModCloth leaves room in its video budget to consult reports and refocus future clips. Looking through statistics from the Wistia video hosting platform, for example, ModCloth noticed that its users were rewinding and pausing to the introduction, when the model’s mea-surements were shown. Videos are now edited to show the measure-ments for virtually the entire duration of the clip.

Stories worth tellingCoffee brand Illy began its branded entertainment efforts in 2011 with a simple goal: focus on engagement, not advertising. “Instead of interrupting what’s interesting to the audience, we would like to

THE NUMBERS

Coffee brand Illy focuses its content on engagement,not advertising.


VIDEO | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015

become what’s interesting to watch,” says Paolo Bon-signore, marketing director, EMEA at Illy.

Illy saw early success with an episode of National Geographic Channel’s “Megafactory” series, which focused on the company’s huge Italian plant. The suc-cess of that episode spurred the coffee company’s mar-keters to create an episodic series, Artisti del Gusto (Artists of Taste), a lavishly shot look at barista cul-ture. Most recent, Illy produced a feature-length doc-umentary, A Small Section of the World, focusing on a woman-owned-and-run coffee mill in Costa Rica—the first of its kind.

“For over 20 years Illy has only bought coffee di-rectly from growers, which is how we know the coffee is the quality we want,” Bonsignore says. Illy wanted to demonstrate the principles behind this decision in a more visceral way than just a slogan on a coffee can, but recog-nized that it knows coffee better than it knows filmmaking.

The company engaged renowned doc-umentarian Lesley Chilcott to tell the story, and the services of agency Film-Buff to bring the film to a wide variety of content distribution platforms, includ-ing Netflix. “It doesn’t really matter to us who finances a piece of content, as long as it’s good,” says Janet Brown, FilmBuff CEO. “Brands are realizing that video is a great tool if they have a great story.”

Brown salutes Illy as a sterling example of smart, subtle video content marketing. “Be smart about how obvious your involvement is; the less obvious, the bet-ter,” Brown says. “In Illy’s case, they used video to capture their high-level brand values in a way that’s organic and natural to the brand.”

The soft touch is paying off. Being more active in social media has helped Illy double its direct consum-er database over the past two years, and Bonsignore credits half of that improvement to content marketing efforts like Megafactory and Artists of Taste.

The surprising ease of simplicity and flexibilityDirector/producer John Mounier left behind a ca-reer in national broadcast working with 15-camera shoots for a one-man production company. He knew that simply repeating his long-form work for brands would be a mistake. “We’re inundated with market-ing videos all the time. We skip past them because we’re not interested,” Mounier says. “For video to be successful on the Web, it has to be authentic, right to the point, and short.”

As an experiment, Mounier did an 80-second video profiling the life of a friend and painter. “I had an

epiphany. You can get a lot of narrative in that short period of time, and that’s what people are looking for,” he says.

Mounier now helps professionals tell their stories and build their personal brand in short profile videos of about one minute each. The entire process takes less than a day, and Mounier rarely shoots footage for more than a single hour. That’s because one of the cost-cutting, time-saving secrets of modern video is that much of the work can be done without ever pick-ing up a camera.

If he needs to illustrate an idea with footage that he can’t find or create in that timeframe, he pulls down a

stock clip from VideoBlocks, a service that curates and publishes royalty-free video. “I did a television series in 2006 that had a budget over $60,000 per episode for stock footage. Today, for a couple hundred dollars per year, I can find all kinds of tiny nuggets to fill the gaps in our videos,” Mounier says. “And having access to tons of interest-ing footage really lets you get creative.”

Using royalty-free library content makes it feasible for modest operations to experiment with structure and mes-saging without significantly increasing production costs. “Some of our most

successful customers will create six or seven versions of a single video and do A/B testing. That would cost a fortune to do with a traditional agency and film crew,” says Joel Holland, VideoBlocks CEO and founder. “But when you have time and a library of templates, you can sit down and be creative.”

The good newsVideo has never been more important to include in a brand’s content marketing efforts—but it’s also nev-er been easier to include. Even marketers concerned about mobile video complicating their efforts can re-lax. Today’s hosting platforms and mobile operating systems do all of the heavy lifting.

Keep in mind that wide, sweeping panoramic shots aren’t as effective on a four-inch screen as they are on a wall-mounted television, so mobile users will appreciate closer footage. As far as actual playback is concerned, video requires no special tweaking or optimizing. “The vast majority of video platforms are device-agnostic,” FilmBuff’s Brown says.

Whether you shoot for the big or the small screen, getting your video content strategy in order is defi-nitely worth the trouble, as Sales For Life discovered when it meant the difference between shuttering and success. “Our company wouldn’t exist if we didn’t understand how to deploy video properly,” Sales For Life’s Shanks says. n

7 VIDEO DO’S AND DON’TS

1. DO consider audio as important as video.

Forget the high-end camera—buy a decent

microphone. “When people watch a video, they’re good

at looking for a reason not to like it, and one of the

easiest ways to dismiss a video is poor audio,” Hol-land says. “Go buy a $30

microphone. It will make a big difference.”

2. DO use video to tell a unique story visually,

not just to replace the printed word.

“Don’t make a five-minute video that could have been a three-paragraph article,”

says Erika Trautman, CEO and founder of Rapt Media.

3. DO keep it brief.“Shorter is almost always

better. Three minutes is now considered excruciat-

ingly long,” Holland says.

4. DO be prolific. “The more content we

poured out for free that was tactical and could be

implemented immediately, the better our business became,” Shanks says.

5. DON’T default to humor. Video doesn’t have to

be funny to be effective. “There’s a humor backlash

because either you nail the joke, or it’s potentially

offensive,” Trautman says. “What we see as effective

is authenticity and speaking to your customers’ per-

spective and pain points.”

6. DON’T overuse pan-orama. If your audience

is predominantly mobile, zoom in. “You want nice,

close-cropped shots that show up well on a small

device,” Holland says.

7. DON’T procrastinate. Pick up a camera and start

experimenting. “Don’t talk. Make,” director/producer

Mounier says.

“What’s the point of doing a test if you’re not going to listen to the results?”Andrew Kordek Trendline Interactive

Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | VIDEO


By Ginger Conlon Content marketing is as old as, well, marketing itself. Many of its core principles and approaches are as valid today as they were when first introduced. Others are as out-of-date as poodle skirts and spats. To clarify which approaches to keep and which to catapult, we asked a baker’s dozen content marketing experts the following: What’s one assumption or practice from content marketing’s early days that still applies, or one that it’s time to let go of and move on—and why? Here, their responses.

TRENDS | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015


Content Marketing Strategies to Keep—and to Abandon Content marketing is an age-old practice. Some

methods are worth keeping; others, not so much.

MATT SCOTTSVP of Strategy and Business Development, CrowdtapBrands have been telling their stories through content for de-cades, but until recently they’ve been the sole authors of these stories. As consumers increas-ingly behave and engage as self-publishers in their own right—le-veraging social media platforms and digital technologies to make their voice heard, instantly—the world of content marketing has undergone democratization.

People define themselves by the brands they trust and love, and share their [brand] experi-ences candidly via social media. Forward-thinking marketers are realizing that these conversations can be inspired, shaped, and harnessed to play a lead role in their brand’s overall marketing efforts, fueling authentic and compelling user-generated con-tent—which is trusted above all other forms of media, per Ipsos Media CT research.

Brands have always lived in-side of the hearts and minds of consumers, and now marketers have the tools and technologies that make it easy for them to put real people at the heart of their content strategy.


Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | TRENDS

MICKY LONGVP and Practice Director of Lead Nurturing, Arketi GroupA significant change in today’s approach is the desired length of marketing content, which has led to the concepts of “snackable” and “long-form” content. Traditional approaches focused primarily on the subject matter and budget for de-velopment and much less on the length of the final product. Deep, detailed, and lengthy whitepapers full of technical specs were the norm—and often the more that could be crammed into the document the better, as content was usually the way to show off subject matter expertise.

Longer content that dives deep into a subject can still work, depending on how it’s used. But in today’s rapid-fire, multitasking world, prospects are significantly less likely to want to curl up with a nice technology-focused whitepaper. Instead, shorter, list-based, to-the-point content (tip sheets, infographics, etc.) that can be digested in a shorter timeframe will perform better. The obvious challenge is that it takes much more thought and editing discipline to produce shorter content that is both relevant and useful. And to maintain a level of excitement in the blog post, guide, or whitepaper to keep the prospect interested.

ADRYANNA SUTHERLANDPresident, gyro CincinnatiBrands must stop emphasizing quantity over quality. The early days of content marketing were all about get-ting noticed and being heard. Brands worked to create a big presence, and emerging digital and social media tools enabled companies to project large volumes of content to the masses. Some believed this spray-and-pray mentality was an effective strategy to help them become more discoverable. But search engines like Google soon became quite sophisticated by changing their algorithms to favor content that offers more value to the user. Quantity was no longer an advantage for search, and it never was for the buyer. Savvy brands had already been focusing on creating more compel-ling content that was contextually relevant—knowing that it’s better to put out fewer pieces of content with a unique point of view to reach and connect with the right individual. Today, knowing your audience is critically important, and a brand should carefully consider each piece of content and each channel. When brands tailor content to the buyers’ needs in a humanly relevant way, they can achieve better results. After all, connecting on that emotional level is something that hasn’t changed, no matter what medium is being used to tell the story.

KRISTA LARIVIERE CEO and Cofounder, gShiftOne content marketing practice from early days that still applies today is audience targeting. Creating content that’s relevant to an intended target market, answers their ques-tions, and helps them make informed decisions will always be one of the most important practices for content market-ing. The technologies and data that content marketers have access to today would make early-day marketers jealous. Unfortunately, not all content marketers take a data-driven

approach to content marketing investments.Audience targeting in 2015 is about using data to inform the content marketing

workflow process to create smarter content that the intended audience is looking for in search engines and social media. Strong content marketers will use technologies to understand where and when to distribute content digitally to intercept the target au-dience in the most appropriate channels. The success of audience targeting can now be proven with data to understand if the content is working.

Audience targeting will always be a significant practice in the content marketing process. Content marketers need to evolve with the technologies that are available to help them create smarter content and prove the performance and engagement of that content by channel and audience type.

CAMERON UGANECDirector, Marketing and Communications , HootsuiteThe best marketers have always used storytelling to connect and inspire an audience to act. The customer is the hero, overcoming a conflict using a special tool : your product or service. This traditional story structure is as old as humankind, and has always been an effective tool for marketers.

But in the broadcast era, there was a shift where many brands turned their products into the hero. They would focus more on features, specifications , and statistics rather than telling stories —a far less effective way to market your business.

I often use this analogy: When your colleagues ask you about a conference you attended, you don’t start with facts and figures. You don’t state that you met ‘x’ number of people or slept ‘x’ number of hours. When you’re asked about your children, you don’t say they’re four feet

tall and weigh 45 pounds. You tell stories. Questions about your business deserve the same treatment.Thankfully, with the rise of social media and the empowered audience, we’re now shifting back to storytelling. Stories are inherently social; they help us

build connections and make sense of the world. Content marketing shares these goals, which is what makes storytelling such an effective practice.

TRENDS | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015


HERB MITSCHELECEO, ShodoggOne of the most valuable components of content marketing has been and continues to be the col-lection of data to better understand how your au-dience consumes and shares your content. Being able to analyze the ROI of your content marketing efforts is extremely valuable to any business; that’s a known fact. However, ensuring that you analyze the right data to make informed decisions about what’s working and what’s not is a huge asset for

both your sales and your marketing engines. Make sure you have technology in place to track relevant data points that highlight

the KPIs your business needs to guide decision-making. Start analyzing high-level data points, and then drill down into the details once you start to see patterns that are important. This is going to tell you the effectiveness of your content and what you might do differently next time to improve.

DEAN WATERSCEO, VIMBYToday’s media landscape is a world controlled by consumers, viewing what they want, when they want it. The days of pushing intrusive marketing messages and hoping it will convert to a transaction or the beginning of a relationship are over.

Content marketers need to let go of traditional, invasive, hard-hitting methods and focus on gaining new consumers or keeping existing ones through a trusted and genuine voice. What’s more, marketers need to embrace an always-on men-tality for delivering compelling and relevant content, in real time, laying the ground-work for long-term customer relationships, which lead to organic distribution.

With the separation between advertising and content marketing continuing to grow, media fragmentation is more defined, and brands are being challenged with implementing greater relationship-building methods through content mar-keting. This makes trusted relationships with key audiences more impor-tant than ever.

As for the future of the industry, we believe success will come from tapping close-knit, guarded, and specialized communities, which are hard-to-reach audiences. These customers are influenced by their peers and have suc-cessfully broken away from all the noise, making them ideal candidates for customer relationships.

JENNIFER SMITHMarketing Communications Director, Corporate Visions Inc.The adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” may have been introduced in the early 1900s, but it still rings true today. The part of your prospect’s brain that makes a decision—known as the “lizard brain” or “old brain”—doesn’t have the capacity for

language. Instead, it relies on images, not text, to create contrast, which also creates the urgency required to convince people to change whatever status quo bias they’re currently entrenched in. The most successful content marketing practices today, tomor-row, and beyond will continue to incorporate visual storytelling techniques that paint a clear picture for prospects and customers.

ANNE BUEHNERSocial Media Manager, Red DoorThere’s noth-ing quite as alluring as a s tra te g i cal ly e m p a t h e t i c

brand. Content marketing has been giving a voice to these brands for years. Originally, brands developed and promoted magazines, newsletters, guides, and recipes books to communicate beyond sales-driven messag-ing. The core idea that a brand can be a valuable resource for consumers is still relevant today. When a brand knows its audience (the demo-graphics, psychographics, journey, hopes and fears, concerns, etc.), it has an opportunity to practice empathy. From a recipe that shows a new use for a product or ingredient to a video that shows how something is made over gen-erations of artisans, the best content taps into the need-state or emotion of the consumer. This helps build trust, loyalty, and connection between brand and consumer today.

MARLA SCHIMKEVP of Marketing, ZumobiContent will always be king, but how we distribute it has drastically changed. Content, once only watched on black-and-white TV screens at specific programming times, can now be accessed by billions via millions of sites like YouTube or Vine—anytime, anywhere thanks to the smartphone. Content delivery has changed dra-

matically. For the first time ever, mobile viewing has exceeded TV, according to analytics firm Flurry. However, content that tells a story, inspires, and excites will always be in vogue—be it 1950 or 2050.

Recently, the Content Marketing Institute found that 84% of marketers are working to find more outlets and better ways to repurpose their branded content. Content placement, or the “where,” is just as important as good content. Today, brands have numerous vehicles for content dispersion, such as their own branded apps, right at their fingertips. With these apps, users have already opted in and are more inclined to become brand loyalists. To keep users coming back, brands can present fresh, dynamic in-app content by way of a mobile content hub. In ag-gregating their existing content from multiple channels like blogs, RSS feeds, and, of course, social media, they can create the optimal audience. Good content is a requirement. Good content placement? That’s business.

NATALY KELLYVP of Research, SmartlingThe “old days” of content marketing can mean just a year or two ago. Best practices change rapidly, and SEO drives most of these changes.

In the early days of digital content marketing there was more of a focus on quantity in some ways than on quality. For example, a com-mon technique was to break up a long blog post or a long eBook into multiple, shorter pieces. That practice is becoming outdated now. Why? In the past, having more pages was a strong signal to search engines that a site had good content, and lots of it. However, as more marketers have relied on this practice, other signals that relate more to engagement—such as bounce rate, time on site, and social shares—are becoming more important indicators of search relevance. So, long-form content is becoming more popular, because it’s viewed as more valuable and offers substance, as long as it’s easy to consume.

Another assumption or practice from the past was that content mar-keting teams were primarily writers, and didn’t necessarily need to be well versed in SEO; these were viewed as two separate disciplines. Today it’s impossible to have a strong content marketing team without SEO expertise. All marketers today create content for two audiences: hu-mans and bots. Even though search engine marketing has evolved, and measurable human behavior plays more of a role in determining search relevance, knowing how to create the best content for both audiences is a balancing act, and remains a challenge for modern marketing teams.


Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015 | TRENDS

MICHELLE GENSERSenior Director, Communications and Analyst Relations, SAVOOne practice from content marketing that should change is gating. Today, buyers—especially B2B purchasers—are looking to self-educate before they start the buying journey. By gating content you’re preventing this from happen-ing because prospects don’t want to provide their name too early in their journey. If they’re forced to do this, they won’t read your good content and probably won’t consider you as a potential vendor. If you keep your content open, however, prospects can review and even share your content with colleagues, which helps educate them about your solution. You build confidence among your prospects by keeping content available for review, sharing, and education.

SLOAN GAONCEO, PulsePoint"Content is king” still applies, but the new riff on that age-old saying, is that if content is king, then distribution is queen.

Marketers understand the importance of evaluating campaigns for both brand impact and tangible perfor-mance goals, and while content marketing has helped brands to create one-to-one engagements with audi-ences, scaling it has been viewed as a challenge.

Content quality will always be important, but to truly capture maximum value, content marketing needs to be realized at scale. Advances in advertis-ing technology, specifically programmatic, are the final piece to the puzzle that allows marketers to do this today.

Our industry has embraced automation, and programmatic has moved up the funnel to take on content marketing and branding campaigns. In fact, ac-cording to industry research we recently conducted, 83% of marketers believe that content marketing will be delivered programmatically by 2017.

Thanks to the convergence of programmatic and content marketing, mar-keters no longer need to choose between solutions that offer both efficiency and high engagement.


PARTING SHOT | Essential Guide to Content Marketing 2015

The Art of Content Marketing

Respondents who say that

their brands currently create:

57% Email newsletters49% Images43% Short-form content

Planning

Conversion

Inspiration

Senior marketers who consider the following critical to their success

as digital marketers.

Senior marketers who determine what their audiences are interested in by means of:

31% Performance data from past content/campaigns31% Active monitoring of social channel activity28% Intuition

60% Written content 51% Visual content

60%60% ntent n contWritWrittenritten content 51% ntVisual sual contentis l co n

Respondents who say that the following forms of

content touch two to three people before going live:

25% Facebook 16% Twitter

Respondents who plan their content a month or more ahead of time for:

Yes

No, and we have no plans to develop them

No, but we plan to develop them in the next six months

Senior marketers who use content topics for planning:

SOURCE: Percolate

Senior marketers who consider the following major challenges

for their marketing teams:31% Creating content faster31% Collaborating with teams and partners on content creation29% Creating a greater volume of content25% Having a single place for planning, content/media, and publishing24% Knowing what everyone else is working on

49% Useful in some situations, but not all

25% A valuable option for their marketing teams

16% Not an effective or viable option

10% Something that they’re not really familiar with

Respondents who consider

externally sourced content:

When it comes to creating content, not all marketers share the same aesthetic. Some prefer a more humorous approach, while others enjoy producing educational information. There are also a number of mediums content marketers can explore, ranging from blog posts to videos. But even if marketers don't share the same content style, they often struggle with the same challenges: mainly, speed and collaboration.

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