New To Content Marketing?

A Student's Perspective on the Different Channels of Marketing

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Steps in Defining Your Content Marketing Strategies

Last week’s post delved into what it takes to be a successful marketer, dealing with the risks that the industry forces you to take and how you must learn from your and your colleagues’ mistakes in order to grow as an accomplished marketer. This week’s focus is emphatic on the goals that every marketer should set before conducting a content marketing strategy, content strategy and a content plan. But before we get into that, we must first distinguish the small variances between the three easily interchangeable terms.

Content Marketing Strategy vs. Content Strategy

To the laymen, content marketing strategy and content strategy sound redundant and interchangeable, understandably so, but there is a noticeable difference when we dissect the two. First, content marketing strategy can be defined as the “why?” factor in your marketing goal that helps the marketer groom their strategy towards meeting their end goal as a business. When thinking, “why?” it helps illustrate your purpose in creating content in the first place, to determine whom you’re trying to help and in doing so helps you figure out how you will help them, the consumer. Content strategy slightly differs because it has a deeper meaning and tends to go beyond the scope of your content marketing strategy. Defined in Kristina Halvorson’s words, content strategy is the “creation, publication, and governance of useful content.” In my own words, content strategy is a tool meant to manage the content that a business has, acting as a filtration of your existing content to make sure it fits with the needs of your audience. To give a rough synopsis or summary rather, it all revolves around organization in defining clear goals and clear methods to achieve said goals. 

This is where we get to the “meat” of this post. The main objective is to have organization! You can find something similar in any “self-help book” that you read, stressing the importance of setting organized, clear and achievable goals as a preliminary step. The same applies for marketing and developing a marketing campaign in that the only way to attain goals is to set them in the beginning to not let your efforts go in vain when your content falls on deaf ears. This relates to last week’s post in that marketers need to know what their audiences want, which should ultimately be your main goal, proving the correlation between these two recent posts.

Devising a marketing campaign holds little merit if you don’t construct a game plan that fits the needs and wants of the consumer. Some marketers, and all “self-help books” will even say that it is beneficial to physically write these goals down to cement them into your brain as a mantra would. It may seem a little tedious or even juvenile to write down your goals on a piece of paper, somewhat like you would a Christmas gift wish list when you believed in Santa, or whatever your beliefs were, but sometimes adult practices don’t always have to be sophisticated and referring back to your roots of when you first learned about organization may not be so juvenile in the end.

This is applicable in any scenario but lets imagine you are a marketing consultant hired by a company to give external advice or physically manage their content marketing campaign. You need to go into that first meeting ready to hit the ground running and establish yourself with the company that is seeking your expertise providing evidence of your competence right off the bat. The first thing you need to ask that company is what they wish to achieve and what their target audience wishes to achieve in order to better curate a method and give direction to your content marketing strategy and content strategy, aiming to meet these goals. This is where that third term comes into play, Content Plan.

Content Plan

The reason for talking about Content Plan last is because it is that last step in your content development and delegation. Content Planning is where you document the specifics of the execution of your strategy and whom you delegate out of your team to satisfy these tasks. This is why it is imperative to finish the first two steps before looking at the Content Plan so that you can put it into action but it is also why this third step is equally as important as the first two and if it not done correctly it can waste all the time you spent on devising your strategy. How you decide to publish your content and whom out of your team you deem the most qualified to share your content, in the way that you wish to be perceived by your audience, is all part of your Content Plan. By this time, all the hard work and brainstorming is done and it boils down to execution and delivery of your content.

Not to discredit myself, but as always, I hope this was informative to anyone out there willing to learn from the conceptualizations of a pre-grad Business Marketing major.

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Learning From Content Marketing Failures

Today’s lesson is to allow the failures of others be lessons for you before you have to fail yourself.

Once in the world of marketing, after years of schooling and training, you will find that failure is inevitable and should be anticipated. Most successful marketers have endless horror stories of their failed attempts and mistrials but it is through these losses that have ultimately lead them to their successes.   What I have started getting in the habit of doing in my research, instead of purely researching the greatest methods of effective content marketing, is researching where marketers went wrong and how they fell short.

In this video below, there are four big hitting B2B marketers ranging from Head of Strategy, Senior Managers and Consultants to Marketing Managers that all share their stories of how they fell short in prior marketing campaigns in a conference setting (so clearly learning from others’ mistakes is something that the industry is well aware of).

The first marketer to speak up was Anton Buchner, a Senior Consultant for TrinityP3, which is comprised of global marketing management consultants, saying that where he and his team first went wrong was not considering what their audience wanted to better develop a marketing strategy tailored for their audience’s preferences. Anton stressed that he and his team thought they had amazing content and they did their due diligence to promote said content via social media platforms and even advocates and promoters to get brand awareness.  

So in this example, we can see that even if you do everything right and to the book, or everything you think that needs to be done in order to achieve success, you have to make sure that what you are promoting is appealing to your target audience in the first place.  As Anton later says, once they analyzed customer feedback, they were able to gage the different levels of customers, which in their case was different consumer knowledge of beauty products. It was after their customer feedback that they were then able to segment their audience into three groups, Very Advanced Knowledge of beauty products or regime as he calls it, Mid-level then finally to basic level. Once they clustered these different levels of consumers, they then tailored their content strategies to the three different groups by giving more advanced content to the advanced group “class to class type stuff” as Anton mentions. He admittedly said that in hindsight, this segmenting of customers should have been rather obvious but proved to be easily overlooked. 

So when defining your content strategy, even in B2B marketing, try to avoid over looking factors like these by getting lost in what you think will sell and instead consult the people’s opinions that you wish to target and sell to.  

Again, referring to the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger, things only go viral if there is Emotion involved. As Berger summarizes, “When we care, we share.” Anton regrettably shared that he and his team just assumed what they had, content wise, was bound to go viral and that they felt that they were doing what needed to be done even though they never consulted their audience to see what they as consumers, the people that are in control of making things go viral, wanted. This is where Berger’s intellection of emotion comes in in that when curating content, mainly pertaining to B2C but still helpful in B2B, think to put more focus on the feelings rather than the function in order to arouse your audience and foster some sort of connection between your content and your audience.  

When considering B2B marketing, as Luana Zugman puts, Senior Manager in Strategic Marketing for Thomson Reuters, rather than focusing on entertainment or social currency and the factors that drive emotion, B2B customers are looking for what’s helpful to them as a business and what will drive their business. But this isn’t meant to say that in B2B marketing you have to be all data and no appeal, it just means that when developing marketing strategies for either B2B or B2C, you just have to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and facilitate their needs and what they want to hear about your product or service. Another great recommendation that Luana brings to the discussion is that marketers should talk with their sales and customer service staff as these employees have the most interaction with the customers. Whether it be face-to-face interaction when the sales staff is working on the ground level to find and meet customer needs or the customer service staff that’s sole purpose is to get customer feedback to ensure customer satisfaction. These co-workers in their respective fields are your resource as a marketer and should be used when defining your content marketing strategies.

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BluePost Digital & Content Evaluation

Earlier this morning I had the fortune of coming across this search agency based out of London by the name of Bluepost Digital, that I found relevant to the theme of this blog and felt obligated to share. Their description of their agency can be found on their Linkedin account stating, “We are an organic search agency with a difference, thanks to our Brand First Search approach; protecting your reputation and increasing conversions with measurable results”. They are part of the Marketing and Advertising industry with specialties in SEO (search engine optimization), Social Media, Content and Digital Marketing as well as Corporate Reputation.

On their website, they go into detail of what their “Brand First Approach” is, which is essentially the title they give their business approach stating, “It represents a move beyond the prevailing SEO focus on non-brand keywords visibility”. Bluepost Digital’s claim as to why their approach is a move beyond SEO is because they have learned that a company’s brand keyword results stands as the preamble to the company’s sustainable success. As Bluepost Digital rightfully puts, “your brand keyword results are your shop window” and through their guidance, they will help you to control these keyword results which actively protects your brand reputation, improves conversions with customers and ultimately creates a platform to build your “non-brand visibility” all aiming to create and sustain brand engagement and awareness.

To put it simply, Bluepost Digital uses their own proprietary technology –X8 Insights that acts as an evaluator of the value, risk and opportunity your company’s brand keyword presence in a natural search to enrich the chances of being noticed in search engine results. Although this company isn’t the most glamorous of agencies out there nor is it well known outside of the marketing and advertising populous, this form of service is continuously becoming more vital to all businesses in the modern age and has become a crucial part in the attainment of success and growth.

Another service they offer, which is somewhat unrelated to their main services but is still helpful, is a YouTube account meant to give monthly evaluations and rankings of the month’s best content marketing commercials and is the reason how I came across their company in the first place.  I decided to watch the August 2016 video posted below because the picture of the bronzed KFC Colonel, for obvious reasons, naturally captivated me rendering me a victim to great content marketing.  I also felt the need to get a bucket of fried chicken, as I’m sure the rest of you would easily justify my actions.

The KFC advertisement is totally absurd but as a marketing student looking at this ad critically, it is refreshing to see that they aren’t simply talking about their secret 11-ingredient recipe that created their wealth anymore. Rather then continue to beat a bead horse, they tried an outlandish approach that always catches my eye. The best part of the commercial might be that the sunscreen is actually a product that they sold to customers and as Alex Judd (the narrator of the Bluepost Digital video) said, people snatched the KFC sunscreen up with no hesitation. The creativity involved in this ad is nice to see especially when Popeye’s Chicken only talks about their recipe in each commercial or new products they are releasing. Granted, the two companies are in different stages of their existence and Popeye’s is still trying to penetrate KFC markets but it probably wouldn’t hurt if they tried easing up on pushing their products and focused more on trying to make their customers or potential customers laugh or associate their brand with laughter.

When considering companies, or organizations in this case, that don’t sell products but push for attendance or involvement; it is always interesting to see how they try to engage their audience. National Blood Week in the UK successfully launched their #MissingType campaign to promote awareness for giving blood. As seen in the video, any form of literature published during that week would purposely leave out the blood type letters in the titles or articles standing as a catchy but direct approach in raising awareness while making it fun for the audience. They boasted a huge turn around of 300,000 people donating blood proving that their method of approach was received well and left an impression on their target audience enough so that they literally gave their own blood. As a marketing student, it is gratifying to see that effective marketing doesn’t exclusively mean that you’re helping companies sell more products but rather effective marketing can also make the world a better place and promote people helping people.

The puppy content was cute but I can’t help but jump straight to the Pizza Hut’s DJ box launch that left me speechless after the first time seeing it. I’m not a huge fan of their pizza but I can now firmly say that I am their biggest fan of their content marketing. Where they lack in taste, they thrive in creativity. I mean that DJ box, firstly, is impressive on a technological scale but also in that people of all ages would love to try their hand at pizza box DJ-ing even if they aren’t musically inclined.

Although you might not get a chance to buy KFC sunscreen or be a Pizza Box DJ anymore, you can still find great examples of effective content marketing by tuning into Bluepost Digital’s CME account on YouTube to better familiarize yourself with how companies are engaging their target audiences in a successful way.

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Be a Sell Out or Always Be Sold Out

Supreme Clothing, ever heard of it? If you haven’t by now, don’t worry your life stills matters all the same, but you probably won’t ever find out about this brand and it’s not your fault. Sound like a successful clothing brand to you? Oddly enough, it has been revered as one of New York City’s staple streetwear influencers during the 20 years they’ve been selling cloths. Let me preface that I personally don’t wear any of their clothing because I’m not too keen on spending 60 dollars on a blank T-shirt with their logo on my chest, but that isn’t stopping the millions of people across the world that wear their gear proudly.  

The reason why we’re talking about Supreme Clothing today is not to promote their brand or their products, but instead it is to applaud their brand strategy from their entry into their marketplace.

Brief Company Background

Supreme Clothing’s founder, James Jebbia, first set out to create a skate apparel and clothing brand for likeminded people sharing his interests of artistry, skating and the embodiment that is New York City. His intentions were never to be a top selling brand with his products able to be found in big retail stores everywhere. Instead, he wanted to create something unique and “off the beaten path” which ultimately became his niche in the market and he has remained integral to this mission throughout the 20 years of his company’s existence.

In order to better understand how this worked for Jebbia and Supreme, and how it most likely won’t work for most companies, we have to go into detail of how he cultivated the sense of exclusivity that has been associated with his brand since the early years of operations.

First, we all know that demand drives supply and any college grad business professional would say that supply must meet demand in order to yield the highest profit. Jebbia probably knew full well that this is how business works but he decided to push the boundaries and defy the ways of tradition.(much like Old Spice in my previous post) This is where the genius shines through in Jebbia’s thinking. Instead of meeting demand with supply, he thought that if each product line release was limited in volume, then people would race to get his products before time ran out. This means that when the fall line releases, customers don’t have the whole season to get those products, rather they have only the time allotted to get those clothes before they sell out for good which can be a maters of minutes. This is why you can see a T-shirt from last season’s launch selling on ebay for double the price. Apparently, this isn’t what he set out to do because technically this second market doesn’t yield any other profit for him or his company. Instead, it sustains the sense of exclusivity that his products and brand exude.

The main thing to remember is that this was a gutsy call on his part because if people didn’t like what he was selling, then he’d probably still be printing shirts in his mom’s basement to this day. (Not to say that’s how he started his empire but it adds a dramatic effect to what I’m trying to get across).  

Giving purpose to this post, the main take away is that the conventions of business are made to be tested and broadened in order to keep it evolving. Business professors might disagree with me but it’s not to say that it isn’t true. Referring to the text, Contagious Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger, (from the last post) we can see that my opinions mirror Berger’s original ones pertaining to his STEPPS acronym. Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories. This post is primarily focusing on the first S in STEPPS, “Social Currency” where Berger explains it as being the factor of human nature where we inherently care or at least consider how people view us. This can range from wanting to appear cool or smart, but the characteristic that makes this relevant to Supreme’s “philosophy” is that people want to be seen as being in-the-know or as an insider. In an age where knowledge is so readily available all from a click of a button, it is rewarding to be able to inform someone of something (for example a clothing brand) that they didn’t already know.

This, excluding their quality products and creativity as well as the carefully selected brands that they choose to collaborate with(Louis Vuitton in the above pictures), is why Supreme became so viral and sought after. Even the football cleats in the above picture were made exclusively for Odell Beckham Jr. of the New York Giants to wear in-game. Here Supreme is tapping into multiple different markets (Louis Vuitton, Nike, NFL, Odell Beckham Jr. fans and of course New York City) with literally one pair of shoes.

But not all products or industries can operate in this manor, for obvious reasons, but it is so interesting to me that brands like Supreme can get so big without “selling out” and simply becoming just another generic brand that solicits itself on a macro scale aiming to saturate the market as much as they can, pumping out product after product just to meet demand. Instead, Supreme focuses on the integrity of their mission and on the products and collaborations they make allowing the cult following that they have to dictate whether or not they stay in business. This to me is such a foreign concept in business and it paints a picture of the chain work of society and of human nature itself. It stands as a great synopsis of how humans interact with one another and our want or desire to interact with one another, showing just how social we truly are. If that weren’t true, then Supreme would have never made it as a clothing company. 

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Word of Mouth

Today’s post topic will be on Social Transmission, derived from the concepts of Jonah Berger’s New York Times Bestseller, Contagious, Why Things Catch On.

Jonah defines Social Transmission as “social influence and word of mouth” which has indeed proven to be contagious and gives a deeper meaning as to why things catch on. To paraphrase his conceptualization, Jonah touches on the factors of human interaction and how they allow marketers to tap into their audience once, leaving it to their audience to then spread the word for them. The reason for this is that people love telling stories and people love to hear them. The stories that we hear from colleagues, friends and family etc., have a significant impact on us as the listener because we value our peers’ inputs. This has changed the game of advertising because as Jonah rightfully states, word of mouth is more persuasive than traditional advertising because ads will always argue that their product is better than their competitors, which consequently makes their arguments less credible. But the words from our trusted peers are naturally considered to be more valid because our peers’ opinions are unbiased to the company’s image or products.

Jonah’s second reason for word of mouth being more effective than traditional advertising is that “word of mouth is more targeted”. His example for well placed targeting of ads is for a skis company. Would it be more beneficial to the company if their ads were placed on television during the nightly news, or would it be more productive to place their ads in a ski magazine? It’s a pretty straightforward example but so many companies lose sight of this. 

Today I want to show you two ads from two separate companies that have successfully executed the use of Social Transmission and have given new industry standards in advertising for their industry’s products.

First, Heineken’s 2013 The Voyage ad campaign with the slogan, “Open your World”:

This ad struck me as a great example for this subject matter due to Heineken’s perfect use of story telling about their product and the type of experiences that their product (beer) will bring to the consumer without ever explicitly saying anything. Let’s dig in, the video starts off with what seems to be an interesting guy that has drawn a picture of his taxi driver, has a pet goat for some reason and shows that everyone seems to be interested in him (hinting that interesting people drink Heinekens). He then creatively pays the waiter for two Heinekens with his goat being his crafty accomplice and proceeds to dance through the festival trying to get back to his goat that is holding his two cold beers. 

The video continues to play several scenarios of him trying to catch his goat, one being, an attractive woman gives him a spicy pepper where he then immediately looks at the two beers that are covered in condensation persuading the audience that Heineken pairs well with spicy food due to its refreshing qualities (all without explicitly saying this). The chase continues where he meets a guru of sorts and then conveniently comes across two more attractive women that, of course, show interest in him. The video ends with him ultimately getting his beers in time to meet up with his friend where they happily share the two beers. This video’s main goal is to show all the possibilities a night can have if you choose to “chase” Heineken, concluding that if you drink Heineken, you’re bound to have an epic night. Again, all this was left to interpretation of the viewer by showing an exciting video without mentioning the product’s qualities as a beer or the qualities of the potential night you might have if you choose to drink Heineken.  

The second video is a humor driven clip for Old Spice, the pioneer in thinking out of the box in their content strategies. Other brands like Axe Body Spray have done a decent job in conducting their advertisements in a similar fashion.

This video is without a doubt meant to make the audience laugh but there’s a subtle ingenuity to it when it comes to the two ladies. The “Alpha Dog” itself is hilarious and has nothing to do with deodorant, which shows Old Spice’s content strategy of being outlandish and irreverent to the fundamentals of advertising. The ingenuity shines through when the two ladies deliberately call out Old Spice’s lack of traditional advertising by saying, “That’s suppose to sell deodorant?” and then proceed to say, “Talk about something real, like the smooth sophisticated scent of Old Spice” it mocks the traditions of advertising making them a vigilantly of advertising.

These two ads show that Jonah’s intellection of the significance of word of mouth is more important than simply stating the product’s qualities or uses by creating ads that will generate discussion and sharing, leaving the traits of the product out of the message. Everyone knows that there are plenty of deodorants and beers and that it all comes down to customer preference, so why not aim your content to stand out and be shared virally. I don’t know about you guys, but I am falling victim to their marketing and will be getting a case of Heinekens and Old Spice after I sign off here. Hope this was an informative post that will help you to redefine your content strategies.

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Looking for Content Marketing Agencies for your Business?

Today I decided to consult the web to shop for content marketing agencies to see what they might offer and came across this agency called 6S Marketing, which offers step by step guidance tailored to your specific industry to get your company engaged in the correct use of content marketing. 

Url below: 

http://info.6smarketing.com/content-marketing-agency?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=content-marketing-agency&utm_campaign=Fall2016&ads_cmpid=649323588&ads_adid=35715941467&ads_matchtype=b&ads_network=g&ads_creative=189977985114&utm_term=content%20marketing%20agencies&ads_targetid=kwd-36590207499&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&ttv=2&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsorciI3L1gIVzYJ-Ch2vrA7dEAAYAiAAEgKzr_D_BwE

Their sole purpose is to help integrate your current digital marketing campaigns with your content marketing strategies and goals. Their systemic approach is well articulated and resembles the scientific method consisting of a four-stage process; Plan Strategize Implement Launch

1. Plan: Just as in the scientific method, the first step is to determine or define the problem. In the case of developing a content strategy, start by defining the business challenges and objectives while simultaneously addressing the company’s current resources and budgets. Once all is defined, you must set goals for the business and its content strategy campaign.

2. Strategize:

Step 2, in my opinion, is arguably the most important step where the entire content marketing campaign clings to, “Brainstorm Buyer Personas”. In essence, this is what content marketing is all about. As a business, the main priority for your content is to not just simply reach more people to bring awareness, but rather it should focus on connecting with the right people. To just advertise your company’s name and its products is the way of old in marketing, where as now the mission is to make real personal connections or relationships with your customers by tuning into their personas as people, not just customers. As 6S rightfully stated, audiences are more discerning then ever making it so marketers must create and tailor content to their audience by tapping into their audiences’ individual and collective personas. This is the key take away and is my reasoning for deeming it the most important step of this process.

3. Implement:

Implementing is a pretty straightforward step but can be hazardous for some companies if they fall short. Creating “Landing Page Templates” is a tool that most companies overlook that consequently damages their personable image. A “Landing Page” is simply a section of your website that is accessed via a hyperlink from another web page which is most commonly the website’s home page. Companies should consider putting a sizable effort in the designs of these landing pages to make the customers’ purchasing journey more enjoyable. The design plays an imperative role in enticing the purchasing decisions of the customers and should be put in place to make the transactions seamless and again, enjoyable. This can be an easily developed tool that can alleviate buyer’s remorse for the customer by just making the transaction simple, efficient and yes, enjoyable. There are hundreds of websites where big or small businesses can get free landing page templates that are completely customizable if the company isn’t willing to create their own templates. Think of it like this, when you are presenting an idea at work or if you are a student using power point in a presentation for class, you wouldn’t use the white background with black text and call it a day would you? Instead you use one of the many templates to make your presentation presentable and unique, thus creating a more enticing presentation to better captivate your audience while also being more personable or relatable. The same idea applies to customizing landing page templates to attract customers and improve your interface making transactions unique to your company. 

4. Launch 

The Launch step is much like the “Communicate Results and Findings” in the scientific method. 6S associates the “Launch” step with performing data migration and updates, customizing analytics and reporting, link digital marketing and media strategies, as well as Q&A and deployment.

Linking digital marketing and media strategies is a great summary of the main purpose in this four-step process created by the 6S content marketing agency. Companies need to reengineer their content marketing strategies to make this a priority and move away from the “message” and instead, make customers the focal point, but also make the customers feel that they are the focus. That’s where the Q&A comes in handy to get a grasp of how your audience is reacting to your improvements and if they see themselves as your company’s focal point.

In summary, agencies like 6S will quickly become a highly sought after agent in helping businesses of all industries to reconstruct their marketing strategies to better fit the current age of marketing. I predict that these agencies will act as consultants to big name organizations and take the position as the new and improved advertising firms. Even though ad firms will never be entirely obsolete, top ad firms will most likely adopt 6S’s approach and offer similar services to disallow take over by these new up incoming agencies.  

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Coca-Cola’s New North Star

A look into Coca-Cola’s Content 2020 Initiative Strategy Video:

As mentioned in my previous three-part post, marketing is taking on a new tactical avenue consisting of a more business-to-consumer conversational approach.  Coca-Cola has proficiently reinvented their marketing strategy with “Content Excellence” as their main objective. 

Content Excellence has the sole purpose of “creating ideas so contagious, they cannot be controlled”, which Coca-Cola refers to as “Liquid”. These terms are just another way of saying that their content goal is to create conversation models through brand stories that create ideas meant to foster in-depth conversations with their customers to better understand and meet their needs. Coca-Cola’s expertise in reaching this goal is derivative of their strategic use of dynamic storytelling of a brand idea meant to systemically disperse across multiple channels of conversation creating a “unified & coordinated” brand experience. This consequently means Coca-Cola must edit regularly to achieve Content Excellence rather than just producing a bunch of ambient noise lacking structure and purpose. This also means that they must actively listen but more importantly, they must actually converse with and engage their consumers in order to provoke collaboration between business and consumer. 

I believe they’ve done a fantastic job in stressing the cohesiveness of their message, through storytelling, that Coca-Cola brings happiness. I also believe that their reasoning for putting so much effort and spending into this “Happiness” movement is to conceal the truth of their products, they are terrible for you. The only thing Coca-Cola can guarantee is diabetes and tooth decay, not happiness. Needless to say, I have to tip my hat to them for diverting attention from the obvious hazards of consuming their products, by adverting our attention to the nice things Coca-Cola does. Marlboro could gain a thing or two from watching this Content 2020 video. 

But this post is not meant to slander Coca-Cola and its products; instead it is meant to applaud the ingenuity of their content marketing department and how all businesses could benefit from this approach. 

Back to the matter at hand, Coca-Cola’s development of “Liquid Content” has rendered them a multi-stream media giant that creates ideas so compelling that “they have a life force of their own” (their own words). They have accomplished this by working directly with creative talent outside of the brand and through industry collaborations with other firms, and equally as important, music artists, games and even film. These collaborations they have undertaken all require individually specified processes all with the same revolving principals. 

Relatable to my previous post, Red Bull is another example of how a beverage manufacturer can become a media giant by using the same tools of marketing as Coca-Cola. Both companies sell beverages that no doctor in their right mind would recommend consuming, yet they have such a devout following. Why? You guessed it, content marketing. 

Coca-Cola’s Current Research Approach:

Coca-Cola’s current research spending consists of 20 percent on qualitative testing, which they deem as an increasingly outmoded & irrelevant tool, 60 percent on heavy executional link testing and the remaining 20 percent on static in market testing. Coca-Cola does realize that they need to recalibrate where and how they invest their spending in R&D. As stated in the video, they understand the need to learn how to properly research in order to amplify the true potential of their creative spaces and ideas. For the laymen, creative space is essentially the intellection that the proper environment or setting can incubate and flourish creativity. This shows that Coca-Cola has taken a look in the mirror and realizes that even though they are so successful, they still have room for improvement. 

 Coca-Cola’s Desired Research Approach:

Coca-Cola’s desired research approach basically stands as a how-to approach for gaining the most out of a brand’s research spending and can be adopted by just about any organization looking for success in direct consumer relations. First, they are aiming to spend 30 percent on inspirational spaces & prevocational tools that should be toothsome to all businesses and to consumers as well. Second, they want to avoid any qualitative testing completely and alternatively turn their spending of 15 percent towards feedback & online dialogue tools that work directly with the consumers to promote genuine consumer collaboration. They plan to keep 30 percent of spending on “link testing” to ensure cohesiveness amongst all modules to maintain “Liquid Linked Content”.  This revised research budget could stand as a template for all genres of business that revere customer satisfaction as the company’s pinnacle end goal. 

To conclude this post, the key take away I gathered from this video is that businesses need tension in order to prosper and it is tension that lead Coca-Cola to reinvent their marketing strategy/research budget and it is tension that pressured them into devoting so much spending towards creative thinking. But ultimately, it was tension that made them become more than just a beverage company because I guarantee that if Coca-Cola was a successful producer of a healthy beverage, they would have never had the need to put so much thought in creating the veil that is their “Happiness” image. 

To watch the discussed video:

https://youtu.be/G1P3r2EsAos

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How is Content Marketing Different than Regular Marketing Pt.3

#adventure

#music

These content marketing approaches elevated Red Bull into a lifestyle or a movement over just another successful energy drink producer. Other rivaling companies like Monster or Rock Star have made a sizable attempt to meet the new industry standards of energy drink sponsored events or athletes but due to the fact that they weren’t the pioneer in this movement, they will never be revered as Red Bull is. Back to the initial focus of this post, Red Bull has successfully differentiated themselves from their competitors outside of their product on a content level. I’m willing to bet that if a focus group was asked to undertake a double blind experimental taste test, few would be able to distinguish the taste differences or the amount of taurine and caffeine between the variable tested drinks.  

I hope this post was helpful in differentiating content marketing from regular marketing and I hope that this blog will continue to aid prospective marketers everywhere. –Lucas McCallion

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How is Content Marketing Different than Regular Marketing Pt.2

The main take away from this information is to stay clear of the traditional ads and to focus on coming off more personable and relatable in order to better connect with your consumers in hopes to build lasting and loyal relations with them. The fact that so many products and services these days are so synonymous with each other, it has become imperative for businesses to use their content marketing to separate themselves from their competitors at a brand level rather than just focusing on differences on a product level. The world of marketing is embarking on a new frontier folks, so get out of the currents of traditional marketing before you have to abandon ship.

One of the world’s leaders in content marketing is non-other than Red Bull. Their content approach is one to admire being that as a energy drink company, they have a huge cult following revolving around many different aspects of the brand that actually have very little to do with their beverage product. If you visit RedBull.com you won’t see a single product picture, not a single can. Instead, you are given a selection of clickable links to hash tags that are an embodiment of Red Bull and their content marketing strategy. One in particular is the #epic link which is full of everything Red Bull, but still contains no signs of their products. For example, if you click on the #epic link, it will direct you to multiple hash tags that Red Bull deems epic like #surfing, #music, #adventure. Each of these hash tags is coupled with a picture of a sponsored surfer, musical artists or Red Bull sponsored music festival lineups or just people that conquer the world and life in general #adventure.

#surfing

Under #surfing, you’ll find this picture of an aquatic photographer by the name Zak Noyle with a description saying, “ Chase The Shot With Zak Noyle This Wild Winter”, and then goes on to show all the amazing pictures he’s taken of either Red Bull sponsored professional surfers or in the above picture, Conner Coffin, ranked #66 USA professional surfer. Red Bull, via unparalleled use of content marketing, has reinvented themselves as not just an energy drink company but instead has become this incredibly dynamic organization that has its hands in thousands of operations having little to do with their actual product which consequently increases their sales.

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How is Content Marketing Different than Regular Marketing Pt.1

For my inaugural post on what hopes to be an informative blog on Business Marketing, the focus will be on the differences between Content Marketing vs. Regular Marketing and how content marketing might be the better solution for you and your new business.

From a bird’s eye view, content marketing and regular marketing have more similarities than differences. They both set out to fulfill the same core objectives, pull in potential consumers and increase sales, just in different ways. The first major difference is that content marketing must have a valuable and compelling nature in order to educate and build trust with the current consumers and more importantly, potential ones. Rather than just blatantly pitching products to an audience via traditional mediums like radio, television or print adverts; content marketing delves more in the inception of the consumers’ purchasing decisions instead of deciding for them. This fosters a sense of control for the consumer allowing them to decide on their own, whether or not your product or service better fits their needs or better solves their problems than your competitors. Content Marketing comes in many forms making it a protean tool in your marketing campaign strategy. The most popular methods of content exposure are social media platforms, web articles, videos, blogs and even self-sponsored tweets published by your company or at least the head of the company informing people of your day-to-day operations, mission statements for the company or even showing customers the different ways to use your product or service in a way that they might have not thought of on their own. These in-house tweets are more believable then externally sponsored advertising ads that today’s consumers absolutely despise.

In conducting content marketing, defining a clear and attainable goal is paramount for your approach. Everything content related published by your company should have the same goal in mind giving cohesiveness to your content and overall theme or impression of your company that you’re trying to exuded. Coke for instance, has associated a coke with happiness and all of their content supports this message. Does a coke really bring happiness, or have they just done a great job of portraying that?