Most Content Marketing is Fairly Mundane Stuff

Many brands view their Content Marketing practice as another sales communications channel.  Why not?  The objective is to ‘sell something’ so why not use every buyer touch point to get your point across.  Seems obvious the more sales messages, the more sales.  The classic lower funnel strategy that’s worked for ions.  Unfortunately, the world has changed and the consumer journey, while still a funnel, does not look like one anymore.

 The Path-to-Purchase Has Changed Significantly

It now looks like a bumble bee collecting pollen, not a logical linear purchase process

The New Consumer Journey Greatly Impacts Content Market Strategy

Always-on shopping and connectivity to other buyers means that recommendations/reviews now trump sales messages by a mile.  People want genuine dialogue about products with other users, not selling messages from manufacturers.   As the McKinsey chart illustrates, word-of-mouth is now the #1 influence for gaining brand consideration from new customers.  If there is no consideration, there is no purchase.  Brands need to develop conversations and open dialogues with shoppers to gain increased consideration and sales.

However Brands Have a Far Different View Than Consumers

Content Marketing is a brand engagement strategy built around providing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain customers driving incremental sales conversion.  However, many brands don’t see it that way.

   Brand View

Consumer View

“Eighty-seven percent of people want meaningful interactions with brands, but only 17 percent think brands are actually delivering today”

Edelman Brand Share 2014

Dialogue Drives Value

The key to successful Content Marketing is creating a dialogue and relationships … not pushing a branded content monologue at every buyer touch point.  As the Accenture research shows below, dialogue marketing drives significant value in a number of critical marketing areas

Straight Up  ⇒  Brands need to start leveraging the full potential of Content Marketing 

• Build dialogues … not monologues
• People learn by doing … build interactive content around your target audiences interests
• People believe other people … build brand influence through the Blogosphere and other Social channels

Zig is a nimble digital consultancy with deep expertise in Social/Mobile/Video marketing.  Our approach is different … we go beyond generating awareness to teach consumers why your products are better and get them to buy.

You can see our work by clicking on the link ⇒ http://www.zigmarketing.com