Content Marketing Book Summary
Week 1
Chapter 1 – The game and the marbles
- Modern technologies are increasingly optimizing successful one-on-one
communication.
- Automated journalism, conversational chatbots and interactive storytelling play a
role.
Chapter 2 – The playing field. From content publishing to content marketing
Content and Marketing
- The message that feeds the communication between brand (sender) and audience
(recipient) traditionally forms the domain of communication.
- Marketing, in an operational sense, naturally looks for returns, positive forms of
conversion, in the broadest possible sense of the word. (Example: More brand
awareness or conversation into more sales).
- In short, marketing is all about more. It is a bridge discipline that brings together
business, customer, market, and environment at a strategic, tactical, operational,
and infrastructural level.
Brand-wide integration
- Not only via corporate domains, such as their own websites, online video, or social
media channels, but also through a constantly growing range of other, non-
corporate channels, user forums and product sides.
- In order to prevent the loss of unity and conversation in the broad spectrum of
customer-brand communication, a content marketing approach that is both
proactive and reactive is crucial, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
- Content marketing aims to use relevant content in such a way that, with the longest
possible lead time and the least possible people and resources, the most
communicative efficiency is achieved in the breadth of brand, strategy,
and organization.
, - Before testing this summary definition, we first briefly discuss the field of ‘custom
publishing’, which is the actual historical predecessor of the field of content
marketing.
- Custom publishing: cradle of content marketing
Custom publishing: cradle of content marketing
- Custom publishing is a centuries-old tradition in which brands try to strengthen their
positioning and marketing objectives by providing their (potential) relationships with
informative, interesting, or activating editorial content that supports the position
and proposition of the brand.
- This editorial approach explicitly distinguishes publishing content from the more
sales-oriented content such as advertising.
- Example: in the early 19th century Galignani published a printed edition – in
combination with their own special reason room – in which content from influential
writers and influencers was offered, which he used to support the attention and
appreciation for its own publishing house.
From paid to owned content
- At this core, custom publishing does what every classic publisher does: you select
and define a potentially more or less coherent community – consisting of a group
with more or less common interests – which is nor or insufficiently served by other
publishers in terms of content, but for which you expect broad interest based on
market knowledge, research and/or business intuition.
- If these assumptions are correct and there is sufficient audience to actually
appreciate this content, you can expect two money flows to arise: one from
subscription fees and one from adversities.
- Even if the means and purpose are different, the overall content approach,
organization and distribution of the classic publisher are virtually identical to that of
the custom publisher. The major difference is that the custom publisher did not, or
at least not primary, realize their commercial goals through income from subscribers
or advertisers; even though there are good examples of custom publishing products
that achieve such a high reach that third parties are more than willing to buy their
way into the custom publishing domain.
Owned content as content optimization
- Example: Allerhande, includes a magazine, a YouTube channel, WhatsApp cooking
assistance service, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – strengthen each other by
mutual logical placement, optimization and supplementation of content.
- Cross-media content domain
- The contact form this creates forms the ideal foundation for inbound marketing.
- With this content platform, the retailer has an important influence on the
experience, thinking and purchasing behavior of shoppers, and therefore on the
commercial performance of the retail brands.
- But, even if we succeed in creating a relevant, coherent, and loyal reach, and if we
succeed in keeping the attention in this domain, then we do not automatically
achieve the intended conversation into out brand and market objectives.
,Scope and definition of content marketing
- On the preceding pages we sat that content marketing can functionally be
considered a spin-off or an innovation of publishing. The development of custom
publishing into content marketing as it has transpired over the past few decades is
processing in the same way as the trend in which brands purchase exposure form
public and professional titles less often and less automatically (hence the steady
market-wide decline of advertising revenue), but instead develop their own content
domains, whether or not with like-minded content partners, in order to reach,
captivate and blind their target groups.
- Brand as a publisher:
- The trend in which companies spend less budged on purchasing exposure on third-
party channels and then focusing part of the marketing budgets on building their
own content domains is also called the brand as publisher. A brand uses publishing
knowledge and activities in order to reach the largest possible group of stakeholders
and bind them to a usually owned content hub in the long term, simultaneously
strengthening their loyalty to the own brand.
- The underlying thought with brand publishing is that in the mix of paid and owned
media, on the one hand, an own attractive traffic is created that builds the visibility
and interaction in social and rented media (think of social influencers who work for a
brand, whether or not for a compensation) and that this affects engagement,
attitude, and activation. Additionally, via brand publishing, we build a more intensive
customer brand loyalty because the owned content offers opportunities to ger to
know visitors and implement ever further refinements of the marketing, product,
and service proposition toward the visitors.
- Brand management:
- Brand management is the marketing discipline that monitors, analyses, adjusts, and
organizes the brand identity, brand image and brand position. This is an important
activity, as brand value is an important pillar under corporate (stock market) value.
- Brand management generally goes through the following steps:
- As mentioned, modern brands need to increasingly seek and maintain an active
dialogue with the market, society, consumers and stakeholders.
, - Warning: branded content is often confused with content marketing or publishing
brands. We mainly find branded content in parts of the publishing world where there
is a casual attitude toward journalistic independence and integrity. It involves brands
or products being positioned in the format of objective journalism, against payment.
- Joe Puzzli’s definition for content marketing:
o Content marketing is a marketing and business process of creating and
distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a
clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer
action.
- In short, the intention is not to push content towards receivers, as still happens often
in advertising and classic publishing.
- Customer centered:
- In content marketing, we follow a different path than the publishing industry we
originated from. Via content marketing – and mainly through own media channels –
a brand closes the distance to the consumer by informing, advising, engaging, or
entertaining them. If we play the game right, this increases the trust that consumers
has in the proposition and reputation of the brand. By focusing on the receiver, the
corporate self-interest comes second in terms of the content.
Chapter 3 – The brand and the organization. The end of the silos
Brand objectives
- Strategically, the following concise observations and business questions are
important here:
a. The degree to which mass brands such as Coca-Cola can convey their message to
a mass audience appears to be suitable for less and less brands.
o Ask yourself to what extend your brand is seen, understood and appreciated
by your target groups.
b. Every brand has a unique character and identity. From this identiy, the brand
functions as a sociological construct in an increasingly interactive and complex
society.
o Investigate your brand archetype (the circle of Jung is a useful tool) and
identify how your brand interacts with society, inside and outside your
organization.
c. A brand that always swims with the tide will lose recognizability and will not
survive. Dare to give your brand a leading role in the whole of internal and
external communication.
o Write down your brand profile and corporate story and continue to use it as
the touchstone for your internal and external communication.
d. Live, think and act your brand. Place your brand firmly in the market and society,
shoe your responsibility in that and listen to the world around you from your
own brand values.
o Your brand values support action perspective, your brand communication
proves that not the brand itself is central, but that it serves a broader
purpose.
The brand as an organizing principle
