Ways Content Marketing Will Change in 2015

Like the 29.6% of respondents to a Smart Insights survey, I too believe (I know) content marketing will be the biggest part of marketing for my company in 2015.

One of the major changes highlighted in the article is an enhanced focus on personalization. With the increased volume and depth of data attributable to your profile following you around the internet, marketers now have the ability to personalize content to your specific interests/profile.  At my company, we just evaluated a couple of automated marketing tools (Pardot and SharpSpring) that have the ability to reverse look up a users IP address, identify when you visit our website, download a whitepaper, click on our ads, etc.  Either of these platforms will pull data from social media sites and elsewhere into our CRM tool and build a full profile so we can then personalize emails, landing pages, and other messages they receive.

A second change mentioned in the article is "better use of visual content" - both videos and infographics - since these mediums typically perform better than static text.  We learned in class that 2015 would be the year of video content, so this article supports that point.  While video may not make sense (at this point) for my firm, we definitely will be increasing our use of infographics (and graphics in general).

U.S. Bank Digital Marketing with Kittens, Puppies, and Babies

A really great article came out on Forbes today written by Jason Bloomberg.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/02/20/building-trust-with-digital-marketing-at-u-s-bank/

The article mainly focuses on the U.S. Bank's recent digital marketing efforts led by Kelly Colbert, the company's VP of Social Media.

My main takeaway was Colbert's quote: "Digital used to mean just an  additional touchpoint. Now it's a unique experience displayed on Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, etc."

To understand the belief system of the millennials ("the future of the business" says Colbert), they are experimenting with digital marketing to build a "trust relationship" associated with content marketing and emotional connection, often incorporating visual aids of kittens, puppies, and babies.

This relates to my blog post about Cookie Monster visiting art museums and how that was a great digital marketing initiative for MoMA.

It's that image-using, story-telling, common-ground-establishing content that shakes the core and pulls in the consumers. Keep it direct and simple, and you will be just fine.

Social Media Is Like a Cocktail Party

"Social media is like a cocktail party.  Don't be a jerk and don't talk about yourself all the time. Don't try to make a sale before you get to know someone."

This is a fantastic analogy (and good advice for both social media and actual cocktail parties).  Additional digital marketing advice touted in this Forbes articles includes:

Companies should blog more often.  Silence is a missed opportunity to communicate directly with stakeholders. My company is guilty of this.  We started a "market update" blog that was published weekly, and we managed to keep this up for a few months.  But consistency takes up resources, and we diverted those resources elsewhere.  We know we have to start it up again, but I always find an excuse to avoid starting.

Most digital communications aren't visual enough.  Every PR student should take a course in graphic design so you can take full advantage of digital possibilities.  Guilty as charged here as well.  We have very little design expertise on staff, so we need to consider bringing talent on board or hiring an outsourced consulting firm to support our marketing efforts. 

You have to mix paid and earned media.  Organic reach alone isn't enough anymore, and the lines between paid and earned are blurring.  Both need to support each other.

Traditional media companies continue web attack

An article in today's WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120632926897458805.html) reported that Forbes, one of the largest traditional media companies with significant business in print magazines (Forbes, ForbesLife, American Heritage), is pursuing the development of its own network for online advertising. It's first impact will be felt among 400 financial blogs, but will likely expand dramatically in order to compete with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Time Warner.

This article reminded me of comments made by Time Warner CFO John Martin who, upon visiting Columbia Business School last month, discussed the firm's plans to transition its AOL unit from a subscriber-based business model to a more lucrative and growth-oriented online advertising platform model.