There’s a lot of talk about return on investment as a marketing metric … but ROI is inherently flawed for campaign-based marketing. A new look at ROI might be just the remedy we need to build a case for content marketing.

I’ve been on a journey over the last few months, exploring the history of marketing and measurement. I feel a bit like Indiana Jones. The books I’ve bought are long out of print and when they arrive from remote booksellers across the world – sometimes tattered and worn – it feels like I’m discovering artifacts from a lost world.Continue Reading

Have you heard? Video on the web is popular. OK, I state the obvious – but video has truly emerged to become both a huge opportunity and challenge for brands in their content marketing efforts. In terms of how big the opportunity is for B2B marketers in particular, consider that a study by Forbes and Google found that 75% of senior executives watch work-related videos on business-related websites at least weekly.

And these videos drive action. In that same study, Forbes and Google found that 65% of those executives have visited the provider’s website after watching a video.Continue Reading

The reinvention of marketing is a road, not a door.

We’ve certainly had a few adventures over the last year as we’ve helped enterprises of all sizes work through elements of their content marketing journeys. One of the biggest insights I’ve had is how many of the content marketers come to success with absolutely no idea when they crossed over from “struggle” to “success.” It’s as if one day they just woke up and realized they’ve been operating in a completely different way and, yeah, it’s working.Continue Reading

Agile is a tune to which all the marketing kids are dancing these days. But, interestingly, what gets lost in translation is the distinction between being fast and truly being agile.

The pressure to move faster and faster is everywhere. As Jim McGinnis, Vice President at Intuit, said in a recent interview:Continue Reading

We’ve just finished our Intelligent Content Conference, our amazing Executive Forum, and our 100^th client advisory engagement. It’s time for a little bit of reflection.

The exponential growth of content marketing has revealed an interesting skills gap that is hindering the efforts of companies to transform content marketing from a promising set of experiments into an agile, scalable, strategic function in the business.Continue Reading

You know those times when you see a discussion so great that you know it’s going to take you more than a few hundred words to respond? So you think, “I should write a post about this.”

Yeah, this is one of those times. In a wonderful post about a month ago, Jay Acunzo of NextView Ventures wrote about “segment thinking” in content marketing.Continue Reading

Is content a sustainable competitive advantage?

No. It’s not. And, now let me tell you why.

A reporter was interviewing me a couple of weeks ago for our upcoming book launch and he asked if he could “push back” a little on a word that I used. It was a word that, in his mind anyway, was one that we marketers tend to throw around a lot. I said “sure, push away.”

The word was “strategy.” He said, “Tell me – what is strategy?”

OK, yeah, time to go get a cocktail.
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One of the overriding themes to emerge in marketing during the last 15 years is the end of “interruptive” advertising. From Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing back in the late ’90s to inbound marketing and even content marketing more recently, the central idea is a world where audiences opt in for content that ultimately helps to position a brand more favorably in the eye of the customer.

But what’s happened is that in many cases interruptive advertising is mistakenly seen as synonymous with paid media. In other words, the idea of the 30-second paid spots, banner ads, full-page spreads, and even cold calls as methods to engage a potential customer is considered antiquated. And a good argument can be made that this idea creates a large portion of the drama and confusion around native advertising.Continue Reading