Dentsu Aegis Quarterly

On Content Marketing

Dentsu Aegis Quarterly

On Content Marketing

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The world of business is changing fast. We face new chal-lenges at work in a capricious market.This situation sets demands on you as a marketing professional and as a client and on us as your marketing service partner and as an agency group.

To give you the best possible advice we are reliant on solid insights. Not only about your products and your industry, but foremost about the consumer. The consumer behavior shapes how you should act as a business, and how we advise you to create effectful solutions that taps into this consumer behavior.

We know how important such insight can be for you and for your business.We think this knowledge will make your business more profitable and more competitive and stimu-late innovation.That is why we decided to point our critical eye at consumer-centric and market-oriented commercial issues and share our findings with you in a new series of analyses. It is customary for us to share this information exclusively with our clients and business associates; No one else. This is one of the many benefits you receive using our network as your partner in areas like marketing, communi-cation, media and digital platforms.This report will provide you with insight and information about the consumers relation to content marketing and some of the business opportunities this creates. This is something that we know

you are curious about, and also something you need to know and understand as a business. Many of you have asked us to share what we know about what is happening in the digital landscape, why things are happening and what consequences this has for marketing. We hope this report provides you with the insight and knowledge you desire. Dentsu Aegis Network has 24000 colleagues in 110 coun-tries around the world, and they are dedicated to helping your business succeed in your market. Everyone works together to provide the best platform possi-ble to enable you to navigate through this time of upheaval, not only to survive but also to thrive.

Paal Fure, CEODentsu Aegis Network Nordic & publisher

Marketing in an era of transformation

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Contents

Marketing in an era of transformation ............................................

Our definition of content marketing .............................................

The marketing perspective .........................................................

The communications planning perspective ..................................

The performance perspective .....................................................

10 golden rules for content marketing .........................................

Content marketing from a social media perspective .....................

Creating a content strategy ..........................................................

Content measurement ...............................................................

5 easy-to-apply principles for content marketing ..........................

Publisher: Paal Fure, CEO Dentsu Aegis Network Norway Strategist & Editor: Simen Hanssen, Strategic Director Vizeum Norway

Project Manager: Siv Natalia Lima, Office manager Isobar Norway

Layout/design: Taran Steen, Designer Isobar Norway

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Text: Peter Petermann, Managing Director Strategy Carat Germany Dan Calladine, Head of Media Futures Dentsu Aegis Network UK Agnete Pedersen, Head of SEO iProspect Norway

Daniel Novello, Head of StoryLab Dentsu Aegis Network Norway Simen Hansen, Strategy director Vizeum Norway

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Content Marketing is essentially what it says – marketing with content, rather than with advertising. The new digital age has produced far more sorts of content – pictures, videos, apps - and therefore far more way for brands to use content in their marketing.

We are in a time where some people choose to block ads, and others choose to pay to avoid ads (for example in Spotify and Netflix); content marketing can bypass some of this avoidance.

To some degree content marketing always existed – think of Guinness producing the Guinness Book of Records (to solve arguments in the pub), Michelin producing a dining guide for hungry travellers, food brands producing recipe cards and booklets, and more. However now we are seeing more of it, and new names to describe it, for example ‘Native Advertising’ so it’s important to understand what it is, and how it can be distributed.

If we take the structure of ‘Bought, Owned and Earned’ media, content marketing is most associated with Owned, as in the examples above, but can also be Bought and Earned. For example: A printed supplement inserted into a magazine about holiday planning, paid for by a credit card company – bought media. A short film made by GoPro, and widely shared on YouTube – Earned media. There is a large overlap between owned and earned – but the point is that some films take on a life of their own, far

beyond the intention of the original creator.

FormContent Marketing comes in many forms. We often think of it as videos (often the easiest examples to give) but just as there are so many different types of content there are lots of types of content marketing.

Video – Yes, YouTube, but lots of new video formats now exist, allowing all sorts of content, like 6 second comedy Vines made for brands like Hewlett Packard and Honda, and 15 second summaries of catwalk shows made by Burberry on Instagram.

Text – Anything that can be written down, ranging from recipes and ‘how-to’ guides, to ideas for using the products, to advertorials in publications from traditional newspapers to the more modern article styles on sites like BuzzFeed. For example ’The Toughest Places to Survive on Earth’ for ADAM, the tough new Vauxhall / Opel car.

Pictures – Pictures have always been used to show the brand in action, and can get lots of interest in new forms like Instagram. Digital photos are often very sharable, for example photos created by brands on Twitter to capitalise on trends like ‘The Dress’.

Infographics – An alternative to a text-heavy approach is to present things attractively as an infographic guide. The beauty site LaurenConrad.com did this last year with

Our Definition of Content Marketing

a very well presented and useful wedding planning guide – as a shareable infographic.

Apps – Apps can provide useful service for consumers. There are lots branded apps, for example adidas’ miCoach app, and also ones that just entertain, for example the special ‘Rio’ levels created in Angry Birds to promote the animated movies in 2011 and 2014.

Physical objects – Another way of looking at using images as content is to produce physical objects, and let people photograph them. This has been brilliantly done by LEGO, for example when they made a giant X-Wing fighter and placed it in New York’s Time Square for people to phtograph.

Curation – Brands can also do content marketing by curating what others have produced. This can take any of the previously discussed forms, but presenting it with their own spin. For example Innocent Drinks has a Pinterest board ‘Fruit for Thought’ of funny pictures of fruit, to show fans how much they love the fruit that goes into their

drinks, and their slightly irreverent personality.

DistributionContent, in whatever forms, can be distributed in a number of ways. Ideally content should be engaging, well produced, timely, relevant, and easy to share.

Bought – Bought is the easiest form of distribution. Content can either be designed for paid distribution, like advertorials on news sites or sites like BuzzFeed, or paid to be distributed as bits of social content in networks like Twitter or Facebook, where they will appear as they were a piece of content, but with a little note underneath to explain that they are a paid ad.

The rise of native advertising has generated new possibil-ities for brands to plug their content directly into editorial contexts. This blending of branded content and editorial content has created great debates, but is inevitably a new and fertile channel for content marketing.

FORM DISTRIBUTION

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Owned – This is the second easiest form of distribution – create your own destination. It could include things like printing your own leaflets and books, but it also includes creating your own sites, including micro sites for specific purposes, and your own profiles on social sites.

For example Shelter, a housing charity in the UK, created a site to show how much housing cost in different parts of the UK. Using the idiom ‘there isn’t enough space to swing a cat’ they created a site called Catswing.io to show how many thousands of pounds it cost to buy ‘enough space to swing a cat’. They then used PR to direct people to find the site.

Earned – The hardest form of distribution, but po-tentially the cheapest, earned is where people willingly share the branded content through their social channels. It generally depends on the quality of the content – how engaging, funny, timely, emotional, scary and so on – but also on how easy it is to share. For example the ‘Catswing’ example above was very easy to share because people had worked out the cost to swing a cat, there was a pre-popu-lated tweet and Facebook status update to share with the numbers included.

Brands need to understand content marketing as one way of communicating in the digital world. It’s not right for all marketing jobs, but done well it can reinforce brand values, increase the perception of a brand in the mind of the con-sumer and drive consumer action.

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The Marketing PerspectiveWithout wanting to go too much into the details of Byron’s theory: there seems to be a lot of merit to this idea and it explains rather plausibly why some brands are more successful than others despite a similar media budget. The theory behind “Mental Availability” explains why and how regular advertising is most effective to drive brand growth: by continuously reminding consumers of the key brand message; by “refreshing memory structures” as Byron Sharp calls it.

In other words, advertising works because when you are an established, well-known brand it takes only a few contacts a week for people to be reminded of what they already know about you. Without these messages the mental image consumers have of a brand would eventually fade away, the brand would lose its Share of Mind and other brands will take up that space.

If you want to grow your brand you need to increase your brand’s Mental Availability or Share of Mind. To that end, you have to build new memory structures. At this point, CONTENT can be much more powerful than advertis-ing: lots of scientific evidence1 suggests that it is a lot easier for consumers to remember something they actually care about (relevant content as opposed to advertising); and that they learn faster through storytelling than through messag-ing. Therefore, content allows a brand to increase Mental Availability faster and more sustainably because it builds new mental associations more quickly and more lasting than advertising.

“Mental Availability” is probably one of the most interest-ing new concepts in marketing today. It was developed by Byron Sharp, author of “How Brands Grow”, and it de-scribes the influence a brand’s presence in people’s minds has on their market success. In a nutshell, Byron claims that there is a direct correlation between the number of associations a consumer has with a given brand and the propensity to choose this brand over another.

1 For example: Levin, Joel R.; Levin, Mary E.; Glasman, Lynette D.; Nordwall, Margaret B. (April 1992). “Mnemonic vocabulary instruction: Additional effectiveness evidence”

When it is relevant to them, people are genuinely interest-ed in content even when it comes from or is sponsored by a brand. In fact, they don’t mind at all that brands attach themselves to content – this is the price they are willing to pay for free content. But today’s consumers are quite savvy, especially around content and, therefore, brands do have to be careful about the content they choose and how they deliver it. If a brand wants to compete for consumers’ attention the content it delivers must have value. It has to be (more) entertaining, (more) informative or educational, or (more) inspiring. Moreover, you need to make sure that brand has “a right to play” in a given content area. For example, Coke’s ability to work in music or Red Bull’s cred-ibility in adrenaline events are unquestionable. But could a financial services brand authentically deliver beauty tips?

If you want to grow your brand you need to increase your brand’s

Mental Availability or Share of Mind.

Philadelphia cream cheese was under pressure from private labels. First they tried to in-crease Mental Availability by building new associations around food: from being associated mainly with breakfast occasions to becoming a versatile addition to many other types of food. They delivered thousands of recipes demonstrating that the brand literally “Goes with everything”.

In Italy, however, the brand went even further: because Mondelez realized the audience’s obsession with fashion they extend their content strategy and created lots of associations around models, fashion photography, designers etc. This was a different interpretation of “Goes with everything” and thus the content around this idea built entirely new memory structures. This strategy allowed the brand to win back significant market shares.

In 2008, Seth Godin, one of the most influential authors in marketing, claimed that “content marketing is the only marketing left.” A lot has happened since then and clearly there is still a lot of traditional marketing going on – quite successfully. However, content marketing has undoubtedly become one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of modern marketing. And not to use it would certainly be foolish for any marketer.

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Many claim that the consumer purchase process has been dramatically changed due to the increased availability of information and the rise of the internet. It is no longer a linear funnel, but a circular process where the consumer can enter at various stages and throws brands in and out in their active evaluation phase

We are not going to dwell on the changes in the purchase process, but we will state that the biggest implication on communications planning is the “active evaluation” stage. The consumer has an enormous space to explore when

evaluating different options and brands, where they con-sume different types of content to get closer to a decision. People used to get this information directly from the brands or the retailers, now the distribution of this content comes in a myriad of channels. Content also comes in many forms, such as video, infographics, articles, reviews etc, which in sum ads complexity to your channel eco system.

We do believe that content marketing can play a major role in all stages of the process, but the heritage and the heart of it lies within the active evaluation phase: to move

TRIGGER

INITIAL CONSIDERATION SET

MOMENT OFPURCHASE

active evaluationinformation gathering shopping

loyalty

loop

postpurchase experience

ongoing exposure

THE PURCHASE FUNNELTHEN

AWARENESS

FAMILIARITY

CONSIDERATION

PURCHASE

LOYALTY

CUSTOMER DECISION JOURNEYNOW

content marketing could actually drive real business results for these brands, as this will usually break the category language and set them apart from the competition.

In low interest categories many brands have designed their own content universe which lifts the content from dry and boring product specs to focusing on the end benefits of the category and the brand. The consumer loan player GE Money has created the webpage “artofmoney” which fo-cuses on how to save up money, tips for your car and home, travel tips, and other lifestyle related content. (http://www.artofmoney.com.au/)

The Scandinavian airline SAS has created the webpage “Scandinavian traveler” that equally talks about travel destinations, food trends, culture and lifestyle. (https://scandinaviantraveler.com)

By elevating into the category they find new ways of com-municating to the consumer in a relevant way, and create new mechanics for driving both share of mind, brand value and conversion.

The communicationsplanning perspective

the consumer mindset from being interested to generate purchase intent. But the recent development of digital distribution channels and smart use of data enables content marketing to also play a vital part both in the earlier and later stages of the purchase process. So it needs to be care-fully planned by setting the correct role for content market-ing in your communications mix, and also setting the right KPIs. Do we want more people to discover our brand? Do we want to develop deeper insights and drive brand value, or are we using content to drive direct sales. By answering these types of questions it becomes easier to plan and struc-ture your content marketing initiatives, both when it comes to form and distribution channels.

From brand to categorySome brands say that content marketing is not relevant for their business and their channel ecosystem. They usually operate in a low interest category where price or distribu-tion is the determining factor for success. We believe that

defining the role of content marketingin your ecosystem

“content form x distribution channels = options = complexity”

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The push dimensionMost of the business objectives we receive in briefs are about growing the business. If we are to use content marketing proactively to grow your business at a satisfying pace, the content needs to be proactively pushed out in dis-tribution channels to generate reach in the relevant target groups. Depending on the purpose of your content there are several options to action on this, both when it comes to form of content and the distribution aspect. But the main implication is that you are moving from owned channels and toward bought or earned channels. Owned channels still play a part in the push dimension through channels such as newsletters and Facebookpages, but these channels mainly communicate with your existing customers, thus driving frequency and not further penetra-tion of your brand.

Channels such as native advertising, paid social media and various paid video channels are good vessels to gain rapid reach far beyond your existing customer mass, thus setting the scene for more people discovering your brand and growing your business.

It is always important to look at the short term KPIs such as direct sales, but other important KPIs in this dimension is reach, traffic and interaction rate. You are setting the scene for generating sales, both on short and long term.

The pull dimensionThis dimension relates to the “active evaluation phase” of the consumer journey, when the consumer shows interest in your category or brand. In this dimension we are moving towards owned media as the most important contributor,

which for most brands is the hub of your content. The most important factor is to be found when the consumer is searching, so make sure that your content is search-friendly.

A more recent and interesting part of the pull dimension is to identify users that show interest in your category and pull these users towards your content. The rise of auto-mated processes and use of data enables us to use both contextual and behavioral data to identify consumers that most likely are interested in your category or brand at a point of time, and pull these consumers with relevant con-tent towards our own channels. We can plug content into

the spaces traditionally used for advertising, thus blurring the lines between advertising and content marketing. By categorizing your content and using data we can deliver the relevant content to the right user, at the right time.

Harvesting on the benefits of content marketingIf you successfully drive traffic to your site by doing good push content marketing (or other push activities such as advertising or PR), you have also set the scene for harvest-ing on this potential.

We often refer to the ecosystem of channel planning across the consumer journey and the paid, owned and earned di-mension. In the world of digital communications you need to have an equally sophisticated ecosystem of data collec-

tion. So when designing your channel eco system you also need to think about how you collect, store, merge and use the data collected. This will be your ally for harvesting the potential content marketing has created in earlier stages of the purchase process. A set of content marketing initiatives combined with a strong performance marketing program can both grow your brand footprint and drive direct short term sales.

Attention Interest Search Action Share

facebook

facebook

native ads you tube search

content webcrm ecommerce

remarketing

Example of how a content marketing approach fuels your ecosystem by working across through the consumer

journey and across bought, owned and earned media.

Fueling your ecosystem

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Performance PublishingIn a performance perspective, data and web analytics make the very basis of content marketing. The numbers tell us what to talk about, what platforms and channels to distrib-ute the content through and which keywords people use when they search for information. They tell us what people are asking for, and what questions should be answered through your content. From a performance perspective, content marketing can be described as performance pub-lishing.

Getting to know the user through analytics and keyword researchGoogle and other search engines are the #1 channel when it comes to both research and decision making, all over the world. We use it for research, for decision making, to get information, to shop online, to gain knowledge about everything. We use it to understand and to find our way through the jungle of online content.

So what does this mean to us from a performance market-ing perspective? This mean that good content marketing = good search engine visibility = better results. Content mar-keting from a performance perspective means to answer people’s questions in a language, shape or form that they recognise, through great content. This will give you good visibility and relevant traffic to your owned media.

Content marketing from a performance perspective always starts with the user; the potential customer. The num-bers, keywords and behaviour. What are people looking for online? What keywords do they use when they search for it? What do they want? When do they want it? And in what shape or form? What makes us share, like or link to a webpage, a picture or a video? To get to the bottom of this, to get to know the potential customer, we always start with the numbers, the web analytics data. We often start with the keywords. What keywords do we use when we search? Locally? Globally?

The Performance Perspective

Content marketing from a performance perspective always starts with the user; the potential customer. The numbers, keywords

and behaviour.

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Do we search from a mobile device or a desktop? Then we look at all the available user behavior data. What do people do when they visit your website? What can the internal search data tell us? What makes them stay? What makes them return? How do we get them to convert? Accurate keywords and user data lead to good and relevant content creation that will give you great and measurable results in all digital channels.

When the content is created and published, we keep on analyzing. And by doing this, we get accurate results from our content marketing. Content marketing in a perfor-mance perspective always start with analytics and keyword research.

How do we behave in the search engines?Visibility online, and especially in the search engines, are a key factor to getting results from your content marketing efforts. When you spend a lot of time and resources on cre-

ating great content, you should also make sure people find it. And they usually find it through the search engines.

We know this: The #1 organic result gets around 33% of all the clicks in a search result on a desktop and 30% of all the clicks from mobile devices. The #5 position organic re-sult only gets 5% of the clicks. When your content is visible on page 3 in the search engine results, you will get only 5% of the clicks from desktop, and close to 0% of the clicks from mobile devices. With mobile, we rarely visit page 2 or 3 in the search result, we stay at page 1, in the top 10*.

In other words; to be on top of search engine results is a key factor to get the visits. Great content and great usabil-ity on your website is the key to converting these visits and

The #1 organic result gets around 33% of all the clicks in a search result on a desktop. When your content is visible on page 3 in the search engine results, you will get only 5% of the clicks from desktop.

“What do people do when they visit your website?”

“What makes people stay on your website?”

* Source: http://www.advancedwebranking.com/ctrstudy/ (Average of aug14-jan15, International, exact posision.)

The #1 organic result gets around 30% of all the clicks from mobile devices. With mobile, we rarely visit page 2 or 3 in the search result, we stay at page 1, in the top 10*.

making them count. To get the visibility for your content, you need relevant content that answer people’s questions, by using the right keywords. To get them to convert, you need to know how they behave on your website. This will get you the best possible results and the best possible ROI on your content marketing.

CRO - Conversion Rate OptimisationA big part of Performance Publishing, or content mar-keting from a performance perspective, is conversion rate optimisation - CRO. When you use the relevant keywords and get the traffic from the search engines - how do you get the visitors to behave the way you want? How do you get them to convert? With CRO you can test how your digital content works and make the necessary changes, always with the performance perspective in focus. Content marketing from a performance perspective, Per-

formance Publishing, is about getting the visibility, to get the relevant users to visit your owned media, to get them to convert, return and share your content. It is effective, user friendly and will give you great ROI.

“What keywords do we use when we search?”

“How do you get the visitors to behave the way you want?”

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1. DOES IT ADD VALUE? Is it in some form useful to consumers, is it entertaining or inspirational? Be sure to compare your content not only to other content available in the category in which your brand operates – you need to benchmark your content against everything that is available to your audience.

2. HAVE YOU CONSIDERED DIFFERENT CONTENT FORMATS? Video and short editori-al content may be the most obvious types, but have you considered 6s Vines or animated GIFs as an alternative to longer videos? What about pictures on Instagram? Or even live streams? For some consumers non-standard formats are more relevant.

3. HAVE YOU EXPLOITED ALL YOUR CONTENT? Viewers are often not only interested in the videos you produce but also in a behind-the-scenes or a making-of; you can have other people talking about the content to extend its appeal. Also, new video technology, such as Videopath, will allow you to enrich your videos with additional material – so that you can add depth (and therefore relevance) to your content.

4. DOES IT TELL A STORY? Does the content you provide add up to a Big Picture? When you provide more connected and interrelated content your audience will build new memory structures faster and more sustain-ably than through disparate pieces of content. Storytelling is the best way to learn anything.

5. HOW CAPTURING IS IT?Especially with video content it is immensely important that you “hook & hold” your audience. To that end, the first few seconds are critical: if they are not engaging or interesting your audi-ence will switch off. And remember: in most media (Facebook, in-banner, digital OOH etc.) your video content will have to work without sound – at least initially.

6. DOES IT STAND OUT OR IS IT UNEXPECTED? This is an extremely important prin-ciple. Most content doesn’t stand out. It all looks the same

10 GOLDEN RULES FOR CONTENT MARKETING

in a given category. If doing nothing else, cast unique people. Also, always do this test before watching new content from your brand: Imagine what the content will look like before you see it and if you’re right, that’s bad. High arousal videos (feeling of exhilaration or surprise)

are shared twice as often as low arousal (feeling of contentment).

7. IS THE BENEFIT TO YOUR AUDIENCE CLEAR AND SIM-PLE? Especially when providing utility, you have to make sure everyone gets it. What is the value of your content to your audience with respect to your brand? Ask 10 people who saw your content what the benefit was, and if they all say the same thing you nailed it.

8. IS IT AUTHENTIC, CREDIBLE AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, IS IT “ON BRAND”? Your brand needs to have the “right to play” in whatever the content is about; if your brand is not credible in this

content area people will shake their head and move on – or worse: switch to another brand.

9. DOES IT HAVE A CLICKABLE CALL-TO-ACTION OR SOME OTHER FORM TO “LEARN MORE”? In an integrated ecosystem you do not want to create any dead ends. So at the very least, your content should lead to the brand website or a central content hub where your audience can find out more about the brand or consume further content. Additionally, you can think about more ROI-relevant mechanisms such as a link to the online shop.

10. IS IT CLEAR THAT YOUR BRAND IS PROVIDING THE CONTENT? The key reason you employ content is to create additional memory structures for the brand – but of course that will only happen when the brand is clearly present. Using the brand’s logo (ideally from the beginning), using other brand assets or the brand’s color palette will create a mental con-nection between brand and content. You may also want to think about an even more blunt approach and use “spon-sored by” or “presented by” cutins.

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Content Marketing from a Social Media perspective

Why Social Media is both a tuner and an amplifier for ContentTo play an instrument in front of a live audience, in par-ticular the instrument of Content Marketing, you will soon realise that not only will the strings need tuning, but also amplification. What is your weapon of choice and how do you make it sing?

The ever so beautiful VOX amplifier is a carefully crafted box of wood, wires and speakers invented by Dick Den-ney in the late 50`s. In July of 1962 two young lads from Liverpool would acquire their very first VOX amplifiers. Later that year, the group would emerge from the studio with a song called “Love Me Do” and change the world of popular music forever. The unforgettable sound of their jangling guitars would become the standard for great guitar sound for decades.

Socially able brands are making progressSocial media marketing is an important instrument for brands and content marketers with a few stories up their sleeve. It is also very personal in a sense, but everybody likes something. And that is our cue. Should a Content strategy be content, audience or media centric?

What shall we post today?As social media increase to grow across markets, brands need to fill that space with great content to populate those channels. Brands are more occupied with this than you might expect. They have seen results of social media communication over some time now. But any poor staff member, responsible for posting content to Facebook and other social media, face the same issue every afternoon; what will I post today? Some even concern themselves with next weeks publishing plan. Those poor souls are bat-

Stories for boystered with expectations from top management “to do well in social media”. And in meetings with agencies and other suppliers of goods and services in the industry that lies in the wake of Social Media success, comes even more advice to publish more, be relevant, and spend more. It is time to look right and left.

Crossing Abbey RoadEvery child learns that they must look left and right be-fore crossing a busy street. Having said that, it sometimes appears that this logic is lost along the way to adulthood. Not only do we live in a world of very rapid shifts, it has also enabled us to gather and use many little bits of data to predict, learn and optimize content. One should not take a step back to gain momentum and oversight. There is simply no time. Disruptive competition and other brands will not only overtake you, but also sometimes run you over. Some would suggest a much smarter approach. Take a step sideways and look to your left and right. If you step back, you will pause and loose critical momentum. You soon be-come irrelevant. The competition is not your only enemy.

The competing brand offering the same products and ser-vices as you are merely trying to achieve the same as you. A harmless threat in comparison with your best friend giving birth, your cause asking for your voice in earthquake relief, or your brother posting a funny video on your timeline.

It is easy being popular – it is much harder being relevantIn several content marketing over the years, it has proven somewhat difficult to explain why a client should eliminate a very popular piece of content. Surely, everyone wants to be popular; it means growth, prospects, and business. Or, does it? The answer is no. Not always. It is quite rare that a popular piece of content really reaches the specific goals set for it. Popularity is not a currency of much worth in the long run. One can say; you can have popularity and relevance, but not economy. You can have economy and popularity, but not relevance. You can have economy and relevance, but not popularity.

What is the difference?An ongoing matter for discussion; will content marketing and social media marketing merge, or continue as separate measures for marketers to deploy stories? Is it time to let go of the silos altogether and think of an ecosystem as a whole?

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Jay Baer @jaybaer, president of Convince and Convert, author of “Youtility” has written this paragraph: “Content marketing is a device used by companies to educate, inform or entertain customers or prospects by creating attention or causing behavior that results in leads, sales or advocacy. Social media is used by customers and prospects to com-municate among themselves, and occasionally with com-panies. This communication can result in leads, sales or advocacy, but is often less structured and conversational, and can be reactive too, as social media is increasingly used as a customer support channel. From the company perspective, the goal of content marketing is consumption, then behavior. The goal of social media is participation, then behavior.”

Jason Millner @JasonMillerCA at LinkedIn writes:“Content marketing will not replace social media by any means; they are and will continue to be two very differ-ent things with two very different functions. Social media channels are the tentacles from which your content extends its reach while opening up a direct line of communication with your customers and prospects. In addition, what were once known as “social media vanity metrics” (shares, plus ones, Likes, retweets, and comments) are now playing a much bigger role in how your content ranks within search engines and the social platforms themselves. At the end of the day, content and social will be broken out of their respective silos and pulled together as an essential part of an overall integrated marketing strategy.”

Many brands will perhaps be not too concerned if one takes over from the other. They will continue to seek atten-tion and deep engagement, and measure how they impact a company’s sales, sentiment and reputation. Regardless whatever vehicle in which the content sits.Content marketing is also about to mature to become like high quality programming and served through program-matic buying. Interruptive commercial time or disruptive advertising will give way to content living alongside jour-nalistic or entertainment content. There are no contradic-tions. In fact it provides brands and marketers with great opportunities.

It seems that a communications strategy that includes con-tent creation and distribution on several platforms within

the ecosystem of bought, owned and earned are proven to be successful.

Your Content is your latest productA rare few brands have treated content, not only as a marketing tool, but also as their latest and greatest product. This seems to be the case for several of the brands doing well in social media. People are not only talking about the brand, but also sharing, commenting and engaging in the

stories. That provides brands with unique data they should handle with great care and understanding. Data is input to output. The VOX amplifiers live on, as does the music of The Beatles, U2 and many others. Each band has their sound and much of it relies on how the guitar plays out through the amplifier. It is time brands start looking for their own sound and then consider what kind amplifiers they might use. U2 released their latest content with an unprecedented move with Apple. Was there ever a better way to tune The Edges guitar? *

* 72 of 79 U2 shows are already sold out on the bands forthcoming Innocence and Experience Tour 2015.

From the company perspective, the goal of content marketing is consumption,

then behavior. The goal of social media is participation, then behavior.”

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“Stop behaving like a brand, start behaving like

a publisher”

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Creating a content strategyContent Marketing is the fastest growing marketing activity for many of our clients. However, many of them do not necessari-ly know how to develop, activate or measure a content strategy. Here’s how you do it:

Who WHO IS THE AUDIENCE AND WHAT ARE THEIR AREAS OF INTEREST? Beyond the usual sources of data we typ-ically use to identify the passion points of an audience. There are two sources that are particularly useful when you are creating a content strategy: the Facebook Audience Lab and Google Trends.

The Facebook Audience Lab delivers a ranking of the top Facebook pages and other interests for any given audience segment, from the TV shows they love, to the causes they support. It also offers insight on Face-book behavior, such as likelihood to share or comment on specific subjects. Google Trends, on the other hand, can give you a tag cloud with related keywords that will stimulate Con-tent Ideation.

What WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT SHOULD THE BRAND DELIVER? Once we have identified which content might be relevant, we have to make sure it is valuable to them. There is little point in serving more of the content which people are already getting enough of. So we need to find the gaps: what are they not getting currently but would like to have? And which of these gaps can the brand credibly and authentically fill with content? Content ideation will give you thematic areas. Then, there are four broad types of content to consider to fill those gaps:

Original content: Original content doesn’t mean investing at Red Bull levels. Oreo is good example of how a brand can become part of con-sumers’ conversations through inexpensive social content.

Co-created Content:Here, a media owner gets to create content which their audiences would value, while the brand gets association with content which is authentic to their values and positioning.

User Generated Content: Brands can stimulate this through activations, such as a sweepstake, or through special hashtags for consumers to use (e.g., “#allin” for adidas).

Curated content:Via curation engines which gather third party content from across the web. Curating con-tent can be powerful for brands, given how difficult it can be to find relevant content.

HowHOW DO YOU LEVERAGE THE CONTENT? You need to define the depth of engagement you want to generate with your content. Deep engagement is typically not the most important objective for your content. In or-der to generate brand growth you usually want to reach as many people as possible with your content and build new memory structures with them.

However, in many cases you will find that there are some consumers who are so interested in your content that they want to engage further with it. It would be a wasted opportunity to not allow these people to “dig deeper”: you need different levels for different segments.

WhereIN WHICH CHANNELS & TOUCH-POINTS WILL YOU DISTRIBUTE THE CONTENT? Many brands are still publishing content only in their own channels, thereby failing to reach all potential consumers that are not currently fans or loyal customers. It is crit-ical that you leverage both Owned & Earned media; but be sure to include a significant budget in Bought media to distribute and am-plify your content. And don’t forget to leverage Shared media: use the infrastructure of your content partners (media owners etc. if you have any) to distribute your content.

WhenWHEN WILL YOU DISTRIBUTE THE CONTENT? Successful content tends to evolve: e.g. the #icebucketchallenge was adopted bit by bit by celebrities, Facebook groups and other social net-works. Therefore, you should create a content calendar that indicates how your content strategy is rolled out over time. You can populate the calendar with relevant industry or consumer events and plan out exactly which assets need to be distributed when. Deploying adaptive creative programmatically means you can also take advantage of unpredictable events.

It helps to imagine that we’re magazine publishers. We create or curate the right content; we publish and syndicate it to attract readers; we sched-ule regular, editorial meetings to make sure the strategy is still on track and delivering the expected outcomes.

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Content MeasurementLike all other marketing activities, Content Marketing needs to be fully accountable. We need to be able to demonstrate the contribution of content to the brand’s ROI. If we do not track business metrics such as sales and if we don’t correlate these measures against the content strategy KPIs we have no way of knowing whether our strategy was successful nor how to improve it.

Dentsu Aegis Network has a number of powerful instru-ments for advanced analytics that can help us to calculate and model all contributions across Bought, Owned, Earned and Shared Media. With these tools we can demonstrate the value our content strategy delivers across the entire ecosys-tem.

But even before looking at the business outcomes we can and should analyze – and optimize the performance of our content strategy while it is live. There are 3 aspects we need to take into consideration to optimize our content strategy.

Media Delivery In most cases, the key objective of our Content Strategy is to increase Mental Availability. To that end, we want to get as many people as possible to see as many different pieces of content as possible. Therefore, audience reach is still one of (if not THE) most critical levers for success.

However, there are two ways of looking at this: cumulative reach (how many people did we reach in total?) and con-tent reach (how many people actually saw individual pieces of content?). The reason we want to track this separately is that with respect to content cumulative reach (the typical way of measuring reach) can be deceptive: contrary to ad-vertising, each new piece of content will create additional

memory structures. We need to understand (and optimize) each piece of con-tent. Therefore, our measurement approach should take into consideration two additional elements:

Engagement If, indeed, we aim to increase Share of Mind, the key metric we need to look at is “engagement”; the more time I spend with a piece of content the more likely it will (sus-tainably) influence my memory structures.

Thus, we need to track metrics such as “time spent” or “interaction rate”; these are vital to understand whether or not the individual piece of content has had enough time to actually create new mental connections.

With video content a very important metric is the socalled “View-through Rate” – i.e. the number of full views (from beginning to end). Quite often, the strong connection between the content and the brand doesn’t come until the end of the content video; in that case, a high VTR is critical to the success of your content strategy. A high VTR is also important if you want consumers to click through to the brand’s website or e-shop.

Strategically, there are two things you might want to keep in mind when creating content: either get a “VTR” guar-antee from your media/distribution partner (i.e. have them deliver as many views as are necessary to reach a certain VTR percentage; YouTube offers TruView ads); or create your content in such a ways that the association to the brand is established even if the video is not viewed all the way through. (Here, you may want to think about innova-tive tech solutions such as Videopath.)

By tracking engagement (especially VTR and CTR to the brand’s website/shop) closely and by understanding when people click or leave, you will be able to optimize the con-tent production on the fly.

Contagion The other key metric for your content strategy is Conta-gion (by that we mean sharability and relevance). When people share a piece of content with their friends or com-ment on it that must mean that somehow the content was relevant to them or that they see it as relevant to others. Which is precisely why we are creating a content strategy in the first place: to increase the relevance of the brand’s communication.

When we find that a given piece of content is shared, men-tioned or commented on we should do two things:

we should amplify it in Bought Media to spread this con-tent to as many other people as possible. And we should try to learn quickly why this particular content was shared: understanding what works and what doesn’t will help us to optimize our content strategy in near-real-time.

In summary, we need to track the outputs, outtakes and outcomes of our Content Strategy – just like with every other media strategy. Monitoring the outputs (i.e. the me-dia metrics) will help us to make sure that all our content actually is seen by as many people as possible. Tracking the outtakes (i.e., the engagement metrics) will ensure that the content actually did create new memory structures. And correlating the content to business outcomes will make certain that we understand the ROI contribution of the content strategy and that we remain fully accountable to our clients.

ROI

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5 easy-to-apply principles for content marketing

1Be smart Be clear about what you want to achieve and define SMART objectives.

2Be authentic Make sure you have the “right to play” in a given content area.

3Be measurable Track what you contribute to ROI.

4Be relevant Relevance is key to a successful content strategy.

5Be valueable Entertainment, information, education, utility.

Carat is the #1 Global Media Network, and the fastest growing, according to RECMA. Our vision is to Redefine Media and create better client business value through our command of media convergence.

We are a market leader in digital and diversified media solutions. Established in 1968 as the world’s first media agency, we are part of the Dentsu Aegis Network. Carat currently services clients in more than 140 countries and employs more than 8,000 staff worldwide.

Carat – Redefining Media

Its goal is to deliver a demonstrable uplift in media performance across TV, Print, Digital and Radio on a global basis. Amplifi operates across three distinct areas of specialisation: Investment, Global Media Partnerships and Programmatic buying (AMNET). Amplifi uses the opportunities presented by convergence and globalisation to deliver a value proposition that works for clients and media owners.

Amplifi - the media investment arm of Dentsu Aegis Network.

Vizeum was created for the new era of media: A conver-gent world where consumers and content come together, in real time, on platforms and devices; a global world massive-ly impacted by digital technology which is totally reshaping the environment that brands and people live in.Vizeum embraces every dimension, linking social, mobile, offline and online, generating emotions and trust, and building powerful connections between brands and people at speed and scale.

Vizeum - Connections that Count

Isobar is a global full service digital marketing agency, driven by the purpose to deliver borderless ideas enabled through technology, to transform businesses and brands. We have over 3,000 digital pioneers in 66 offices, across 41 markets worldwide.

In 2013 Isobar won over 170 awards, including 18 Agen-cy of the Year titles and we have won two consecutive, Asia-Pacific Agency Network of the Year Awards. Key clients include adidas, Coca-Cola, Disney, General Mo-tors, Google, HBO, Kellogg’s and P&G. Isobar is part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dentsu Inc.

Isobar – Ideas without limits

International

Across the globe, we make digital marketing human by bringing everything together – creating the connections brands need to stay ahead, and giving businesses a tangible advantage in today’s world.

At iProspect, we’re not just specialists in different types of digital marketing – we also know how to bring it together. By putting customers at the centre, we create effective strategies that connect with people across every channel – and grow businesses in ways they can measure.countries.

iProspect – Driving Digital Performance

Posterscope is the world’s leading Out-of-Home commu-nications agency and location expert. It knows more about what people think, feel and do out of home.

Posterscope translates this understanding into compelling, creative and quantifiable Out-of-Home solutions through its investment in data, technology and people, which make a meaningful difference to clients’ businesses.

Posterscope - Pioneering Out-of-Home

psLIVE, Dentsu Aegis Brand Experience Network, is a leading international Brand Experience Network that delivers engaging and memorable consumer experiences, all driven through insight, data and innovation. We aim to make the brand experience a meaningful and memorable one, augmenting the traditional media proposition, extend-ing through owned and earned media. We create integrated, digitally driven and measurable multi-market campaigns Employing 200 experienced professionals, psLIVE offers relevant creative solutions and excellent implementation consistently in all our 22 markets through living our values of ambition, collaboration and agility. The network has true international reach and boasts an impressive portfolio of clients, including leading global brands such as Twentieth Century Fox, Canon, Sony, Adidas and Allianz.

psLive –Empowering Brands and Bringing them to Life