Content Marketing and the Agony of Defeat

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Digital agency Sticky Content asked 283 marketers what's defeating their content efforts.

Their answers are no surprise:

• 37% said they have no strategy

• 33% said management dings content

• 46% said demands change after content has been created

• 66% said their organizations waste a quarter of all content; 15% said, half

Is your organization lumbering toward self-defeat? If so, ask:

• Is management serious, or not, about content? Are they merely entranced by this year's "shiny object?" If they're in earnest, then what's our strategy?

• Do reviewers understand what to approve? Message? Accuracy? Style? The reason the content exists? What are the ground-rules?

• Does management trust the content creators? If not, why not? Do they rewrite the lawyers' briefs and the developers' code, too?

• Does management care about waste? One way to boost marketing's ROI isn't to create more content, but to publish and promote what's been created.

• Can I improve things? Or is our situation impossible? (Remember what Napoleon said: "Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools.")

Do You Chase Butterflies?

Remember the sunny feeling you had as a child when you chased butterflies?

If you do that in business, you're begging for trouble.

In a recent blog post, event-design guru Jeff Hurt laments the fact that most workers sacrifice impact for busyness.

"I’ve seen way too many professionals addicted to cleaning out all the emails or making progress on their list of tasks instead of spending time doing the right thing," Hurt says.

"We’ve got to retrain our brains that strategic thinking first is more important than a check mark. We’ve got to rewire our brains to realize that strategy leads to more success than our busyness."

I've witnessed another, equally toxic habit that plagues many professionals, particularly senior executives, marketers and sales managers.

That habit is chasing butterflies, the mindless pursuit of fugitive opportunities; an addiction to chasing every papery grail of growth that happens to flutter by (usually far off the path of the core business or audience).

Like busyness, chasing butterflies feels good.

Focus, its opposite, doesn't—especially when there are so many lovely distractions about.

Focus isn't easy. 

Focus isn't fun.

But it's a habit you have to adopt, if you want to have impact.

Just ask Marissa Mayer.

Adaptability is Our Secret

Kimberley Hardcastle-Geddes contributed today's post. She is president of San Diego-based mdg, a marketing agency that currently serves 10 of the Trade Show Executive Gold 100.

Given the pace at which the media landscape continues to evolve, it’s impossible to say (with any degree of certainty) what mdg will look like in five years. 

That’s precisely why, when evaluating new candidates for employment, we look less at their current skill set and more at their proven ability to learn new skills. My business partner, Vinnie Polito, and I make it our mission to hire the right people, have in place the right processes, and create the right culture to allow us to adapt to meet the ever-changing demands of the clients we serve.

Most recently, we’ve met these changing demands by enhancing our offerings in specialty areas and hiring more professionals skilled in digital marketing, coding, video production, international marketing, database marketing and public relations. Our clients’ needs in these areas are becoming more significant, yet they don’t have the corresponding internal resources (nor the desire and budgets to develop them internally), which enables us to efficiently and effectively fill gaps. Over the next five years, we’ll continue operating under the same general philosophy, developing new business units that align with evolving demand.

We’ll also stay focused on delivering results. While we believe in the power of a strong brand, we know that our clients hire mdg based on the agency’s proven ability to increase attendance, grow membership, enhance the bottom line or achieve whatever objective happens to be at the forefront of their marketing plans. 

mdg has built a reputation over the past 39 years for an ability to effect real change, and will continue reinforcing that reputation over the next five.

Tomorrow's Agencies Will be More Consultative

Rick Whelan contributed today's post. He is president of Marketing General, a full-service membership marketing agency based in Alexandria, VA.

What will my agency look like five years from now?

We’ll look exactly the same, but different. 

I say the same, because the need for great strategy, consulting, creativity, program implementation and back-end results reporting and analysis will be the same; but different because the speed at which all the components will be needed, and the constant evolution of tools, technique and technology, will force us out of our comfort zone. We'll have to test new media and new methods to get ever better, faster results for our clients, all for less cost.

Other changes I think we’ll see are fewer full-time on-site staff, and the increased use of freelance specialists worldwide who are employed for their expertise in a certain areas and for a particular project or program, and then let go until they are needed again. This will maximize my agency’s talent pool, but also allow me the convenience of “just in time” experts to match clients' needs, budgets and expectations.

One thing that will not change is the need for some sort of agency orchestration of all the moving parts of a marketing campaign. If anything, agencies will be more much more consultative in nature and challenged to prove and then reprove their worth to a client over and over. 

Finally the biggest change (and one that's been building all along) will be the use of better, bigger and more encompassing data on prospects and customers alike to drive all facets of the marketing spend.

Series continues.

A Team of Trusted Advisors

Jean Whiddon contributed today's post. She is president and CEO of Fixation Marketing, a woman-owned, full-service marketing communications company based in Bethesda, MD.

Last week I met with a new primary care doctor. As I approached the desk of the new practice, I noticed a significant display of business cards: on the left, about 10 card holders for the primary care docs; on the right, a smaller cluster for the related specialists. Ah, I thought, one-stop shopping for integrated medical care.

I bring this up because the medical practice somewhat mirrors my vision for the marketing firm of five years from now. 

At the center is a core of hands-on creative strategists and designers, able to conceive, write and/or help execute the solid building blocks of an effective multimedia campaign—advertising, direct mail, email, websites, print and digital collateral. They’re agile, experienced and savvy (clients are in a hurry, so they need adept problem solvers). 

In our “one stop shop” for strategic campaigns, the extended team includes “specialist partners,” incorporating, but not limited, to a researcher, media planner, SEO/SMM/SEM pro, developer and focus group/meeting facilitator. All these subject matter masters may be independent, but are vetted, curated and managed by Fixation with complete transparency (and with as much direct contact as warranted between client and partner). It’s a model that’s heavy on custom collaboration and light on overhead, because that’s what works best.

What a far different model than the “all in-house” agency I joined nearly 25 years ago, but one driven by client needs and a changing marketplace. And really, it’s been evolving for a long time.

Series continues.