Content marketing today does not need justification. It has become more or less a standard and accepted way of marketing. While more and more marketers have embraced content marketing, there still lies some confusion about type of content to create, how to make it engaging and how to derive true business value from it.
It is important that content should be delivered in real-time based on consumer behavioral patterns, it should be engaging and visual and it should be very easy to share useful content.
Some of the major challenges which marketers are facing today include:
- According to a recent survey of over 230 B2B marketing professionals, lack of time and costs are the biggest content-creation challenges.
- There is a content overload. Social media has made everyone a writer. People are writing a whole lot today – on Facebook walls, Twitter, Flickr groups, social comments or communities and forums. With so much of background noise, marketers are struggling to increase their signal-to-noise ratio.
- In today’s digitally focused world with short attention spans, users are no more reading long whitepapers or case studies – no matter how good the content is.
- Lot of content consumption is happening on mobile devices and people want the content to adapt to the mobile experience.
- Creating real time content is more valuable. Remember the Oreo ad which was released during the Super Bowl blackout? Not a whole lot of content, but the timing was just too perfect.
For the digitally savvy and mobile addicted user today, what seems to be working are ‘marketing–apps’. Marketing apps provide unique mobile experiences to consumers while delivering the right marketing message.
Here is how we think marketing apps are bringing in the paradigm shift:
- Instead of showing a 10-page whitepaper with loads of content, marketers can convert that whitepaper into an app which shows the content based on user interactions. The consumer interaction based content delivery can make content consumption more effective and less boring.
- If the content pieces are provided based on demand, the concept consumption is easier – it becomes easy to digest information in bits and pieces based on the navigation pattern of choice. Marketing apps thus provide an opportunity to build real dialogues with the readers.
- Today, users are looking for rich and engaging content experiences that work everywhere. If the content is more active and entertaining, rather than a passive piece of writing, it is more likely to keep the users engaged.
- Marketing apps allow marketers to perform quick A/B testing and deliver optimal user experiences through in-built analytics. If analytics show that a particular section of the content piece is not read at all, marketers can quickly tweak the app to make the important information easily accessible and gather user feedback on the same.
- Lot of marketers struggle to derive leads or call to action through content pieces. With marketing apps, it is easier for them to embed solid call to action within the content itself. For example, one can include a quiz right within the whitepaper and based on the user’s response to the quiz, he can be approached with right piece of information or a solution to his problem. Since the action is based on user response, it will not be treated as intrusive.
- With social sharing, it is easy to turn customers into brand advocates provided; marketers can deliver unique digital experiences to them. Marketing apps can provide very smooth social integration which can make content sharing easy. If the reader likes your content piece, he can quickly share it across his social network and thereby increase the vitality of your content.
Have you considered using marketing apps in your marketing mix? What are your challenges? We would be keen to hear your views.
