Quantcast
Channel: Next Stage Media Group » content curation
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Navigating The Content Marketing Jungle {Michael Gerard Interview}

0
0

Content Marketing 360

It’s a jungle out there. Content marketing as in industry and discipline continues to evolveMichael Gerard and it can be a very exciting time for marketing professionals. It can also be a confusing time with a few challenges and roadblocks along the way. Michael Gerard, Chief Marketing Officer for Curata, recently took time out of his very busy schedule to talk me on the latest episode of Content Marketing 360 podcast. Curata had just come off their 3rd Annual Content Marketing Survey and Michael wanted to share some findings and results that came from this endeavor.  A resource outcome from this survey is the 2014 Content Marketing Tactics Planner, an ebook that takes a deep dive into the tactics of digital content marketing. Michael has an engaging, relaxed and informative style that comes through on our time behind the mic. I know you will not only enjoy what he has to say, you will definitely take a few items away to use in your business today.

 Interview Highlights

  • What is your objective with the 2013 Content Marketing Survey? “I really wanted to dive deeper into it, and that’s why, you know, just the title of it alone, getting into the content marketing tactics planner, right? Figuring out more about what are folks the Best-In-Class companies doing out there from a tactics perspective for content marketing? So we approached it from a high road getting some of the questions around direction of investment challenge, etc. But we delved very deep to understand how folks are preparing themselves for this big movement to content marketing. What are the foundational elements they’re putting in place? And what are they doing tactically? For example, what their content marketing mix and other more tactical issues.”
  • You wanted to better define “best in class” for content marketing. What was your methodology in putting together this year’s survey?   “You’ve got to think about, in every question we put on there, you know, why are we doing it sort of the, it’s sort of the, “So what.” So I wanted to put together some questions that would help us segment the population, and more specifically, ask questions to get at who’s actually Best-In-Class versus who’s not. That’s why within the actual e-book and the results we’re able to break out folks by, you know, we call sort of the fox, the elephant, the wildebeest, and the T Rex. You know, different descriptions for each of those with the fox being the leader, it’s cunning, and strategic, and quick thinking. As we reached out and put questions together to get that, and we were very fortunate, we had many people join this study. We had 502 marketers overall participate in the research. About over 80% of them were B2B and, let’s see, about maybe were B2C, so there’s some overlap in there, certainly.”
  • What have you found is the current state of content marketing moving into the new year?  “The way I describe it is sort of a full steam ahead approach. So you have 71% of marketers increasing their investment content marketing. I think a lot of marketers probably wouldn’t be too surprised at that. Big focus on leads, engaging buyers, let’s increase investment and there is a significant drive towards increasing production of content, okay. Second thing is, the investment side. So, folks, are, you know, 71% investment’s great, but only a quarter of companies are really going to achieve Best-In-Class in 2014, at least relative to the industry maturity. There’s a lot of what I call blind ambition. Folks are investing a lot, but once again, from a cautionary perspective, quantities not everything.”
  • How are companies investing in content marketing workflow and production? Workflow is very tactical, so I step back a little bit and I look at it more from a process perspective weekly, I’ve mentioned that folks are investing in a content lead, but they’re also building out their team. We’re trying to create assets, content assets for our audience, to better engage with them, at the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel where there’s much nurturing going on and tapping into your marketing automation system. Even downstream and lower part of the funnel, you know, the required information for our sales folks. I think the better organizations that are larger, you know, they are taking a close look at, “Okay, what types of content work are we going to do? What types of content are we going to generate? And then how do we take that content and use it across multiple types of assets, right?”
  • What surprised you about the challenges facing content marketers? “The two that came up on the lowest side of that, that weren’t really identified as significant challenges were on measuring the impact of content as well as promoting content. Anything that has to do with marketers, know we invest a lot in creating content assets, and it’s so tempting to go off and work on the next content piece, the next asset. What we have to spend more time in is marketing our marketing.”

Listen to the full interview here:

Click to read the full interview transcript.

 

 


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images