Last week four marketing pros from Austin companies and a moderator from Astadia sat down at La Condesa to share insights about content marketing. Here are highlights from their panel discussion.
Moderator Steve Kellogg, Director of Global Strategic Partnerships and Solutions at Astadia, kicked off the talk with the following statement:
Customers today expect an ongoing conversation. You not only have to focus on the conversation, you have to own it.
In content marketing today, we have brilliant data management, good content, but low conversion. There’s still too much about the company and no emotional connection.
Content marketing will be the Wild West for some time to come. We thought it was settling down, but it’s only getting more complex.
Steve later added:
As powerful as content marketing is when done right, today’s marketers are hampered by constraints — like silos and metrics breakdowns and customer data integration.
The customer experience is there. The technology is almost there. What’s missing is the capacity to influence behavior on the customer decision journey.
Natasha Morgan, Director of North American Marketing, Oracle Marketing Cloud Event Agenda, stated:
People will forget everything except how you make them feel. Companies today need to have a personality and they need to show that they value people.
Another goal of content marketing should be to help consumers experience the product completely. Interaction with customers should be driving the content marketing strategy.
John Ellett, CEO and Founder, nFusion , stated:
Overall, companies still don’t invest in people-to-people connections.
We are making the transformation from inside-out — it’s not easy, because the tools and the language aren’t there yet.
It’s critical to use data to build relationships in real-time, so that we’re not just creating content with a rear-view window approach, but a windshield perspective.
Tom Barnett, VP, GM, Callaway Golf Interactive, stated:
It’s easy to create content for an audience of avid golfers. But we still go to great lengths to improve the quality.
We’re creating content in many places to meet many different needs. It’s a complicated process, but we’ve worked to narrow it down into a process with easy steps.
Helena Lewis, Sr. Group Manager, Marketing Operations and Technology, National Instruments , stated:
We’re transforming from content strategy that was product- and quantity-focused to content that targets the people we need to speak to in ways that are meaningful to them.
Traditionally, we overlooked who we were talking to. Now, we’re starting to work with personas.
We are investing in content creators and focusing on being creative in our content.
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