Somewhat interesting Bloomberg video from Ad legend Jerry Della Femina on the future of advertising and ad agencies.
The key points:
The advertising industry is not run by creative anymore, but the bean counters.
The “good-old days” for advertising is over – where they used to make 15 cents on every dollar spent, now it’s more like seven or even five cents.
According to Jerry, every meeting with marketing executives starts out with “How can I get more people to my website?“
Everyone wants viral
The discussion in the video then revolved around niche, viral campaigns as a way to drive website traffic. That’s fine, but it’s concerning that so many marketers focus on “the viral” believing that one brilliant idea that people want to spread will make all the difference.
The formula for success, according to David Meerman Scott, includes: a combination of some great—and free—Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.
Couple Key Points
You first need a network of people. In order to do that, you need to create and share valuable “free” content to your target audience consistently, over a long-period of time.
The power is not in the one, but in the many. Blendtec didn’t just blend one thing up and hope people shared it. They have done it consistently over years, with now hundreds of millions of people engaging in their Will it Blend? videos – transforming their entire business.
How do I get people to my website?
This Huffington Post article by Charles Warner goes into some detail about how content is NOT king, but it’s all about marketing and search (I strongly disagree with this).
How can you market without having a valuable, interesting story to tell? When executed correctly, your content IS your marketing.
How can you be found in online searches without having valuable information for people to find? How do you rise to the top in search without many people linking to your content because it’s so valuable?
So if you really want to get people to your website…
First, stop asking that question. It’s not about people coming to your website. If you get a million people to your website and they do nothing, what’s the point? You want the right people doing the right things that will help your business (and help them at the same time).
Second, don’t think that it’s one time or easy in any way. Creating good content on a consistent basis that people want or need is hard. That’s why so many marketers and agencies look for the “quick” viral hit. That makes it seem easier. That makes it about the creative, the idea, about the campaign. For success, make it about your customers and do it over a long period of time.
Before you do anything, answer these questions. It will save you a ton of time.
Then formulate those into a basic content strategy.
Then use these six steps to content marketing execution success.
Successful marketing is not about the search for the viral hit…it’s about a continuous process of valuable publishing. Who knew that in this high-tech era, that the secret to marketing success would be around a technique used since the dawn of time – publishing?
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