Last week more than 2,500 marketers attended PerformanceIN Live, a two-day conference hosted by the global performance marketing publication PerformanceIN. The event provides attendees with the opportunity to network and learn the latest insights from industry experts within affiliates and performance marketing.
It was for this reason, and my interest in learning more, that I jumped at the chance to moderate a panel discussion on how to measure the effectiveness of content marketing.
The CMA curated a panel of leading experts within the industry and, after introductions, I shared my thoughts on the three main issues that content marketing is currently facing.
1. The sheer amount of content being created – we’re now at a point where we’re creating more content than ever before. How do we break through and target an audience that has an eight-second attention span (which is apparently one second less than a goldfish)?
2. The lack of documented content strategies and team silos, leading to duplication, mixed messages and lots of project-based outputs.
3. Our inability as an industry to truly measure how effective our Content Marketing efforts are and our agility to change direction when something isn’t working
When we asked the 100+
audience members how many had a content strategy, I wasn’t surprised to see
that the number was around five. According to recent data, less than half of
businesses have a documented content strategy.
The panel agreed that, moving into 2018, this will be even more essential for brands, especially with a strategy that all channels feed into to ensure consistency. There is also the argument that a central plan breaks down silos and opens up opportunities for integration with a single point of reference. The discussion moved on to the fact that a content strategy shouldn’t be seen as single project but as a coherent approach to engaging an audience.
The conversation continued on to other relevant conversation starters such as the current industry buzzwords – machine learning and VR – as well as the future of content measurement.
For this particular section the topic of connected consumers came up and I was particularly interested to understand how the panel members felt about wearable tech and whether consumers would start to feed into how we measure the effectiveness of the content it created.
As an example, my Apple Watch takes my heart rate constantly throughout the day and is connected to my iPhone. Will we get to a stage, beyond eye-tracking software, where my reaction to the content is measured?
This time will come but, more importantly, it’s about understanding what we’re trying to achieve with content before we create it. It was mentioned in the panel discussion that by the time technology is this advanced, there will probably be legislation in place for people to opt in or out.
With demand for content so high, we agreed that the ideal scenario would be to break down the silos within content marketing, providing brands with increased opportunities for transformative business growth. All panellists, myself included, are here to help businesses deliver more through their intelligent content strategies and we are excited about the road ahead.
Thanks for having me, PI Live 2017.
