What Is Content Marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), which was founded in 2011, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

More than a decade later, this is still the best definition of content marketing that I've seen.

Note that “valuable, relevant, and consistent content” is being used like a magnet to attract and retain “a clearly defined audience.” But it also needs to be used like a screen that filters out disinterested or unqualified people “to drive profitable customer action.”

What Are the Benefits of Content Marketing?

According to the CMI, content marketing has four key benefits:

• Increased sales
• Cost savings
• Better customers who have more loyalty
• Content as a profit center

The first of these benefits, increased sales, is also one of the goals that you can set in universal analytics to measure how content marketing fulfills your target objectives.

Content marketers can use Google Analytics to measure the number of conversions generated by a campaign, although “conversions” might mean making a purchase for an ecommerce site or submitting a contact information form for a marketing or lead generation site.

The second benefit, cost savings, is popular in organizations that want you to do more with less. And if you want to deliver cost savings, read my column in Search Engine Journal, which was published on Feb. 19, 2020. It's entitled, “Is a Super Bowl Ad the Equivalent of Lighting Money on Fire?”

If content marketers can demonstrate that their latest campaign lifted brand awareness, favorability, consideration, and purchase intent more cost‐effectively than running a 30‐second commercial during Super Bowl LVI (which cost as much as $6.5 million in 2022), then that should convince senior executives in the C‐suite to increase their content marketing budget.

The third benefit, better customers who have more loyalty, isn't one that mass marketers will focus on because they ignore market segment differences and still believe, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

However, content marketers who've analyzed their market opportunities, selected their target segments, and tailored their marketing mix are much more likely to appreciate the benefit of having better customers who are more loyal.

The fourth benefit, content as a profit center, sounds like “pie in the sky.” But it's the goal of brands like Red Bull, which is often described as a media company that sells energy drinks rather than a beverage seller that publishes content.

Many content creators and social media influencers are also focused on content as a profit center. For example, YouTube's creative ecosystem supported 394,000 full‐time equivalent jobs and contributed $20.5 billion to the U.S. economy in 2020, according to “The State of the Creator Economy” by Oxford Economics.

How Does Content Marketing Relate to SEO and Social Media?

The practice of SEO started back in the mid‐1990s. (I know because I used SEO to optimize our website when I became the vice president of marketing at WebCT in 1999. Back then, the leading search engines included AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, and Lycos.)

The term “social media” was coined by Chris Shipley in 2004. (I know because she asked me to speak at BlogOn 2004, which was the first “social media conference.”) Interest in the search term social media marketing took off in 2008.

But interest in the search term content marketing didn't take off until 2011, which was also when the Content Marketing Institute was founded. (I know because I became the faculty chair of content marketing at Market Motive in 2012.)

Because content marketing was the new‐new thing, I was frequently asked to explain how it related to SEO and social media marketing. And I often used a Venn diagram to illustrate the similarities, differences, and relationships between these basic digital marketing disciplines (Figure 5.1).

I'd explain that many SEO strategies and tactics are often focused on optimizing content on websites. However, many content marketing strategies and tactics are often focused on optimizing content on websites, blogs, YouTube, and other platforms, which have been blended into Google's Universal Search results since May 2007.

Yes, there is overlap. SEOs and content marketers can collaborate to optimize all of the short articles/posts (fewer than 3,000 words), videos, virtual events/webinars/online courses, research reports, e‐books/whitepapers, and case studies on their organization's website.

And I'd explain that most social media marketing strategies and tactics are often focused on creating and distributing engaging and shareable content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. However, most content marketing strategies and tactics are often focused on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content on websites, blogs, and email newsletters as well as social media platforms.

Yes, there is overlap. But social media and content marketers can collaborate to create a consistent stream of content that is valuable, relevant, engaging, and shareable as well as distribute it across more and different channels. Although, this often requires the teams to share a “war room” for product launches or industry tent‐pole events.

How Is Content Marketing Different from SEO and Social Media?

Unfortunately, far too many SEOs, social media marketers, and content marketers are fighting with each other over their shares of a small but growing digital marketing budget. So, if you work for or get hired by one of these fractious organizations, then it's important to understand how content marketing is different from SEO and social media marketing.

What Is the Concept of Content Value?

One of the concepts that you'll need to understand is “content value.” In other words, what makes content valuable for a clearly defined audience?

Cassandra Naji, the Director of Learning & Development at Animalz, provides a clear explanation of this concept in a post entitled, “The Content Value Curve,” which was published on the content marketing agency's blog on Oct. 11, 2021.

She said, “Content adds value to the reader by enabling that reader to do something or to think something; it can add tactical value (do something) or strategic value (think something).”

Naji added, “Generally, the more strategic value a piece of content adds, the less likely it is to add tactical value, and vice versa.” Why? Because tactical and strategic content offer significantly different value to radically different audiences.

She explained, “Tactical content is situationally relevant. This kind of content is helpful for one person trying to solve a particular problem, but it isn't very interesting to anyone who doesn't have that particular problem.” She added, “Tactical content reaches tactical readers or folks lower down the marketing food chain.”

Naji continued, “Content adds strategic value when it equips the reader with a new conceptual framework, a new first principle, or a new perspective.” She added, “Strategic readers—executives and decision‐makers—need frameworks and first principles, not instructions on how to do their job.”

What Is the Concept of Content Relevancy?

Another concept you'll need to understand is “content relevancy.” In other words, what makes content relevant to a clearly defined audience?

Andrew Johnson and Colleen Jones of Content Science, an end‐to‐end content company, tackled this question in an article entitled, “Content Relevance and Usefulness: Why You Need It and 4 Ways to Achieve It,” which was published Dec. 1, 2019, in Content Science Review. Their insights are based on content feedback from more than 100,000 people.

They said, “Content relevance is all about your audience's perception of your content's pertinence to topics, issues, needs, or interests. Content usefulness refers to your content's ability to help users make decisions or make progress toward goals.”

They added, “Whenever a user visits your content, they have a specific goal in mind—even if that goal is just to learn more about you. How well your content helps them accomplish that goal is hugely important to how effective your content is overall.”

They also identified customers and audiences who perceived the content they used was “relevant” as follows:

• Nearly three times as likely to report accomplishing their goals than users who felt the content was only somewhat relevant
• More than eight times as likely to report accomplishing their goals than users who felt the content was not relevant

They concluded, “Even more pronounced is the effect of the two dimensions together. According to our data, users who found content to be both relevant and useful said the content helped them accomplish their goal 91.5 percent of the time. That's more than 15 times as often as users who found the content neither useful nor relevant.”

What Is the Concept of Content Engagement?

The third concept you'll need to understand is “content engagement.” In other words, what makes content engaging for a clearly defined audience?

BuzzSumo, a content marketing platform, built machine learning models and used them to analyze 400,000 articles in order to find out what boosts content engagement on social media.

Here are their key insights:

• Facebook provides the most content engagement. But content that generates very strong engagement on one social networking site isn't necessarily going to see much engagement elsewhere.
• On Facebook, Likes made up 70 percent of content engagements. But Likes are highly correlated with Shares and Comments. So, if you can create likeable content, you can expect more substantive content engagement to follow.
• If Twitter is your main platform, then find influencers who can help amplify your content. Using these strategies can help you overcome some of the challenges of working with a platform that has a smaller user base.
• Tweaking content can turn a dial, not a switch. BuzzSumo didn't see any features making more of a 6 percent contribution to the probability of creating high content engagement, which means there's no magic formula for creating high‐performing content.

What Is the Concept of Content Shareability?

The fourth concept you'll need to understand is “content shareability.” In other words, what makes content sharable for a clearly defined audience?

Although “shareability” isn't included in the definition of content marketing, it is absolutely essential if content marketers hope one of their videos will “go viral.”

Original research from more than 2 years of work, five different data sets, around 1,000 videos, nine individual studies, and a large team of researchers from the Ehrenberg‐Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University of South Australia found the following:

• Videos that display personal triumph appear most likely to deliver sharing success. But content creators rarely use personal triumph as a creative device.
• Weather/science/nature also achieved very good sharing rates. But these are also rare.
• Videos of babies outperform many other creative devices, but only when the video evokes intense emotions.
• Using poorly branded advertising is like throwing away your marketing budget.

Shareable content is also important for B2B marketers. Gartner research has found, “The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers‚ each armed with four or five pieces of information they've gathered independently and must deconflict with the group.”

Gartner has also found that customers who perceived the information they received from suppliers to be “helpful” were “three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret”—even if that information is shared with other decision‐makers in meetings instead of online.

Why Is Video Content Important?

You will also want to understand why video content has become so important. The reason is obvious: video now plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives.

In July 2019, the Google/Insight Strategy Group asked 12,000 people worldwide why they had watched what they watched in the last 24 hours. In March 2020, Think with Google published their findings in an interactive feature entitled, “What the world watched in a day.”

The participants, ages 13 to 64, watched a wide variety of content, ranging from traditional media to online video. They chose their number 1 reason to watch from a list of 20. The following were the 12 most important reasons:

• Helps me relax and unwind
• Teaches me something new
• Allows me to dig deeper into my interests
• Makes me laugh
• Relates to my passions
• Is inspiring
• Makes me forget about the world around me
• Keeps me in‐the‐know
• Addresses social issues that are important to me
• Has high production quality
• Helps me be efficient
• Is on a network or platform I like

If you analyze these responses, then you'll notice a pattern: traditional, TV‐era indicators of quality are less important to viewers than they once were. People are now placing more value on content that relates to their personal interests and passions. In fact, the ability to teach people something new, help them dig deeper into their interests, or relate to their passions are twice as important as high production quality or being on a preferred network or platform.

We discuss these findings again later in this chapter—in the section entitled "Content Marketing Strategy and Planning."

Organizational Structure

Although content marketing has evolved significantly over the past decade, our ideas of organizational structure have mutated rapidly since March 11, 2020, when working remotely taught all of us that “work is what you do, not where you do it.”

In the “blended working future,” we'll still need systems that outline how certain activities are directed in order to achieve the goals of our organization. But they can vary a lot.

For example, small organizations (1–99 employees) often have just one person serving the entire organization's content marketing needs. On the other hand, medium‐size organizations (100–999 employees) generally have small content marketing teams in the two‐ to five‐employee range.

Even large organizations (1,000+ employees), which are the most likely to have both centralized groups and individual teams working throughout the organization, rarely have more than 6–10 employees managing content marketing.

So, how does all the work get done?

The latest data from CMI and MarketingProfs suggests that many companies are both outsourcing content marketing work and asking internal staff with other responsibilities to take on more. However, those who have dedicated internal content marketing resources tend to be more successful with content marketing.

Why? Because companies often outsource content creation to content mills (or content farms) that employ large numbers of freelance writers to generate a large amount of textual web content that was specifically designed to satisfy what they thought were Google's ranking algorithms or signals.

Ethical (white hat) SEOs have known since May 6, 2011, when Google provided more guidance on the “Panda” algorithm change, that Google's algorithms are aimed at helping people find “high‐quality” pages and articles by reducing the rankings of “low‐quality” content.

Unfortunately, many of the least successful content marketers didn't get the memo. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with outsourcing content creation. But you need to vet providers as carefully as you need to vet influencers.

The current challenges of outsourcing content marketing include finding partners with the following qualities:

• Adequate topical expertise
• Understand/can empathize with your audience
• Can provide adequate strategic advice
• Consistently deliver on time

And I'd bet dollars to donuts that the top challenge for content marketers who outsource next year and the year after will continue to be finding partners with adequate topical expertise.

Why? Because subject matter experts (SMEs) are worth their weight in printer ink, which is more precious than gold.

On the other hand, hiring new employees isn't a panacea either. Being new to an organization comes with a learning curve to become an SME in that brand, even if you're a content marketing veteran. So, there is no one‐size‐fits‐all solution.

New employees who get hired might work in one of four different types of organizational structures:

• “Flatarchy”: There are no levels of management when you're a team of one.
• Functional: Employees are divided into specialized groups with specific roles and duties.
• Divisional: Various teams work alongside each other toward a single, common goal.
• Matrix: Employees are divided into teams that report to two managers—a project or product manager along with a functional manager.

So, who sets strategy and who owns implementation of content marketing at small, medium, and large organizations?

Well, this person could be the only content marketing specialist at a small organization, the first content marketing manager at a medium‐size organization, or the new content marketing strategist at a large organization.

In the most successful organizations, this person needs the necessary skills, education, and experience to turn content marketing into a strategic marketing approach. In other words, this person could be you.

These key concepts and definitions should help to prepare you for the OMCA exam. But nothing could have prepared you to respond quickly and effectively to a global pandemic.

That's why the rest of this chapter goes well beyond “teaching to the test” to foster a holistic understanding of content marketing strategy, tactics, and metrics.

Content Marketing Planning

So, what happened next?

CMI and MarketingProfs fielded their annual survey during the summer of 2020. They found: “Content marketers are resilient. Most have met the challenges of the pandemic head‐on.” The found the following responses to the pandemic:

• Increased time spent talking with customers: 30 percent of B2B and 26 percent of B2C marketers
• Revisited their customer/buyer personas: 25 percent of B2B and 18 percent of B2C marketers
• Reexamined the customer journey: 31 percent of B2B and 34 percent of B2C marketers
• Changed their targeting/messaging strategy: 70 percent of B2B and 63 percent of B2C marketers
• Changed their distribution strategy: 53 percent of B2B and 46 percent of B2C marketers
• Adjusted their editorial calendar: 64 percent of B2B and 54 percent of B2C marketers
• Put more resources toward social media/online communities: 40 percent of B2B and 43 percent of B2C marketers
• Changed their website: 40 percent of B2B and 37 percent of B2C marketers
• Changed their products/services: 26 percent of B2B and 25 percent of B2C marketers
• Adjusted their KPIs: 20 percent of B2B and 23 percent of B2C marketers
• Changed their content marketing metrics (e.g., set up new analytics/dashboards): 14 percent of B2B and 13 percent of B2C marketers

In other words, both B2B and B2C marketers totally overhauled the process for creating a content marketing plan from stem to stern. For some, 2020 was the year of quickly adapting their content marketing strategy. For others, it was the year to finally develop one.

As Stephanie Stahl, the General Manager of the CMI, said when the 12th annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2022 report was published on Oct. 13, 2021, “Companies are waking up to the power of content marketing due in part to the pandemic. That's not some grand pronouncement from the Content Marketing Institute. It's a recurring refrain we heard from you (or content marketers like you) in our 2022 B2B research.”

She then shared three of the open‐ended responses in the latest survey to the question, “How does your content marketing look post‐pandemic?”

• “Who would have thought that a pandemic would be the thing to finally bring content marketing out from behind the shadows and into the forefront of marketing communication?”
• “The pandemic reinforced the importance of our content marketing strategy. There had been a commitment to it, but now that commitment is company‐wide and there is more collaboration between marketing and sales.”
• “The pandemic allowed our content marketing approach to come front and center for the whole organization and our leadership team. We now understand the power of what content can do. Our challenge is to be able to tie it into a revenue center that generates leads for the firm.”

A year later, the 12th annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2022 report, which was published October 13, 2021, said: “The key theme that emerged was this: The pandemic awoke a sleeping giant—content marketing, that is.”

It continued, “Without in‐person events and face‐to‐face selling, many who had previously paid little attention to content marketing suddenly became aware of its power. More content marketers got a seat at the table and helped keep many businesses on their audiences’ radar. Some discovered new audiences altogether.”

And report concluded, “The research also confirmed what many of us already knew: Content marketers are some of the fiercest business pros around. In the most difficult of times, they get the job done—and many come through more creative and stronger than before.”

So, you will want to adopt this new planning process—because it's been battle tested.

Increase Time Spent Talking with Customers

In the pre‐pandemic era, the first step in the content marketing planning process was to define your purpose and set your goals. (I know because I've taught courses on the five core elements that belong in an effective or successful content marketing plan.)

But this approach often led many of the least successful content marketers to prioritize their organization's sales/promotional message over their audience's informational needs.

In the post‐pandemic era, it's now more important than ever to avoid a product and sales orientation and embrace a market orientation and customer focus. And the best way to do that today is to increase the time content marketers spend talking with customers.

B2B salespeople will argue that they're already doing this. But research has found that they're talking with customers about different things than B2B marketers should focus on.

In fact, the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, in partnership with WARC and Lions, undertook a major study to analyze the effectiveness of 10 years of B2B marketing campaigns, and to replicate the Lions and WARC B2C study, The Effectiveness Code.

Following were among the key findings of The B2B Effectiveness Code:

• For B2B brands to grow, they require a better balance of short‐term sales activation and long‐term brand building. In addition, they need a greater focus on large audiences who aren't necessarily “in the market” today, as well as more use of emotion to connect deeply and powerfully with B2B purchasers.
• But their data showed that B2B marketing currently skews heavily toward short‐term, rational, and tightly targeted campaigns that seek to drive immediate sales effects. Their data also found the use of long‐term campaigning, broad targeting, and emotional creative work were largely absent from B2B marketing.

For B2C marketers, it's more challenging to increase the time spent “talking” with consumers. We can't hold more focus groups muffled by masks these days. But we can do the following:

• Use qualitative, quantitative, and digital techniques to gather customer insights.
• Design customer surveys, conduct market research, and analyze the data to identify or validate who our customers are as well as what they need and expect.

In Chapter 1, this is Step 3 in the process of developing a digital marketing strategy. But let me add this tactical advice: you can conduct a website survey that asks visitors three key questions—for free.

In a post entitled, “The Three Greatest Survey Questions Ever,” which was published in July 2015 on Occam's Razor, Avinash Kaushik said these key questions are:

• What is the purpose of your visit to our website today?
• Were you able to complete your task today?
• (Conditional, if No) Why were you not able to complete your task?
• (Conditional, if Yes) What could we have done to make your experience delightful?

And, I might add, there's no better way for content marketers to get “a seat at the table” than by being the “voice of the customer.”

Revisit Customer/Buyer Personas

In “the before time,” the second step in the content marketing planning process was to define your audience and describe how they would benefit from your content.

But this approach often led many of the least successful content marketers to ignore market segment differences and try to appeal to the whole market with general interest content.

In “the after times,” we now recognize the importance of breaking down our markets into segments and deciding which ones we will go after. And the best way to do that today is to create or revisit customer/buyer personas.

As you learned in Chapter 1, if you rely solely on demographics to create your persona, you'll often create content that is less relevant or engaging.

Why? Because consumer intent outperforms demographics.

For example, Vanessa Hensler, Lead Effectiveness Researcher for Ads Marketing at YouTube, wrote an article entitled, “Consumer intent is better than demographic data for video ads,” which was published in Think with Google in August 2020.

She said, “When it comes to marketing, the use of demographics has always been a blunt instrument. To get the most out of your marketing spend and to increase engagement with consumers, ads must be relevant to what they care about, not just their demographic.”

She added, “Relevance—creating ads that appeal directly to a shopper's interests and intent—drives brand lift and sales. A recent study conducted by Google and Ipsos found that video advertising based on consumer intent does have significantly more impact than advertising based on demographics.”

The study measured brand lift data across 16 video ads relevant to four different life events: getting married, buying a home, moving, and home renovation. The YouTube ads were served using three different levels of alignment: demographics only, demographics with intent, and intent only.

The YouTube ads served in alignment with intent drove a 32 percent higher lift in ad recall and 100 percent higher lift in purchase intent than those served using demographics only. And the addition of demographics to intent didn't produce a significant incremental lift versus using intent alone.

Reexamine the Customer Journey

Five years ago, the third step in the content marketing planning process was to develop your story—the specific, unique, and valuable ideas that you would build content assets around.

But this approach often led many of the least successful content marketers to focus on telling an “authentic” story about their organization's “brand purpose” instead of crafting content based on the specific stages of the buyer's journey.

Today, we've also learned that we need to craft emotional as well as rational content for a journey that is often more like a sightseeing tour with stops, exploration, and discussion along the way—all moments when you need to convince people to pick your brand and stick with it instead of switching to a competitor.

This is why you need to totally reexamine the customer journey—because the map of the specific stages is probably far too linear. And even if it isn't liner, then the roadmap of the journey that different customer segments are taking is probably two‐dimensional.

What's the alternative?

With permission from Search Engine Journal, the next section is a shortened version of the column that I wrote on Jan. 12, 2022, which tackled this question.

What Is a Content Marketing Matrix and Do We Need One?

According to the Content Marketing Institute's Video & Visual Storytelling Survey, which was published November 10, 2021, 83 percent of marketers say video has become more important in the last two years.

Videos were always a powerful tool in the storytelling arsenal. But maybe it's time to reexamine our content marketing matrix.

What is a content marketing matrix and do we need one now? Well, a content marketing matrix is a planning tool to help marketers generate ideas for the most engaging content types for their audiences.

A number of them have been created over the past decade, including one that I contributed to Guy Kawasaki's book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (2012).

Figure 5.2 shows what it looks like.

As you can see, my content marketing matrix has two dimensions:

• Awareness through to action on the horizontal axis
• Rational through emotional on the vertical axis

Content marketers are supposed to use the four quadrants—entertain, inspire, educate, and convince—“as a starting point” to review how their content can support the goals of their B2B, B2C, or not‐for‐profit organizations.

Do We Need a Content Marketing Matrix in 2023?  A decade later, I don't have a problem with using a 2 × 2 matrix “as a starting point.”

But it reminds me of the scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982) when Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) analyzes the tactics of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán) and observes, “He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two‐dimensional thinking.”

That's why I believe experienced content marketers need a three‐dimensional matrix to compete successfully in a world where

• YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly logged‐in users,
• 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and
• video content is playing a starring role in all four quadrants.

I don't have a problem with putting “branded stories” (e.g., short films, series, documentaries, and inspirational videos) in the upper‐left quadrant of the matrix. I've seen some entertaining short films “go viral.”

I've also seen some inspiring, educational, and enlightening videos go viral too. In Chapter 1, we looked at how several major brands in the United Kingdom use nostalgic Christmas ads to build brand awareness and connect with customers on a deeper level.

(Note: This column is republished in Chapter 1.)

Unruly Reveals Top Emotionally Engaging Holiday Ads of 2021  Each year, Unruly tests holiday ads and measures the intensity of emotions, brand favorability, authenticity, and purchase intent that viewers felt while watching an ad, which all contribute to an overall “EQ Score.”

Unruly is a global video and Connected TV (CTV) advertising platform. Content marketers can learn some important lessons from them about how to generate ideas for the most engaging content types for their audiences.

(It's worth noting that Dr. Nelson‐Field worked with Unruly a decade ago to develop an earlier version of their methodology.)

In 2021, Unruly analyzed the emotional responses of approximately 9,700 consumers around the world to more than 50 holiday ads.

Carol Gillard, the vice president of marketing and communications at Unruly, observed several interesting trends:

• “As December 2020 approached, brands went out of their way to relate to the uncertainty of holidays amidst a global pandemic. Messages last year reflected the change in storied traditions and adaptability of consumers as they still attempted to bring cheer into their holiday season.
• “By comparison, many in the 2021 crop of holiday ads do not reference or allude to Covid‐19, and instead seek to create nostalgia for Christmases past, and excite consumers about gathering and celebrating with their nearest and dearest.”
• “Top‐performing ads have high EQ scores (above 6 or 7) and demonstrate a combination of intense emotional response, brand favorability, and purchase intent by viewers.”

Let's start with Wegmans Holiday Commercial 2021, which was ranked number 1 in the United States (Figure 5.3).

The video's description says, “The holidays are about sharing, caring, and enjoying great food. Watch as a little boy shows us that you don't have to be all grown up to be a big helper. Let's get back to happy, together.”

The ad from Wegmans Food Markets scored 61 percent in Emotional Intensity, 53 percent in Brand Favorability, and 38 percent in Happiness, to get an overall EQ Score of 7.3.

Wegmans Food Markets selected Optic Sky, an advertising and digital experience production company, to produce this ad.

I asked Aaron Gordon, the CEO of Optic Sky, “What was your thinking/strategy behind the Wegmans approach to holiday advertising at this particular time in history?”

Gordon said, "This holiday spot is part of the Wegmans ‘Back to Happy’ campaign. It's the first ad campaign Wegmans has run since the start of the pandemic, so it was important to consider the state of COVID‐19 at the time. On one hand, it seemed as though we were making real progress; vaccines were finally available, the economy was rebounding, and schools and stadiums were opening back up. On the other hand, we knew that COVID was unpredictable.”

He added, “The Wegmans internal creative agency decided to focus all three ads on the values they as a company share with their customers, who represent all walks of life. The Optic Sky team worked closely with Wegmans to create ads that evoke a warm, human, and nostalgic tone, while touching upon our shared yearning to leave the pandemic behind (as the campaign name, ‘Back to Happy,’ implies). Together, we emphasized our common humanity, love of family, and hope for the future with scenes of joy, sincere caring, and family meals."

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year | Frito‐Lay ranked number 2 in the United States (Figure 5.4).

The video's description says, “Share more joy this Holi‐LAY'S season with Jimmy Fallon and your Frito‐Lay favorites.” Frito‐Lay's ad scored 55 percent in Emotional Intensity, 45 percent in Brand Favorability, and 36 percent in Happiness to get an overall EQ Score of 7.3.

The Whoopsery | Stories of Evergreen Hills | Created by Chick‐fil‐A ranked number 3 (Figure 5.5).

This video's description says, “Sam is back for another adventure this holiday season, and she brought a friend! After an unfortunate mishap while decorating Cece's family Christmas tree, Sam and Cece try to make it right and end up in a magical place called The Whoopsery.”

Chick‐fil‐A's ad scored 56 percent in Emotional Intensity, 49 percent in Brand Favorability, and 36 percent in Happiness, to get an overall EQ Score of 7.1.

(Gillard noted, “Several top ads used animation, which is reminiscent of the iconic stop motion animation holiday movies of the 1960s and 1970s.)

Macy's Presents: Tiptoe and the Flying Machine ranked number 4 in the United States (Figure 5.6).

The video's description says, “This is the story of Tiptoe. A little reindeer with a big problem. She's absolutely terrified of flying. So her friends get together and teach her a very important lesson: if you believe in yourself, there's no telling how high you can soar.”

Macy's ad scored 53 percent in Emotional Intensity, 48 percent in Brand Favorability, and 33 percent in Happiness to get an overall EQ Score of 6.9.

Finally, OREO “A Holiday Twist” :30 ranked number 5 in the United States (Figure 5.7). This video's description says, “The holidays’ favorite cookie #OREO #StayPlayful.” Oreo's ad scored 45 percent in Emotional Intensity, 41 percent in Brand Favorability, and 29 percent in Happiness to get an overall EQ Score of 6.7.

Some content marketers are going to look at these top emotionally engaging holiday ads, scratch their heads, and say, “But those are YouTube ads!”

Yes, they are. And according to the Content Marketing Video Survey, repurposed ads (long‐form versions of TV ads) are one of the video types that produced the best content marketing results in 2021. (Note: Repurposed ads ranked number 9, so eight other types of video got better results.)

Besides, a content marketing matrix is supposed to help you generate ideas for the most engaging content types for your audiences. So, if you mistakenly think that you can't learn lessons from the top emotionally engaging holiday ads of 2021, then you've got to ask yourself: “Does this pattern indicate two‐dimensional thinking?”

To transform this situation, we need to go beyond producing more videos in 2023. We need to make videos worth watching and create content worth sharing. And there are plenty examples of branded videos that are emotionally engaging even though they aren't ads. If you want to see one, just watch Google – Year in Search 2021.

The description of Google's branded video (Figure 5.8) says, “In a year that continued to test many, the world searched “how to heal” more than ever. Whether they're taking care of mental health, honoring a loved one, or reuniting with family, people are finding ways to come back stronger than before.”

Uploaded on November 22, 2021, it has more than 228 million views and over 178,000 engagements (e.g., likes, comments, shares).

And, if you mistakenly think that B2B videos have to be rational or boring, then check out “Zero Tolerance Machining” with the Wire EDM ‐ Part 1 | US Digital #Shorts. US Digital designs and manufactures motion control products for OEM manufacturers as well as end users. The description of their branded video (Figure 5.9) says, “Our machine shop can cut metal so precisely using our wire EDM that two parts fit together with virtually no gap between.”

Uploaded on October 27, 2021, it has 42.6 million views and 1.7 million engagements.

The B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2022 report produced by the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs says, “The top content marketing‐related area of investment for 2022 is expected to be video (69 percent). This makes sense, as business has shifted online, and marketers look for new/more ways to tell compelling stories to capture and keep audience attention.”

All of this is—potentially—good news. Hopefully, most content marketers won't blow this opportunity by cranking out more branded videos that evoke moderate emotions.

I realize that eliciting intense emotions sounds risky. So, let me close with an excerpt from an interview in WARC's “Insights from the 2021 Creative Effectiveness Lions winners.”

WARC asked Ann Mukherjee, who is chairman and chief executive officer at Pernod Ricard North America and was president of the 2021 Creative Effectiveness Lions jury, “What stood out to you about the Grand Prix winner, Nike's Dream Crazy?”

Mukherjee said, “We felt that Dream Crazy was the next chapter in advertising, helping the industry think about what's possible and redefining the roles brands can play in making a positive dent in the universe.”

She added, “It's also important to remember that Nike was actually solving a business problem around its relevance to younger consumers. This audience does not only want to buy brands, they want to buy into brands. Nike took a risk because it understood that's what it took.”

That's why we need to use a three‐dimensional content marketing matrix “as a starting point” to generate ideas for the most engaging content types for our audiences. Then, we've also got to think outside the box (Figure 5.10).

Change the Targeting/Messaging Strategy

In response to the pandemic, 70 percent of B2B and 63 percent of B2C marketers changed their targeting/messaging strategy. Ironically, this wasn't even one of the steps in the content marketing planning process a couple of years ago.

As I explained in Chapter 1, strategy has also been “the elephant in the room” for digital marketing since 2019. And it may also explain why the CMI needs to keep reminding marketers they need to have a documented content marketing strategy.

Having a documented content marketing strategy is correlated with being successful, but correlation does not imply causation. Documenting your strategy only helps if it leads your team to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content that attracts and retains a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, drives profitable customer action.

So, focus on creating a successful content marketing strategy first, before you harness the benefits of documenting it to accomplish the following:

• Align your team around a common mission/goals.
• Make it easier to determine which types of content to develop.
• Keep your team focused on documented priorities.
• Help your team allocate resources to optimize desired results.
• Provide clarity on targeted audience(s).

You'll need to start by making some scientific, wild guesses about the best targeting/messaging strategy for your brand and industry. Let's use Direct Line, one of the leading insurers in the United Kingdom, as an example. Start by mapping your customer's journey:

• See: People who could end up owning a car
• Feel: People who feel they might need a new car
• Think: People who think they might need car insurance
• Do: People who compare their car insurance options
• Care: Your existing customers whose car insurance is about to expire

Then, craft an overall message for each stage of the customer journey, identify some of the key communication touchpoints that you'll create in an ongoing content marketing program, and identify the KPIs that you'll use to measure the impact of these touchpoints on customer perceptions and behavior.

Table 5.1 shows how that might look.

Finally, Table 5.2 is my hypothetical outline of the headlines of the key messages, which are tailored for each communication touchpoint in a targeted persona's customer journey.

The proposed headlines for the short articles/posts, virtual events, case studies, as well as email newsletters should be self‐explanatory. But you might want to know a little more about the proposed content of the videos.

They build on Direct Line Group's “We're On It” campaign, which took home the top prize at the Marketing Week Masters in 2021 for driving long‐ and short‐term business impact (Figure 5.11).

Direct Line took over a year to develop its new campaign. After delivering the brief to creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi in 2019, the brand launched “We're On It” in February 2020.

The successful campaign featured three characters—Bumblebee from Transformers, Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Robocop—showing each of them being beaten by Direct Line in an emergency situation including a car accident or office break‐in.

A hypothetical content marketing's targeting/messaging strategy matrix would leverage these characters to craft a tailored message for targeted persona during the “Feel” stage of the customer journey. This should drive even more long‐ and short‐term business impact.

How do you measure that? Well, you could use Google Surveys once or twice a year to measure brand awareness, favorability, consideration, and purchase intent. You could also use Google Forms to conduct an annual or semi‐annual customer survey to measure brand affinity.

(I'll examine other ways to measure results at the end of this chapter.)

Change the Distribution Strategy

In response to the pandemic, 53 percent of B2B and 46 percent of B2C marketers changed their distribution strategy. Ironically, this wasn't one of the steps in the content marketing planning process 5 years ago either.

This omission led many content marketers to mistakenly “assume” that employing “more” content marketing tactics as well as distributing their content through “more” channels would make them “more” effective. All too often, it didn't.

So, what's the best approach for creating a distribution strategy today? Well, the B2B and B2C Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends reports for 2022 from CMI and MarketingProfs asked content marketers which content assets produced the best results in the last 12 months. Following were the top content assets:

• Short articles/posts (fewer than 3,000 words)
• Videos
• Virtual events/webinars/online courses
• Research reports
• E‐books/whitepapers
• Case studies

CMI and MarketingProfs also asked content marketers which organic (nonpaid) social media platforms produced the best results in the last 12 months:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube

According to CMI's Video & Visual Storytelling Survey, which was mentioned previously, the following video types produced the best content marketing results in the previous 12 months:

• Interviews with influencers/subject matter experts
• Case studies or customer stories
• How‐to videos or explainer videos
• Branded stories (e.g., short films, series, documentaries, and inspirational videos)

Sticking to what produced the best results in the past is like driving a car down a busy street by looking in the rear‐view mirror. You have to drive slowly. So, if your distribution strategy isn't getting you where you need to go fast enough, then how should you change it?

Well, let me share a counterintuitive, strategic insight: creative effectiveness is the single most powerful force multiplier in your arsenal. Why? Because the lion's share of your success will be determined by the quality of your content. So, you should invest about twice as much of your time, talent, and treasure creating a consistent stream of valuable, relevant, engaging, and shareable video content as you invest in distributing it across more and different channels.

If you can't capture your audience's attention with the video content that you're creating, you need to identify the right partners who can.

Influencer marketing isn't one of the top eight disciplines. But you will probably want at least a concept‐level understanding of how to do the following:

• Identify the right influencers.
• Find the right engagement tactics.
• Keep track of your influencers’ activity.
• Measure the performance of your programs.

To identify the right social media influencers, use these three key criteria:

• Reach: Measures the total size of an influencer's online audience across all major social networks
• Relevance: Measures an influencer's contextual affinity to your areas of interest
• Resonance: Measures the engagement of an influencer's audience with their content

When it comes to reach and resonance, be careful. Some influencers are still using bad practices such as fake followers, bots, and fraud to inflate their numbers. However, Influencer Marketing Hub's free Instagram Audit Tool, Fake Follower & Audience Credibility Checker, can help you spot fake or misstated accounts on Instagram.

Before you engage influencers, you need to invest a serious amount of time watching the videos they've created to ensure their relevance as well as their suitability. In other words, vet their content like your career depends on it—because it does. Once you've thoroughly vetted influencers, let go of control. This will ensure that social media influencers keep creating compelling content that resonates with their audience.

For example, Honey, a browser extension that automatically searches for coupons on more than 30,000 sites, sponsored Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, to create an “expensive” stunt on his popular YouTube channel to expose Honey's service to MrBeast's viewers.

(In January 2022, Forbes declared MrBeast the highest‐earning YouTuber of 2021, hauling in $54 million from advertising, sponsorship deals, and spin‐off products.)

The result of this collaboration was Would YOU Rather Have A Lamborghini or This House? Uploaded on Aug. 22, 2020, this 20‐minute‐long sponsored video got 122 million views and 3.2 million engagements (Figure 5.12). That's more views than a Super Bowl ad typically gets—at a fraction of the cost.

To track each of your influencers, use Google's free Campaign URL Builder tool (https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/campaign-url-builder/), which allows you to add campaign parameters to URLs so you can measure custom campaigns in Google Analytics. Just enter the website URL, campaign medium, and campaign name as well as a unique identifier for each campaign source. You can even use Bitly to shorten the link. Then share the generated campaign URL with each of your influencers to use in any of the promotional channels that they want to be associated with this custom campaign.

We'll talk about other ways to measure the performance of your content marketing and influencer marketing programs at the end of this chapter as well as in Chapter 6, which tackles the challenge of measuring social media marketing.

Adjust the Editorial Calendar

In response to the pandemic, 64 percent of B2B and 54 percent of B2C marketers in North America adjusted their editorial calendar. Hopefully, they did this after they'd changed their targeting/messaging strategy. Why? Because your editorial calendar is not your targeting/messaging strategy.

So, if they adjusted their editorial calendars without changing their targeting/messaging strategies first, then this was just a sad example of what the British call “panic stations,” which is a short period in which there is a lot of confused activity because people feel anxious.

If you've never created an editorial calendar before, read the article entitled, “7 Steps to a More Strategic Editorial Calendar,” which was written by Kelsey Raymond, the co‐founder and CEO of Influence & Co., and published by CMI on Jan. 6, 2022.

She says, “Too many companies focus on the logistics of their editorial calendar—what days content is publishing, at what times, and at what cadence—and ignore the strategic elements. Anyone can schedule blog posts regularly, but the best content marketers create robust, strategic editorial calendars.”

Her seven‐step guide details how to build an effective editorial calendar:

• Determine who needs to be included.
• Identify goals for the quarter.
• Decide the content mix and publishing cadence to support those goals.
• Document your mix and cadence decisions on the editorial calendar.
• Brainstorm topics.
• Plan for flexibility.
• Measure results to determine the success of your plan.

She concludes, “Following a strategic approach to your editorial calendar is a never‐ending process. But that ongoing work should be affected by your evaluation process. Review your key metrics toward the end of the quarter as you begin to plan for your next three months. It gets easier each time you plan the editorial calendar for the next quarter because you're simply tweaking your previous plan rather than starting from scratch.”

The overwhelming majority of content marketers say that video has become more important to their organizations over the last 2 years. And future investments into video are expected to climb even further.

To up your video investment and make it the backbone of your overall marketing approach—like a lot of your peers are planning to do—you need a video content calendar.

You can start by borrowing a page out of the YouTube creator playbook for brands. In the section entitled, “Schedule your content,” the playbook recommends building a channel calendar to map your programming strategy over the year. It advocates producing three types of complementary content in the following framework: help, hub, and hero content.

• Help content: What is your audience actively searching for regarding your brand or industry? What can serve as your 365‐day‐relevant, always‐on, content programming (e.g., product tutorials, how‐to content, customer service)?
• Hub content: The content you develop on a regular basis to give a fresh perspective on your target audience's passion points (e.g., verticalized content about a product line). This is often staggered throughout the year.
• Hero content: What content do you want to push to a big, broad audience? What would be your Super Bowl moment? A brand may have only a few hero moments in a year, such as product launch events or industry tent‐poles.

This playbook was published in October 2015. I would argue that brands have added a fourth type of content to this framework in the past two years: hygiene content.

• Hygiene content: This is the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and Public Service Announcement (PSA) content that you create on an occasional basis.

If you would like some examples of each these four types of content, check out this very small sample of the 754 videos that YouTube uploaded to the brand's 10 channels in 2021.

To see an example of YouTube's help content, watch Creator Basics: How to Set Up and Customize Your Channel. Uploaded to the YouTube Creators channel on May 13, 2021, this video got 1 million views and 15,400 engagements (Figure 5.13).

To see an example of YouTube's hub content, watch CMO X Creator Conversations – The Trailer | Season 2. Uploaded to the YouTube Advertisers channel on July 14, 2021, this video got 13,600 views and 100 engagements (Figure 5.14).

Next, watch Join the BTS #PermissiontoDance Challenge to see an example of YouTube's hero content. Uploaded to the YouTube channel on July 19, 2021, this video got 58 million views and 146,000 engagements (Figure 5.15).

Finally, watch Wear a mask to stay protected during COVID‐19 to see an example of YouTube's hygiene content. Uploaded to the YouTube India Spotlight channel on May 3, 2021, this video has 54.2 million views and 403,000 engagements (Figure 5.16).

In other words, YouTube practices what it preaches. The 754 videos that the brand uploaded in 2021 got a total of 1.8 billion (with a “b”) views and 8 million engagements, according to data from Tubular Labs. That's an average of 2.4 million views and 12,000 engagements per video.

Here's the key takeaway for you: don't sprinkle video into your marketing programs here and there; use these four types of complementary content to create a consistent stream of content that is valuable, relevant, engaging, and shareable. By upping your video investment and making it the backbone of your overall content marketing approach, you can begin using video strategically.

Put More Resources Toward Social Media/Online Communities

In response to the pandemic, 40 percent of B2B and 43 percent of B2C marketers put more resources toward social media/online communities. In Chapter 6, we analyze why many brands haven't seen a return on their marketing investment—yet.

Red Bull is one of the exceptions to the rule. So, let's take a quick look at how the brand quietly changed its video content marketing strategy.

Brands that already have a successful content marketing strategy are generally tempted to stick with what's working. You know what they say, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

Back in the old days, Red Bull was known for creating monster hits, like Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from 128k – Mission Highlights. The Red Bull Stratos space diving project, which took place on Oct. 14, 2012, was viewed live by over 9.5 million users, setting a record for the live stream with the most concurrent views ever on YouTube (Figure 5.17).

This 1:31‐long video now has 47.2 million views, and 250,000 engagements, according to data from Tubular Labs. So, you might mistakenly think that Red Bull's current video marketing strategy is still built around creating similar hero content for massive tent‐pole events that ignore market segment differences on YouTube. But you would be wrong.

Red Bull started putting more resources toward niche social media/online communities more than 5 years ago. And their successful video content marketing strategy has been built on creating hub content that's different from their competition, which gets views from fans with a special interest in biking, motorsport, surfing, winter sports, music, gaming, or other events.

For example, Red Bull creates some of the best action sports clips and original series on YouTube. Sports fans can watch highlights from niche events like UCI Mountain Biking, Red Bull Rampage, Red Bull Ice Cross, Red Bull Straight Rhythm, Red Bull Soap Box Race, Red Bull Flugtag, Volcom Pipe Pro, and Red Bull Cliff Diving. Or they can discover the behind‐the‐scenes lives of athletes like pro mountain bikers Matt Jones and Danny MacAskill.

And Red Bull creates similar content on Facebook.

If we look at the data for 2021, here's what the switch to a strategy of creating hub content on YouTube and Facebook has produced: 2.7 billion views (with a “b”) and 65.1 million engagements. That's the equivalent of making 57 space jumps a year—or more than one a week!

That's what I mean about dramatically changing what everyone thought a successful video content marketing strategy looked like. Red Bull has moved from making occasional “hits” to producing an ongoing stream of videos that get lots of views—and engagements—week in and week out from social media/online communities with special, not general interests.

How did Red Bull put this wildly successful video marketing strategy together? Well, the energy drink brand started uploading videos to Facebook in November 2007 and YouTube in April 2008. And they initially crafted content targeted at young men 18–24 years old who were looking for videos with a “stoke factor.”

Red Bull's demographics are still 91 percent male, but the age brackets are as follows:

• Ages18–24 are 28.8 percent on YouTube and 19.1 percent on Facebook.
• Ages 25–34 are 32.1 percent on YouTube and 34.6 percent on Facebook.
• Ages 35–44 are 6.1 percent on YouTube and 19.5 percent on Facebook.

The demographics don't tell the whole story. Red Bull's social media/online communities are sports fans: people who enjoy watching, reading about, or participating in sports. They regularly spend a reasonable portion of their disposable incomes on sports‐related purchases like sports programming, games, tickets, and sporting equipment. They're routinely the first in their offices to join a sports team. They often come to YouTube to watch sports highlights and commentary.

If this sounds like the target audience of a media company, then Red Bull functions as a media company. And if you ask Red Bull marketers what they are focused on, then you may be shocked—shocked to find they aren't focused on selling an energy drink.

But just for the record, Red Bull sold 7.9 billion cans of the energy drink globally for $7.2 billion (€6.31 billion) in 2020, the most recent year that data are available. In other words, Red Bull has been exceptionally successful because the brand does the following:

• Prioritizes their audience's informational needs over their organization's sales and/or promotional message
• Differentiates their content from the competition
• Crafts content based on specific stages of the buyer's journey

Change the Website

In response to the pandemic, 40 percent of B2B and 37 percent of B2C marketers changed their website. But this may not have generated the results their organizations were hoping for.

Barry Schwartz, the CEO of RustyBrick and Editor of Search Engine Roundtable, wrote in Search Engine Land's newsletter on January 12, 2022, “I've been following Google's algorithm updates for about two decades now and time‐and‐time again, the algorithm updates that Google gives us months or even years to prepare for, are often the ones that have the least amount of impact on rankings in Google's search results.”

Recent examples include the page experience update, which was pre‐announced in May 2020 but didn't start to roll out until over a year later. He added, “Google even told us the page experience update is a minor factor and you should not see significant changes from it.”

Schwartz continued, “The same with page speed update, months of notice, little impact in reality. The list goes on and on, virtually all these long lead time search algorithm updates.”

And he observed, “It is the updates Google does not give us huge lead time to prepare for that impact the rankings the most, like the core updates, the Penguin and Panda updates from the past, and most of the updates that go unconfirmed or unannounced.”

So, why do so many SEOs spend so much time and effort working on updates where the outcome in ranking is so minor? According to Schwartz, “It is because we can act on these pre‐announced updates because they require technical changes to our sites. Core updates and quality updates are about the content and quality of your site; there isn't one technical change to make. But again, there is no real meat in these pre‐announced updates—so should we panic and put so much effort into working on them, when we can focus on overall site quality improvements?”

Let me answer his rhetorical question: instead of rushing to “panic stations,” SEOs should keep calm and carry on creating new quality content for their sites.

This is an opportunity for content marketers to reach out to SEOs and invite them to collaborate on creating new quality content for their company or clients' websites. This will ensure you're offering the best content you can. That's what Google's algorithms seek to reward.

For example, let's imagine that you're a content marketer working on the Tim Hortons Roll Up the Rim campaign, an iconic annual tradition for Canadians from 1986 onward. Every year, Tim Hortons guests could reveal a tab printed under the rim of hot beverage cups that would either announce a prize win—ranging from a free coffee or donut to a free car—or a “please play again” message.

More than 80 percent of all Canadians have said they've played Roll Up over the years. Some things changed—prizes were updated and the odds of winning gradually improved—but the core game remained largely the same.

Then 2020 happened.

And like so many businesses and industries, Tim Hortons was pushed into a digital transformation of sorts. App Annie saw between 2 and 3 years of mobile usage habit growth squeezed into less than a year due to the pandemic. Fortunately, Tim Hortons had already been focused on building and developing a strong digital foundation over the last 3 years, such as the launch of Tim's Rewards and Mobile Order + Pay on our app. But in a matter of days, the brand was forced to take its digital plans to the next level.

So, how might content marketers and SEOs collaborate on creating content in this crisis? Well, you could use Google's free Grow My Store tool (https://growmystore.thinkwithgoogle.com) to boost your business in this ever‐changing environment with a quick and easy evaluation of your retail website.

Here's how the tool works:

• It analyzes your retail site, gives you an overall score, and offers you detailed insights and recommendations to help you strengthen your business.
• It also lets you see how your site stacks up against retailers in your sector.
• It identifies areas of improvement so you can upgrade effectively.
• It accesses personalized market and consumer trends to reach new customers.
• It helps you grow with advice from Google's database of resources and curated tools.

For example, Grow My Store tells you the following:

• Of smartphone users, 87 percent consult their phone on purchases they are about to make in‐store.
• Of in‐store food and grocery shoppers in the United States, 47 percent say that remembering past sizes or items they've bought is a feature that empowers their shopping decisions.
• Of in‐store food and grocery shoppers in the United States, 47 percent say that receiving promotions or deals specific to past purchases is a “nice to have” feature that empowers their shopping decisions

It would be “nice to have” Canadian consumer trends. But it is what it is. Reach out to the SEOs working on the Tim Hortons site and invite them to a Zoom meeting to brainstorm ideas that would enable teams to harness the surge in search interest in both the Roll Up the Rim and the redesigned Roll Up To Win contest on the Tim Hortons app.

Working together, you can create a comprehensive full‐funnel strategy that captures interest with new audiences, helps connect new and existing customers, and informs, educates and drives consumers to partake in these Roll Up events.

That should get you a seat at the table.

Change the Products/Services

In response to the pandemic, 26 percent of B2B and 25 percent of B2C marketers changed their products/services. Um, okay. But, what can content marketers do—beyond supporting the launch of a new product?

Well, for starters, they can read “A Complete Guide To Product‐Led Content Strategy (With Examples),” which I wrote on November 10, 2021. With permission from Search Engine Journal, let me share a lightly edited excerpt.

A Time‐Tested Solution to this Problem  So, let me share an outline that can help content marketers develop a good storyline so their product can be the star of the show in a way that is valuable, relevant, engaging, and shareable.

By the way, this outline can be found in Aristotle's Rhetoric. This ancient Greek treatise, which dates back to the 4th century BCE, is regarded as “the most important single work on persuasion ever written.”

You could say it has withstood the test of time. Aristotle's five‐part outline for a persuasive speech is as follows:

• Get your audience's attention.
• Explain a key problem they face.
• Identify a solution to their problem.
• Describe the benefits of this solution.
• Give your audience a call to action.

This outline still works more than 2,400 years later because it strategically weaves a product into the middle of the narrative after getting the audience's attention and explaining a key problem they face, which is the limited goal of most brand‐building marketing campaigns.

It does this before describing the product's benefits and giving the audience a call to action, which is the limited objective of most performance marketing campaigns. In other words, this product‐led content strategy works because it transforms a product into a solution.

Adjust the KPIs

In response to the pandemic, 20 percent of B2B and 23 percent of B2C marketers adjusted their KPIs. I would love to know which marketers adjusted which KPIs.

In Chapter 2 of this book, Matt Bailey defined “KPI” as a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives. But different organizations have different objectives, which is also why KPIs tend to be unique to each organization. So, let's apply what we learned about digital analytics to content marketing.

• If your goal is to “support the launch of a new product,” then use “search rankings,” “social media analytics,” and “website traffic” as your KPIs.
• If your goals are to “generate demand/leads” or “drive attendance to one or more in‐person or virtual events,” then use “quantity of leads” and “quality of leads” as your KPIs.
• If your goal is to “build a subscribed audience,” then use “email subscriber numbers” as your KPI, as you will learn in Chapter 9 from Michael Stebbins.
• If your goal is to “nurture subscribers/audience/leads,” then use “email engagement” or “website engagement” as your KPIs.
• If your goal is to “generate sales/revenue,” then use “conversions” and “cost to acquire a lead, subscriber, and/or customer” as your KPIs.
• If your goals are to “create brand awareness,” “build credibility/trust,” “educate audience(s),” or “build loyalty with existing clients/customers,” then what are your KPIs?

To understand how you are doing against these objectives, you need to periodically conduct market research. There are several questions that you need to ask before you start gathering information, advises Nate Laban, the Owner of Growth Survey Systems. These questions (and some quick answers) include the following:

• What audience are you targeting and can you access them? (For example, Google provides different tools to help you access different audiences. If you are targeting Internet users, you should use Google Surveys, but if you are targeting a list of contacts, you should use Google Forms.)
• Do your contacts need to be pre‐screened? (You can use screening questions to filter respondents to your survey. For example, respondents first see your screening question, and then those who select a threshold answer such as “Yes” or “I plan to” can answer the remaining questions in your survey.)
• How many responses do you need? (The number depends on how confident you want to be in your results. The U.S. population is 328.2 million people, so 384 responses have a margin of error of +/– 5 percent, and 1,067 responses have a margin of error of +/– 3 percent.)
• Have all stakeholders agreed to the objectives? (Do yourself a favor and make that boring bulleted list of research goals and then make sure all other stakeholders on your team have contributed and approved your goals before you start writing your questionnaire.)

You're ready to write the questions that your target audience will answer.

At the “See” stage of the customer journey, one of your KPIs should be “brand awareness.” This metric measures the portion of a market that can identify a brand either when prompted (aided) or unprompted (unaided).

For example: When it comes to <category>, what brands come to mind?

At the “Feel” stage of the customer journey, one of your KPIs should be “favorability.” This metric measures a target audience's feelings or attitudes toward a company or its products.

For example: How would you describe your overall opinion of <brand>?

• Very favorable
• Somewhat favorable
• Neutral
• Somewhat unfavorable
• Very unfavorable

At the “Think” stage, one of your KPIs should be “consideration.” This metric measures how consumers weigh different factors in their minds while planning a purchase.

For example: Which factors are important when considering <product category>?

At the “Do” stage of the customer journey, one of your KPIs should be “purchase intent.” This metric measures the respondent's attitude toward buying a product or service.

For example: Will you buy <brand> the next time you shop for <category>?

At the "Care" stage of the customer journey, one of your KPIs should be “brand affinity.” This metric measures an individual's brand preference in a product category, which tends to retain loyal customers for longer.

For example: “How do you feel about <brand>?

• I love it.
• I like it.
• I'm neutral.
• I don't like it.
• I hate it.

There are other questions that you can ask your target audience at least once a year—or a couple of times a year if you're using a seasonal calendar to plan for the next 12 months.

For example, an article by Michaela Jefferson entitled, “Inside the Grand Prix winning Direct Line campaign that delivered against all measures,” which was published in Marketing Week on October 27, 2021, reported that all three of the creatives that we discussed earlier “delivered recognition significantly above the Kantar norm of 33 percent. The ad featuring Bumblebee scored 62 percent, Robocop scored 55 percent, and Donatello scored 53 percent.”

She added, “The brand also closely tracked performance against three brand associations which ‘ladder up’ to a perception of brand superiority, and improvements were again recorded across all three. Those associations were: ‘are best at solving problems’ (+3.8 points), ‘goes beyond what you would expect from an insurer’ (+4.7 points), and ‘will sort out claims more efficiently than any other insurance providers’ (+4.2 points).”

So, if you can measure ad creative with these metrics, you should consider using them as KPIs to understand how your content is doing against your objectives.

Change the Content Marketing Metrics

Finally, 14 percent of B2B and 13 percent of B2C marketers changed their content marketing metrics (e.g., they set up new analytics/dashboards) in response to the pandemic.

I can't tell if these data mean that content marketers set up new metrics in Google Analytics because their goals had changed or if they merely set up new dashboards. The first is critical if there've been changes in consumer behavior. And the second is useful if you set up an “action dashboard.”

Much has already been written by other industry observers about how the global pandemic has dramatically changed consumer behavior. For example, it's no small feat to understand travel restrictions, rules, and exemptions as COVID‐19 cases rise, fall, and rise again. So, it's hardly surprising that many travelers are now planning domestic trips instead of international travel.

Let me share a short excerpt from a post I wrote entitled, “Best video content marketing examples from the New Media Academy,” which illustrates what you can do when consumer behavior changes.

In July 2020, I started teaching a series of courses at the New Media Academy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There were 22 content creators and social media influencers who were “students” in the New Media Academy's first Impact Digital Creator Program. I put the term “students” in quotation marks because these creators were already successful.

The New Media Academy teamed up a year ago with Beautiful Destinations, the world's leading travel content marketing agency, to showcase the UAE's hidden gems in beautiful cinematic videos for the World's Coolest Winter campaign.

Check out this video, which is entitled, Let's Go—The Emirates (Figure 5.20).

Several of my “students” are featured in the video, including Fatima AlHashmi, the first Emirati Opera singer; Ghaith Al Falasi, an FIA certified race car driver as well as a self‐taught off‐roader and drift enthusiast; Abdullah Omar AlAli, an AlJazira jiu‐jitsu player; Fahima Falaknaz, the first Emirati female boxer; and Chef Saud Al Matrooshi, the first Emirati chef at Emirates Flight Catering.

So, what transforms this case study into a success story? Well, the World's Coolest Winter, the UAE's first federal domestic tourism campaign, which was launched on December 12, 2020, and concluded on January 25, 2021, generated measurable results.

The country decided to promote domestic tourism because the pandemic had dramatically impacted international tourism. And the direct contribution of the travel and tourism sector to the UAE's gross domestic product (GDP) was AED 68.5 billion (USD 18.7 billion), which is equivalent to 5.2 percent of the country's total GDP.

The 45‐day campaign generated the following:

• More than 2,000 media reports that reached over 20 million people across the world
• 215 million views on videos that captured the UAE's beauty
• 950,000 domestic tourists across the country
• AED1 billion of revenue for the hospitality sector within 1 month

Yep, that's what transforms this case study into a success story. So, if there've been changes in consumer behavior in your industry, that should prompt you to consider changing your goals. That means that you should consider setting up new metrics in Google Analytics too.

What are the benefits of setting up a dashboard in Google Analytics? Dashboards let you monitor many metrics at once, so you can quickly check the health of your accounts or see correlations between different reports.

Setting up an “action dashboard” is especially useful. To learn why, you should read the blog post entitled, “Digital Dashboards: Strategic & Tactical: Best Practices, Tips, Examples,” which was published on Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik back on July 15, 2014.

He clarified the purpose of an “action dashboard” and explained how it should be used within an organization:

• Dashboards are not reports: Don't data puke. Instead, include insights, recommendations for actions, and business impact.
• Never leave the interpretation of data to executives: Always let them focus on your recommendations for action with the benefit of their wisdom and their knowledge of business strategy.
• Don't skip anything: When it comes to KPIs, segments, and recommendations, make sure you cover customer acquisition, behavior, and outcomes end‐to‐end.
• Context is everything: Great dashboards leverage targets, benchmarks, and competitive intelligence deliver context.
• Create a meaningful dashboard: The primary purpose of a dashboard is not to inform and not to educate. The primary purpose is to drive action!

Hopefully, this chapter has prepared you to be successful in content marketing as well as on the OMCA exam. This required me to go well beyond “teaching to the test.”

Why? Because many the competencies and skills required to qualify for employment in a supervised associate position in content marketing are fundamentally changing.

Nevertheless, content marketing continues to be a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.