Scoring with content marketing? First, fix the teething problems

[jrineakter]

Column – “There is no product that I particularly like that I have discovered through advertising and marketing.” And my favorite philosopher Nassim N. Taleb doesn’t stop there. For example, he calls marketing for soft drinks or aimed at children simply ‘evil’. Nobody wants to be sold anything. We consumers want to decide for ourselves what we buy. And so we do our best to avoid as much commercialism as possible. That is not easy in a world overstimulated by advertising messages. Just try to avoid those 377 daily commercial touchpoints . It seems like a cat-and-mouse game. But the advertising cat does not give up; it is simply too successful.


Technological developments have helped us consumers. We pay a small amount per month to listen to music or watch movies undisturbed. We install adblockers en masse on our mobile phones. And if we do want to buy something, we type it into Google and in no time we have the best offer for the best price. Every day high service low pricing . Ordered today, delivered tomorrow. Or in your backyard in an hour by drone.

Happy with experiences
The underlying point is that people are not happy with products at all, but with experiences. You do not share your enthusiasm for a product with your friends by just naming the product, but by describing your experience with enthusiasm.

People are not happy with products at all, but with experiences.”

Marketing used to be a strategic field with a real Chief Marketing Officer in the management team. Now we are all longing for the moment when the Chief Digital Officer takes over his azerbaijan telegram number list place. Petitions are already circulating on social media, because only then will you be taken seriously by the shareholders.

So marketing is dead. Or maybe not entirely?
Marketing is a broad field, everyone is involved and that is a good thing: the more ambassadors, the better. But in order to become relevant again, we are now specializing en masse under the influence of technology: social, online, digital, inbound, content, the list of technical marketing disciplines and exotic flavors is endless. Unfortunately, this specialization has also caused us to lose our strategic position. “It’s great that you understand social media, but we sell cookies, how does that fit into our strategy?”

It's great that you understand social media, but we sell cookies, how does that fit into our strategy?”

That marketing certainly deserves a place at the boardroom table was recently demonstrated by BlackRock boss Fink's call to CEOs worldwide to indicate their long-term vision on developments in their own industry.

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We seem to be so absorbed in the madness of everyday life that we have exchanged words for meaningless images. As a result, we no longer get people involved in the story of our company. In fact, replace the name of your business strategy with that of your competitor and then honestly say whether they are essentially different? We call it 'competition' but 'copy' would be more appropriate. A missed opportunity, especially since telling stories has been ingrained in our genes since prehistoric times. And that is precisely the strength of a good marketer.

Content marketing as a solution for everything?
The best successor to marketing seems to be content marketing. If done well, it offers a perfect combination of art and technology, between brand and sales, between ones & zeros and flesh & blood, between voluntary and a little help, between story and product. Make sure your story is good, and you will automatically be rewarded by Google. Sounds appealing.

The problem is that the content marketing teething problems have not yet been solved for many companies. And that is not a rosy picture of the future for the survival chances of this field after the hype.
Because how do you do that; write a good story, build a loyal audience and especially persuade the audience to take action that brings in money? What may it cost, certainly in relation to other investments? And when is it successful? And does it conflict with other objectives or departments or is it just a new name for the communications department?