What are you most excited about in the digital marketing space at the moment?
There are some fundamental changes occurring in digital media leading the way to more sophisticated user-friendly technology, enabling marketers to harvest more accurate audience data. More data means marketers can make smarter decisions, and help us better understand consumer behavior. The reason this kind of technology is so important is that the industry is increasingly fragmented, with split data across difference devices and different software. It’s important we find a solution that enables us as marketers to reach and engage with our audience and keep our message intact.
We’re fortunate that we have a large number of users who regularly come to our brands for content on a daily basis. But this is not the case with younger audience, so we are focusing on ensuring that our content is distributed to target younger readers. We are making great efforts to distribute our content in a way which is personalised to the target audience, and accessible. It is interesting to see how new players emerge in an increasingly meritocratic market; it’s a breath of fresh air for us as content creators.
Where do you go for great content?
I am an addict of breaking news, to get access to this information I usually go to publishers and titles like ours, elmundo, or Expansión, but I also check industry news on a daily basis through sites such as Buzzfeed, Medium, TC etc. I do this as soon as I wake up and every time I have a free slot throughout the day, mostly via mobile.
A couple of years ago I tried to move everything that I was interested in to Twitter. I wanted to save time because I generally check multiple sources and don’t follow specific journalists, but gradually I left Twitter and returned to a decentralised method of consumption. I realised that I really like the experience which these sites offer me, it’s part of the enjoyment of reading.
What’s next for digital content? What defines good content?
I am not purist about it, a good content for me is the one that I want to read when I want it on the device I’m consuming it.
Depends on the time of day or the day of the week, it can be an article from Ocholeguas, an opinion article from Fernando Baeta or just some fun content from Upsocl.
If I come across something I consider bad content without making a real search, I assume it is probably just badly targeted; it was not for me but it could be interesting for someone else. One thing that haunts me is a bad user experience, I hate websites that neglect this; they might have good content but I’ll just avoid these kind of sites.
What is the biggest myth about content marketing?
There are many, including the myth that that all brands should do content marketing. We have seen so many different branches of marketing over the years, from display marketing, email marketing and branded content to content marketing. If medium or small companies had to divide their budget to cover all these strategies they would need an almost unlimited budget. You have to focus on the business you are in and decide on the most effective way to reach and engage with your potential customers. For a lot brands, the best strategy will be content marketing and for others having a good marketing data base will provide an effective uptake of leads.
But the myth which I find the most amusing is that you can measure everything and if it is not quantifiable then it is useless. Don’t get me wrong, I have been surrounded with data my entire career and I am in love with KPIs, but not everything valuable in marketing is measurable.
For example, there is a general opinion that a banner without clicks does not work, but that is false; even having tried to maximise the exposure of your ad to reach the right audience, it may not be time or place to click, but it does not mean the audience has not seen your ad, so it’s still good brand awareness even if it hasn’t driven traffic to your brand’s website. Sometimes the product is the problem but we generally tend to blame the support.
How are you amplifying and maximising your content?
We are very lucky because we already have a larger user base consuming our content, so our main duty is to amplify our content across our titles to reach different users, based on users’ historical searches. Another focus is to turn our news sites into gateways into new content for readers already on our site, something which Outbrain has been helping us.
Nevertheless, our SEO team works to attract new users to our site through content and at the same time, we buy traffic from external sources; depending on the focus we have at the time for our targets.
How do you work with Outbrain and what is your experience?
We have been working with Outbrain for over two years and will continue to work with them to achieve great results. We come up with new ideas every day to use their technology to meet different objectives.
Laura Sanz, digital acquisition director at Unidad Editorial. Follow her on Twitter @LSANGAR
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