What are you most excited about in the digital marketing space at the moment?
Digital marketing is changing PR and communications and that is very exciting. My job today is so different to what was even just three years ago, and I imagine it will look different again in another three years. The principles of communications remain constant - engaging with target audiences to help build your brand, your profile and your reputation. But lots has changed thanks to digital – how you can bring messages to life, how you identify your audiences and most crucially the extent to which you can reach and engage with them and then measure that engagement.
What’s your favourite example of innovative digital marketing?
Axe’s ‘Kiss For Peace’ campaign this year was really clever. It mixed traditional advertising with social media and engaged with people in a way that amplified and prolonged the campaign over a period of time. From guerrilla videos to asking the public to share their kisses using the hashtag #kissforpeace, which they then showed on a Times Square billboard and tweeted back to the ‘kissers’ – it was all about engagement and leveraging each piece of content so that it was transformed into something new. The partnership with ‘Peace One Day’ touched and interested people in a way that talking about men’s deodorant never could! They built brand awareness but in a way that was subtle and secondary to the social message, which is really what people really got excited about.
I think B2B communicators and marketers can learn a lot from the B2C world. B2B is not the ‘sexy’ side of marketing and can often feel a pretty tough sell, but the fact is that not all consumer products are an easy sell. I think that the magic formula is a smart and interesting idea, developed into engaging content that is disseminated across the right channels to the right people. And don’t be afraid to make it fun, as that grabs people’s attention. Even in the B2B world which is perceived as ‘serious’, people can appreciate well placed light-heartedness; it’s perhaps not appropriate for every campaign but when done well it can make a huge impact.
What defines good content?
Content needs to be ‘sticky’. It must engage and entertain the reader or visitor and at the same time be intelligent and informative. We are all so bombarded with content that we have become very discerning in our consumption, so as a marketer you need to ensure that your content stands out from the crowd. You want to lure that reader or visitor in and then keep them there – or at least encourage them to come back – as they know they will find the kind of content they enjoy or need.
Where do you go for great content?
I like to mix it up both in terms of media outlets and media types, which I think reflects consumption habits; we should all consider how content consumption fits into people’s daily lives. I love my radio fix in the morning, and as I am in Singapore I rely on the BBC World Service News Hour podcast every day as I am getting ready for work for the day’s major global news stories. On my way into work I will look at mobile sites such as The Huffington Post, Mashable, Twisted Sifter, psfk and The Atlantic/ Citylab on my phone.
Once at my desk I will read through JLL’s top media coverage (via Meltwater alerts), which usually leads me to the websites of news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. I then also flick through the daily email alerts from the likes of PR Daily, plus alerts from some of the leading content marketing outlets such as NewsCred and Content.ly. I have Twitter and LinkedIn open in the background throughout the day and keep an eye on them, and use my iPad to download the Times and Sunday Times as well as the Economist and Stylist magazine – both fantastic examples of iPad friendly publications. My colleagues are great at sharing interesting snippets of content so I am always discovering new websites; I like LinkedIn for that as well.
I think it’s common to suffer from content overload at times – which I think serves as a good reminder to me as a communicator to strive to provide the best content in the best format for people. If you don’t have them at “hello” you probably are never going to have them.
What’s next for digital content?
What is interesting at the moment is the way digital tools are developing to help us target and then reach the right people. In addition to social media and PPC, we are looking at marketing automation systems and how they can help us to tailor content for audiences. This feels like a new frontier for the traditional PR practitioner and I am sure something which will continue to evolve. Systems are so sophisticated now and can be used to manage relationships with stakeholders, ensuring that we are providing people with content they are interested in. This is a big change compared to a few years ago, and reflects how marketing, PR and communications are integrating. What’s driving this integration is content and digital platforms. I truly believe that marketing and communications professionals need to become expert generalists – it should be happening already.
What is the biggest myth about content marketing?
I think a big myth is that you need huge budgets and teams to start doing it. There are so many examples of very high profile companies doing content marketing very well – which probably leaves people in smaller firms with limited budgets wondering where to start. But good communicators and marketers should already have the skills to be able to do content marketing and there is a wealth of fantastic information and training about content marketing online, so people really can up skill themselves very quickly. Start small and use the online tools available. Many are free or cost very little, and can help you listen (understand your audience), amplify and measure your content marketing campaigns. My advice would be to experiment – you can celebrate your successes and learn from your mistakes.
How are you amplifying and maximising your content?
Once you have leapt the first hurdle, which is creating high quality, ‘sticky’ content, you then have to face the distribution or amplification challenge. There is no point in having fantastic content if you are not reaching your target audiences. For us that means employees, potential employees, clients and prospects, media, industry bodies, government and influencers more widely.
At JLL we take a multi-pronged approach. We allocate budget to PPC, and have found that Outbrain has been really effective for us in that space. We are using social media of course and also direct distribution to people who are proactively looking to engage with us (where marketing automation systems can come into play). We also always try to leverage each piece of content in as many ways as possible, to get maximum value from it. So that might mean sharing with internal audiences, using it in a client brochure or microsite, in a research publication and also placing with media.
The huge advantage of using digital platforms and tools to distribute and amplify is that everything can be measured; so we can analyse engagement, adapt content strategy accordingly and ultimately show value to the firm in ways that just weren’t possible in years gone by. Gone are the days of vanity metrics, which I think can only be a good thing for everyone.
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