A few weeks ago, Jay Izso asked myself and a few others the following questions:
1. What is the operational definition of content marketing? (so far I have found in the literature 11)
2. What is the operational definition of “quality content”? (must be measurable)
3. How does one measure in dollars the impact of content marketing in a cause and effect manner? (Cannot be correlation)
4. Might “content marketing” be the most useless, impractical, non-measurable term to this point in social media?
Great questions, right? Tough too, I thought. I actually needed a day to consider my responses, but the feedback was positive enough that it seemed worth it to share them with you.
1. What is the operational definition of content marketing?
While I’ve defined “Content Marketing” in my own posts long ago, I’ll use a more operational definition without looking elsewhere. Content Marketing is the use of content, whether it’s text, audio or video, by a company to help reach customers and potential customers. Rather than simply stating what the business does, the most effective content educates, engages and/or entertains the audience and uses the content to demonstrate expertise in their field or build brand awareness.
2. What is the operational definition of “quality content”?
The quantification of quality is the crux of why content marketing and social media is so challenging to accurately measure. While there are no doubt available metrics which can be applied (social signals, web traffic, referral links, goals, leads generated, revenue generated), these all fail to tell accurate, complete pictures for specific visitors. Of the 1000 people who visited a blog post, how many of them, specifically, agreed to follow you on social media? I can tell you exactly how much traffic I got yesterday, how many newsletter signups and leads were generated, and even how many new social media followers I gained. What I cannot tell you is cause and effect. Who chose to follow me on Twitter specifically because of yesterday’s article? I have no idea.
What’s even more critical is that we cannot accurately measure perception. How many of yesterday’s readers were impressed with me because of my content? How many will someday become clients as a direct result of yesterday’s article or a series of pieces of content they’ve consumed over time? While I may sometimes have a new prospect state that they’ve been reading my blogs or called me because one specific post, there’s no other data to support that unless a specific UTM is followed within a specific post and that results in a generated lead (and I do have Goals set within Google Analytics to see such activity, but it’s rare).
So I would struggle then to provide a measurable definition of Quality Content.
Even better, Kenneth Manesse Sr. chimed in with the following statements:
“Quality in a product or service (or content) is not what the business owner puts in to it only. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as most business owners owners typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality. IMO”
“This is what I have been teaching for years and was developed after following one of my “Thought Leaders” Peter Drucker and his belief of quality:”
Benefit
Value = ——————
Cost
“This too is also the marketing formula (people only buy ‘benefits”) because it creates value in their life. This is why they are willing to exchange (price) money for it.”
“So, to answer your question of #2 and your comment (must be measurable) I would say look at the sales.”
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer
so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Peter Drucker
3. How does one measure in dollars the impact of content marketing in a cause and effect manner?
Again, this is where the industry of “content marketing” struggles to compare to other marketing methodologies. A brewery can invest in a pop-up display and ad campaign, place their product in stores, and track sales as compared to the previous period or campaign. Such a campaign can also be compared to other traditional advertising campaigns in actual ROI.
Content Marketing, on the other hand, has to use tools like Google Analytics to measure Organic Search Traffic and Social Media Referrals and other organic referral sources where content created is being linked to and impacting site traffic, and then try to have measurable activity in place (like a Goal for visiting a contact or lead gen form), so that a funnel of activity can be tracked and measured. For a service business that can take a lead from a website and make a sale, this can work well. For a product business that is using content to raise brand awareness, while sales take place offsite, like Coca-Cola, there’s a disconnect that makes measurement far more challenging.
If the business is doing no other advertising or marketing, quantification and valuation of content marketing is relatively easy. The Social Media Hat uses no paid advertising and virtually no other marketing methods, so I know that whatever sales I get are nearly 100% derived from my content marketing efforts. Most businesses don’t have that luxury. Most will have a combined approach of traditional / online mediums. If possible, as many metrics as possible are put in place, and then gaps are analyzed.
For instance, a small business might have a Yellow Pages ad that uses a unique contact phone number so that all contact via that ad can be measured. PPC ads use dedicated landing pages and contact forms so that their leads are segregated. And a mailer sent to 2500 local businesses can use a QR Code to go to a landing page and yet another unique number or discount code for further tracking. The business owner can then separate any sales that occur as a direct result of these campaigns, and better determine where any remaining sales came from, even if not directly attributable to a specific methodology like Content Marketing.
4. Might “content marketing” be the most useless, impractical, non-measurable term to this point in social media?
All of that said, I would never agree that “content marketing” as a term is useless or impractical. It’s definitely a challenge to measure, but it’s the most effective term I’ve been able to find to communicate the combination of content/blogging + social media + SEO to drive website traffic, generate leads, build brand awareness, and deliver sales. Can I tell a business that I’m going to teach them how to use blog content to create opportunities for engagement and discussion on social networks which will lead to conversations, leads and referrals that the business can convert into sales, and that the content will also help improve the ranking of the business within search engines leading to additional traffic, leads and sales? Sure. But that’s a bit much when someone just wanted to know what I do. 😉
What Do You Think?
How would you have responded to these questions? What do you think about Content Marketing? Is it a useless term, just part of the hype of Social Media? Or would you agree that it’s an extremely useful term when used to describe a specific strategy of marketing and messaging for business? I would love to hear what you think in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Ares Nguyen, Flickr.