Many marketing leaders and content creators share the same challenges: How do you create content that attracts and retains an audience while also generating revenue for your company? A few industry thought leaders shared how they’re addressing some of their biggest pain points this year. Many marketing leaders and content creators share the same challenges: How do you create content that attracts and retains an audience while also generating revenue for your company? A few industry thought leaders shared how they’re addressing some of their biggest pain points this year.
1. Knowing when to kill a campaign.
Rob Schutz, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, Roman: One of the main challenges we’ve had to face over the first nine months of launching Roman has been when to kill a marketing campaign that just isn’t working. As a growth marketer, you get used to kicking off new campaigns with high hopes (“this is going to be a winner, OK???”) only to see poor results right out of the gate. Not every channel is a winner. In fact, most are losers, in my experience. So it’s an important skill to be able to acknowledge defeat when a campaign just isn’t working and move on.
Generally, when you launch a new channel test, you’re looking for some signs of life. Maybe you only get a handful of conversions at a 5x higher cost per acquisition (CPA), but hey, it’s something. You can optimize down from 5x. New creative, new messaging, better targeting, etc. You can’t optimize down from 100x. No amount of A/B testing or creative optimization is going to save that channel. In a lot of cases, it’s time to cut your losses and move on. You paid for some valuable education: That wasn’t a great channel for your business. You can always come back and try again later, but for now it’s probably not worth the effort or money. Save your time and energy for campaigns that are scalable and can be optimized to your target CPA. And to all those others … Bye, Felicia!
2. Getting executive buy-in for newer marketing tactics.
Nilukshi De Silva, Global Digital Marketing Director, Urban Decay Cosmetics / L’Oreal Luxe: As our consumers are increasingly connecting with our brand online, it’s vital that our marketing is shifting towards a digital-first approach. But digital transformation requires leadership from the top. Educating senior leadership on the importance of this relatively new way of marketing and encouraging a test-and-learn approach has been a barrier to overcome.
Marketing has evolved. Today’s marketing benefits from leveraging digital innovation–such as augmented reality and AI–and continuously taking risks to invest media dollars into digital platforms, influencer marketing, and adapting brand creative to speak to current consumer needs in concise, impactful ways.
It’s been vital to show high engagement, shareability, and video view-through rates as a way to exemplify that it’s important to communicate with our consumers in the way they need in this digital age. Personalized messaging is key in the world of beauty.
In a cluttered beauty market, it’s crucial that these changes be embraced from the top down for brands to win–and more importantly, be sustainable–in the current consumer climate.
3. Attracting and holding consumers’ attention.
Lisa Peyton, Global Social and Immersive Media Strategist, Intel: Consumers are inundated with messages 24/7 and are tuning out advertising and product-focused content that comes directly from brands. Engagement with traditional ad formats is on the decline, and mistrust and skepticism within audiences is on the rise.
There are a few ways marketers can combat these challenges:
1) Allow someone else to tell your story for you (ideally your brand hero or whomever you empower to engage with your customers on your behalf). I have seen success connecting with audiences by leveraging micro-influencers to help champion value-driven campaigns.
2) Create experiences, NOT ads. Every interaction a customer has with your brand is an opportunity to create a memorable experience. Immersive technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality are presenting marketers a new set of tools to build those experiences.
Marc Graser, Senior Director, Creative + Content Marketing, Marriott International: The biggest challenge content marketers have is getting their content seen. Spend too much media to promote it and it starts looking like an ad, which it shouldn’t. It needs to be authentic storytelling that connects with consumers. The future of content marketing is all about collaborating with brands that have similar audiences. Together, we can save money on content creation, share what we produce across all of our channels, and make sure that the great stories we tell are put in front of the largest possible audience where they choose to consume content. That means taking advantage of all distribution opportunities.
4. Driving meaningful engagement and growth.
Jen Jordan, Executive Producer of Content, Babbel: Our mission at Babbel is “Everyone Learning Languages,” but it’s often a challenge to motivate Americans to learn another language. With Babbel growing rapidly in the US, I wanted to connect with our community and share in the joy of learning something new, creating a healthy learning habit, and expanding cultural horizons. So at the start of 2018, we launched our first-ever language learning challenge—#Babbel21, a 3‑week, 15-minute daily challenge to grow and motivate our community, fueled by language and culture content created by our team of experts. We got so much engagement and product feedback that we’re launching another challenge this fall with the aim of further growing and engaging with our community.
5. Reaching the right people at the right time.
Brian Zweig, SVP of Strategic Partnerships, Social Native: We’ve debated whether content modifications need to be scaled or personalized to drive maximum results. To resolve the discussion, we’re providing brands with enough content to simultaneously market and message all relevant cohorts and every possible customer touch point throughout a buyer’s journey.
6. Setting and sticking to your priorities.
Eileen Rivera, Sr. Director of Production, Fandango: When creating video, we’re looking at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many other platforms, including Fandango’s owned and operated sites, and one size does not fit all. Each platform has different needs, different audiences and different delivery specs. It can drive your team crazy, and it’s important to push for platform prioritization within your organization. If two platforms are asking for the same content, but one needs a specific output and the other is completely different, it helps to prioritize the lead platform for any given project.
7. Differentiating your brand in a crowded market.
Lauren Stafford-Webb, Director of Brand Marketing, Intuit: Being bold is at the core of what outstanding brand marketers do. The world is so massive and continuously evolves at a rapid pace—it’s critical to rise above the noise and cut through the clutter of content. Always take chances, and create distinct, ownable, and relevant ways for your brand to break through.
