CMO Insights: Digital Innovations

Beth ComstockSmall brands innovate out of necessity. Their very survival depends on finding not just a fresh solution to a customer problem but also a distinctive means of getting their story out there.  Fewer naysayers correlates to fewer entrenched ways of doing things equals faster pivots and a natural openness to experimentation.  For big brands, however, innovation is a triumph of determination over institutional inertia.  Or think of it this way, organizations are like planets–the bigger they get, the stronger the pull towards the center.

In this scenario, as one of the largest corporations in the world, GE should have the gravitational pull of Jupiter, crushing innovators before they can take a single step.  But guess again, big bias breath! From a marketing perspective, GE has been on the forefront of digital innovations for the last decade putting many smaller companies to shame.  Curious about how this was possible and thanks to an introduction by The CMO Club, I was delighted to be able to catch up with Beth Comstock, GE‘s CMO (who won The CMO Award for Leadership).  There is nothing more I could say that would be as near as insightful as the counsel Beth provides below.

Drew: For several years now, GE has been ahead of the curve when it comes to experimenting with new channels.  What is the strategy behind all of this experimentation? Is the medium essentially the message?
Beth: GE’s a leading technology company so we believe it important to be aligned with leading edge technology channels. The other thing to consider is that our audiences expect GE to be where they are – they aren’t going to always come looking for us.  We like to experiment as a way of learning, but our efforts have to align to our goal of connecting with our target audiences, which are largely industrial technologists and enthusiasts. And we’ve adapted our strategy around  being micro-relevant – meaning targeting the right audience in the right way. It doesn’t have to be a big audience, just the right one.

Drew: As the CMO, Is it a mandate of yours that GE explore all the newest coolest channels and if so, how are you finding them?
Beth: We have an awesome media team that identifies themselves as digital explorers.  We also take risks with new ideas and small companies as a way to learn and as a way to augment more traditional plays.  I’m a big believer in  carving out a percentage of your budget to develop new models.

Drew: Naysayers struggle to understand how a photo contest on Instagram or a promotion on Pinterest can help you sell GE products like aircraft engines. What do you say to those folks?
Beth: Selling a jet engine is a complicated sale.  Many people influence the purchase decision. And since GE is a company that traverses multiple industries, pretty quickly you’re targeting decision makers across a wide range of the economy and functional roles of business, which is why we believe in the importance of building a vibrant umbrella brand.  In addition to those who buy our products, we target enthusiasts, recruits and GE retail shareowners who want to experience GE in various dimensions.  Industrial technology is exciting, yes, even fun… and some of these outlets allow us the opportunity to open up and express ourselves in new ways.  People want to see that you are approachable.

Drew:  How has your role as CMO evolved over that past decade?  With the advent of “big data,” are you spending more time on analytics that you used to?  
The role of CMO has evolved from defining what marketing can do to delivering it.  I’m a  big believer in marketing’s role as developing markets, and new models. We like to think our contributions are in mindshare, marketshare and margin.  We’ve tried to make marketing a driver of commercial innovation that sits alongside our technical innovators to deliver a range of value to GE customers.  Big data is a perfect space for marketing.  A customer wants to run their business better not just have lots data – those insights help focus the data scientists on analytics that matter most.

Drew:  GE is primarily a B2B company yet you seem to act a lot more like a B2C company in terms of creating emotionally-rich consumer-friendly communications.  Any thoughts on why that is?
Beth: Since when does B2B have to be boring to boring?  Business people are people too. We are emotional beings, we don’t just rely on logic when it comes to business decisions.  Good marketing is about making a connection and delivering perceived value. Period.  In some ways, business marketers have an advantage in that they are closer to their customers and in theory should be more responsive and intuitive.

Drew: Content marketing is suddenly a hot buzzword in the industry.   Are you investing more resources in content development?  
Beth: We’ve been on a path as a content producer for several years now. We’ve widened our definition of content to include data, experiences and yes, emotional connection and even humor.  Content has to be useful and relevant to be effective.  We’ve invested in a range of skills like data visualization and user interaction design as a way to drive content that is engaging and relevant. The marvels of science, engineering and manufacturing offer good fodder for content, and we’re constantly seeking out storytellers who get as excited about this as we do.

Drew: Marketing seems to be getting increasingly complex in terms of ways to spend and ways to monitor. Has it gotten more complex for you and if so, how are you dealing with that complexity? Yes, it is more complex – we have a multitude of outlets and a range of content types to consider.  You need good partners, room for experimentation and a good dose of curiosity.  Trust me, it’s not about the size of your budget, it’s about the ability to use complexity to amplify your efforts, not stifle them.

Drew: Innovation is a sexy word but not as sexy to a CEO as ROI.  Have you been able to link your innovative marketing activities to the kinds of business metrics favored by CEOs?  
Beth: Innovation can’t just be about fun ideas or wonky theories.  Innovation means new methods that yield results.  The challenge is often that time, trial and error are required to get to scale.  I’m a big believer in pilot projects to create proof points and staged development to make sure you get results.  Innovation without process is chaos. Trendspotting without translation leaves you empty.

Drew: Besides your efforts on Pinterest and Instagram can you speak about another recent innovative program that you are particularly proud of?
Beth: I’m especially proud of the work we are doing to help define what the industrial internet can mean to business productivity. It’s a new category for business, not just GE. We’ve put a lot of science and analysis into connecting with our customers and new tech partners in this area.  We’re doing much more in open innovation – meaning using digital communities to drive new methods at GE.  A recent example is a data science challenge with Kaggle that is shaving off minutes and fuel from flight landings – something thought unattainable.  And we’re having fun with Vine, having had a successful #SixSecondScience effort this summer that shows how science can be fun and connects with tech enthusiasts.

Drew: How do you stay close to your customers with so many different types of customers in so many countries?  
Beth: You have to live with them, analyze them, listen and empathize with them.  This means putting good marketing people on the ground in  markets around the world and more importantly, helping engineers and other business teams understand that marketing skills can be added to their jobs too.

Drew: Finally, I’ve heard it said that marketing is everything and everything is marketing especially when it comes to the customer experience. Do you agree with that notion and if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?   
Beth: I’m a big believer in Peter Drucker’s view that without a customer there is no business.  That is a rallying cry for marketing if I’ve ever heard one. And I think business leaders who believe that marketing is just about advertising and go-to-market communications miss out on all the market-making skills we have to offer.  I do believe the new frontier for marketers is holistic customer experience.  We haven’t cracked it yet but I’m looking forward to seeing how we can – and I think digital technology is taking us there very fast.

Embracing Social

tiffany kraftOn June 16th, 2006, I was on a panel at Kraft Foods with Max Kaleoff and David Berkowitz to discuss word-of-mouth marketing and the rise of social networks.  Honestly, it was one of the tougher panels I’d ever been on as the then head of marketing concluded that “this stuff” just wasn’t scalable and could end up being a time suck for employees which is why they weren’t allowed to access Facebook at work.

Needless to say, times have changed and Kraft subsequently embraced social in a big way.  This became particularly evident to me at the recent Pivot conference where I met Tiffany Tamplin, Sr. Director of Refreshment Beverages.  As it turns out, Tiffany had been in the audience back in ‘96, has become a bit of a social evangelist herself and was at Pivot to share a mini-case history of Kool-Aid’s social activity.

Of course, I was all ears especially when she talked about the role LoudDoor (a sophisticated market research and audience targeting platform I’ve discussed before) had played in Kool-Aids efforts.  Through the LoudDoor research, Kool-Aid determined that its Facebook fan base was heavily skewed toward teens and not comprised of the moms who actually buy the product.  Recalibrating its Facebook ad buy, Kool-Aid was able to fix this and subsequently grow its fan base to a scale (>3 million) perhaps unimaginable back in 2006.

In the interview below, Tiffany sheds light on the role social plays for Kool-Aid, why the Kool-Aid man is now CGI, how they grew their Facebook footprint efficiently and increased engagement via a fun photobombing iPhone App. Its all good stuff if you ask me.

Drew:  You mentioned at Pivot that Kool-Aid had a new ad campaign & tagline.  Tell me about the new campaign/tagline, why it was needed and about the shift to the CGI Kool-Aid Man.
Kool-Aid is a brand that brings smiles to everyone because it is undeniably fun. Our new tagline embodies that.  The Kool-Aid Man has been around since the 1950’s and we felt he needed a face-lift for the new millennium.  CGI gave us the opportunity to truly bring the pitcher to life and our campaign is about getting to know the “man” behind the jug.

Drew:  What role did you think social media could play in the overall marketing mix of Kool-Aid?  After all, you already have near universal awareness.
Social as a marketing mix tool plays a key role in creating a personal, meaningful and memorable experience with our brand. It allows us to create a 1:1 experience that is of real substance; an experience you want to share with others. Television, Print and OLA helps us get the word out, but social is where the natural expression and passion of our brand advocates can be harnessed.

The outcome ranged from finding and growing our core consumer base on Facebook to launching our mobile app where the new Kool-Aid Man could be experienced through what we like to call ‘Random Acts of Fun.’

Drew: A lot of brands don’t take the time to research the social behavior of their fans.  Can you talk about why you felt the need to do the research you did with Loud Door and the role it played it refining your social target definition?
Analyzing our Facebook fan base conversation, our agency VSA Partners, could see that we were pulling in a lot of Male teenagers who probably appreciate the brand’s appearance on Family Guy but are not the people who are going out and buying our product. However, we knew our core consumer was online so we worked with LoudDoor to identify her and better understand her so we could start a social dialogue she would respond to.  The net result was significant fan growth this year, exceeding the 3million fan mark.  Today Kool-Aid ranks within the top 10% of branded site.

kool-aid-photo-bombDrew: So now you have a bunch of insights about your target one of which lead you to creating the Kool-Aid photo bomber app.  Talk to me about the app, the role it plays and how it has performed for the brand.
The Kool-Aid Photobomb app was designed to take advantage of the native social sharing that’s embedded in millions of Android and iOS devices.  Sharing and in particular photo sharing is an inherent characteristic of our core consumer and we wanted to facilitate an easy, fun way for her to do so with Kool-Aid.

Drew:  How else did the LoudDoor research help you?  
We leveraged the LoudDoor insights to target directly to the audience who would be most likely to download the app, purchase Kool-Aid and engage and advocate for the brand in social media.

The result? The app also ranked #24 in the App Store Entertainment category surpassing Hulu, Netflix and ABC in its first week. Mobile Ads supporting the app had 300% above the benchmark norm for awareness and 200% above benchmark for purchase intent.

We are [also] able to leverage the insights to provide more precise targeting to our media agency.

Drew: You also mentioned that your Facebook ad spend become 2x to 4x more effective than past efforts thanks to the insights from the LoudDoor research. Can you talk about why you think the ads were so much more efficient?
We saw 2x to 3x efficiency through LoudDoor targeting executed by Starcom, this was in contrast to using Facebook’s standard interest-based targeting.

Drew: Based on the increased responsiveness of your Facebook advertising, does this impact how much you would spend on FB in the future and or/ the role FB advertising plays in the overall marketing mix?  
Yes, we leverage the learnings to deepen our partnership with Facebook and optimize spending. We are working directly with them as part of their “Facebook Garage” program.

Drew: How would you like to see your social program evolve in the next 12-24 months?
Our plan is to grow and expand upon the fantastic momentum we started this past year.

Managing Customer Feedback

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the volume of your brand’s customer service chatter, listen to this. McDonald’s receives five mentions every second on social media. That’s 300 per minute, 18,000 per hour… you get the idea. How can the company possibly sift through the noise and engage its customers with such a constant barrage of interaction?

Kim Musgrave, Social Media Team Leader at McDonald’s, answered this question and more during our panel together at the Social Media for Customer Service Summit in New York. There we discussed how to best capture, manage and analyze customer feedback to improve business performance and create lasting relationships. Kim shared how McDonald’s tackles customer service via social media and agreed to expound a bit further on their strategy in this interview. I suspect you will find her comments quite enlightening.

Drew: How long have you been in your current role and how long have you been at McDonald’s?
I have been at McDonald’s just over four years, and as the social opportunities evolved, I became the Social Media Manager in Customer Experience & Insights in 2011. In this role, I work closely with the Communication & Marketing teams to drive the social media strategy for customer engagement and insights for the U.S. business. This includes developing processes for targeted engagement to build customer loyalty as well as using social data as a source of customer feedback about products and service.

Drew: The Twitter handle @Reachout_McD is relatively new. Tell me a bit about the thinking behind this particular handle relative to @McDonalds and how it has worked thus far. 
The @McDonalds Twitter handle was born in late 2009 as a way for our customers to follow us for the latest McDonald’s news and promotions. As our follower count grew, so did the opportunity to give our customers a place to share feedback, ask a question, etc.

Drew: @ReachOut_McD Twitter tends to be mainly listening & responding versus creating original content. Just curious, why?
Our social service team responds to @McDonalds customer service issues via the @Reachout_McD dedicated handle. We wanted a place to celebrate our customers who have great experiences at McDonald’s, so we re-tweet those as well.

Drew: There is a lot of chatter on Twitter about McDonald’s every day. What kinds of challenges has this created from a listening standpoint?  
McDonald’s serves over 28 million customers in the U.S. each day. In social media, McDonald’s is currently mentioned every second! While tracking total volume/buzz is one metric, we really want to get to the “meat” of the conversations. Due to the fact that about 80% of our mentions are from Twitter, this context can ben be challenging with slang, sarcasm and profanity. “Just killed this Big Mac,” is that positive or negative? We are currently testing tools to get to the sentiment and emotion behind the mention and are finding only about 10% have this insight.

Drew:  Given all the noise, how do you decide what is worthy of a response? Or said differently, do you have different policies for how you deal with positive feedback from customers vs. how you deal with negative feedback from customers on social media? 
Our cross-functional team focuses on @McDonalds for listening and engagement 7 days a week. This team includes Customer Service (both at home office and call center), Communications, PR, and Agencies. As the volume of mentions has increased, we developed a “Playbook” with guidelines for response and a very simple Red, Yellow, Green light system.

Drew: Everyone talks about social listening but not every brand is doing it. How well do you think your team is listening, and are there any tools that are working particularly well for you?
McDonald’s has been listening in social media since 2008 and the way we report to the business has evolved as we have communicated the value of social data. Sentiment is the most challenging, as I mentioned above, so having a tool that can capture the volume, then break down the context in an accurate way, continues to be an area of opportunity.

Drew: Can you provide an example of social listening that helped inform other business activities (marketing, product dev, etc)?
Improving the restaurant experience is one of the opportunities for McDonald’s customer engagement in social. These engagement insights are combined with the traditional voice of customer insights to identify opportunities: how fast, accurate, and friendly is the service? Trending this over time (ie. monthly) can provide opportunities for operations.

Drew:  If a comment happens to come from a famous person, do you handle the response differently?  
Every customer of McDonald’s is important regardless of Klout, number of followers or celebrity status.  Recently, McDonald’s tweeted Al Roker because he missed his first day of work in 39 years by sleeping in. We thought it would be fun to post about it regarding McCafe and then they mentioned it on Good Morning America.

Drew: Let’s talk about your social team structure.  Do you have a separate group for brand social and service social?
We have a cross-functional team. Social customer service is my area, and I have a dedicated supervisor for Twitter customer service. We are currently working with a few of our call center agents to develop the social care process. Facebook is managed by an agency, but we stay very closely aligned and work on service processes.

Drew: How do you see service via social media evolving over the next 2-3 years? What kinds of things would you like to see improved?  
I see the customer expecting brands to be very responsive (just like calling), but also authentic in social customer service—no auto replies. For brands with increasing mentions in social, having the best social tool for prioritization and routing will be a necessity.

More Thoughts on Crisis Management

kade-headshot2012-square-correctKade Dworkin, founder and Chief Crisis Officer of Red Alert Social Media,  a company that focuses on helping corporations and individuals handle crises by leveraging social media, sent me the note below after reading my recent post on crisis management on iMediaConnection.  I’m delighted to share Kade’s thoughts on that subject with you here.

After reading Drew Neisser’s “Crisis Management: No Time for Amateurs” I felt compelled to reach out to him. Over the course of the last five years I have not only moved into social media marketing but I have become a specialist in crisis prevention, management and communications using social media. My list of clients and employers includes nine different $100mm+ brands including several of which that are household names.

There were two points in Drew’s original interview with Doug Duvall, Vice-President, Corporate Communications at Sprint, that I think most people will actually miss.  Not because he didn’t stress them enough but rather that Doug says them in such a matter-of-fact way. 

The first is in regards to the event at Freddie Mac where the CFO committed suicide. Most corporate communications people may not have direct access to the CEO and access to an individual who can make statements on behalf of the company is absolutely crucial in a crisis event. It is a habit of mine for both my corporate and individual clients to make a list of several people who have the authority to make statements for the company as part of my crisis preparation. 

The second point is that large companies need to have people trained in crisis management techniques in various departments in the company.  These people are the early warning system and can activate additional resources such as corporate communications.  Additionally, with this training they can actually contain minor crises before they become larger.  If they can take action within the first 15 minutes, they can entirely eliminate the threat. A smart social media manager trained in this fashion can do this regularly for your company.

The one area that I think Doug misses in this interview is that in crisis events [having] a constant flow of information on a regular schedule can make a massive difference in how the public perceives the crisis.  Breaking communications into three distinct types for the company story, the legal story and the personal story can help immensely.  By releasing each type on a defined time schedule it can eliminate the public’s concerns that the company is hiding information or failing to address all the affected parties.  Finally, these smaller content types can become the original pieces of content that your brand evangelists can use to spread your message to a much larger network of people. 

CMO Insights: Content Marketing

richardmarnellThis week, over 100 heads of marketing will gather in Los Angeles to share innovative ideas and forward thinking at The CMO Club Fall Innovation and Inspiration Summit. On Thursday, I am excited to be leading a panel on Content Marketing with three leading-edge CMO’s including Richard Marnell, CMO of Viking River Cruises. Richard was kind enough to share his thoughts in advance of the summit including how Viking is creating boat loads of content and using it to cruise ahead of its competitors.  And just in case you think I’m running you down the proverbial creek without a paddle, pay careful attention to how the Viking team has generated over 6 million video views and the role it is playing in their sales cycle.

Read on to see what tactics Viking River Cruises has used to engage their customers as well as why Richard Marnell believes content marketing will be an on going discussion even at next year’s summit.

Drew: What you are doing in the area of content marketing and how is it working for your business?

We started really digging into digital content marketing about 3 years ago in 3 very focused areas:

1) Videos about our destinations that focus on history, culture, food, experiences – things that travelers want to learn about;

2) Recipes that tie into the product because they’re for regional foods from the destinations we travel to; and

3) Social media on the platforms that are either relevant to our guests, business partners, media partners, or all of the above.

How it’s working for Viking? Increasing brand awareness – because videos such as language lessons, or meeting the cats of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, or a recipe for Vienna’s Sacher Torte – are things that our audience wants to share with their friends. And on Facebook, for example, when our audience engages with our content, it is then spread to their other Facebook friends. Plus, travel is something they naturally talk about on social media anyway.

Our product has a somewhat long purchase cycle, so content marketing keeps our guests engaged throughout the customer journey. Most valuably for us, it has filled a hole that was previously there for a segment we refer to as Booked Not Departed – meaning those who reserved their cruise a year in advance and are excited, but no longer receiving marketing messages from Viking. Now, they receive content marketing that is relevant to the product/itinerary that they’ve purchased – and it amplifies their anticipation, continues to connect them with the brand, and builds a base of knowledge and enrichment from which to further enhance their actual product experience when they do travel.

Drew: And before someone in the audience can ask about ROI, let’s talk about how your organization measured the success of your efforts in this area?

As a marketing organization we started as a direct mailer, which is highly measurable from an ROI standpoint.  As we have further layered our media mix, we isolate what we can to measure ROI.  Content is one that we more view through the lens of engagement.

This year we have driven 6,000,000 video minutes viewed.  We view this as a very positive sign that our content is being appreciated.

Drew: Content marketing seems to be a slow build versus a quick win as a company builds up its library and proficiency.  Was it a challenge to sell this to your management, and if so, what were the key points that made the sale?  

Our product and brand so naturally lend themselves to content – we focus on enrichment, education, history, culture, travel – that content marketing has been a part of the business from the beginning. New initiatives can be a hard sell at times; investing in video and social media wasn’t immediately intrinsic to the entire management team.

Over time, we’ve looked at the metrics of content within our digital channels:

•Testing email subject lines with keywords that actually promoted 2 of our main content channels – our email open rate is consistently higher when the subject lines state the words “recipe” and “video.”

•Website traffic being driven by content emails.

•Time spent on website pages that include video vs. not.

•The number of leads and eventual revenue generated by customers who came into our database new, through sweepstakes on our Facebook page.

And then using the conversations on social media – our customer-generated content – to showcase to management real-time brand sentiment and feedback around product, service, marketing, policies. Communities can amplify customer feedback in a way that management cannot ignore.

Drew: From a purchase cycle standpoint, what is content marketing particular good at? Are there things it simply can’t do well?

Good content, especially User Generated Content, can help turn awareness into consideration, and consideration into intent, because people are more inclined to believe their peers – even the anonymous online reviews of others like them – or a third party expert, such as a journalist, than to simply trust advertising alone. For Viking that means that having a strong user-generated content outreach program during the relive/recommend/reengage stage is important.

Also, the content that we produce ourselves can be particularly useful in the reengage stage of a long purchase cycle. Our passengers may not take a trip every year, so maybe they don’t always latch onto our promotional marketing, but even if they’re not ready to start planning their next trip, there’s a high probability that they’d like to test out the recipe we just emailed them, or answer a question we posted to Facebook. It keeps us in their consciousness and adds value to their day. Our content marketing helps create a brand halo.

For our product, I don’t think content works as well in the actual purchase cycle. It feeds into all of the other stages, but when it comes time to pick up the phone and purchase a vacation, what’s up on the screen isn’t a piece of content marketing – it’s our website with a very clearly defined cruise itinerary and offer.

Drew: Here we are talking about content marketing in isolation. Can you talk about the synergies of content marketing with your other marketing efforts? 

Content marketing is not a tactic, it’s a strategy. It folds into all of our channels: email, web, social, print, PR, while experiencing the product onboard our ships. It also folds into multiple stages in the purchase cycle.

Drew: How are you getting all this content created? Are you doing in-house or partnering with outside firms? What are the risks/benefits of in-sourcing versus outsourcing?

Currently any Viking published content is all created in-house, but in order to continue scaling with the growth of our business, as well as meet the demands of more and more content, we’ll need to add other publishers to the mix. The benefit to keeping it in-house is that there can be increased speed to publish, and the brand voice will be consistent. The downside is that being a publisher is a full-time job; knowing what to create, how to create it well, and having sufficient time in which to create it is always a challenge.

Rather than outsource more original content, we’re looking to scale for increasing content needs and elevate our brand by partnering with top publishers of the kind of content our audience likes – and curating that content into one digital destination under our brand umbrella. Moving forward, we’re looking to become more like a broadcaster than a publisher.

Drew: Production costs vary tremendously, especially when you are talking about videos. How did you decide how much to spend on content?

We have a fabulous video production team that performs as a full creative agency, and they are a fantastic value.  And no, I won’t tell you who they are.

Drew: Have you sought out user-generated content? What are the pros/cons of this approach?

Yes, we regularly solicit customer reviews – lengthy and detailed ones – on a popular cruise site. We use email and our own website to direct our customers to this third party site to write reviews and rate our product, because it’s a site that ranks high in our top search terms and because we understand that consumers trust peer reviews more than brands.

In PR we’ve started building relationships with social influencers, as well as more traditional media. They produce content differently than traditional media. It’s often quicker, there’s more of it, they’ll take their own photos and videos and publish across multiple platforms. It’s a way of having content created for us, rather than by us.

There’s some risk in turning over your brand to others. 100% of the time they’ll never say 100% of what you want them to say or how you’d want them to say it. They’ll talk about your brand in their own voice, rather than your brand voice – and there are pros and cons to that, too. But it’s an unavoidable situation in today’s digital marketplace. So we start all user-generated content efforts first with understanding who we are talking to: by extensively listening to what our customers are already saying online, by vetting social influencers with both our PR firm and social media team, or targeting customers who rated us highly in questionnaires or with a high NPS. Then, we build relationships with them, provide some kind of guidelines on what we’re politely asking for… and let go.

Drew: Will we still be talking about content marketing at next year’s summit?

Yes. I read once that content marketing began in the 1890s when John Deere published The Furrow magazine to inform farmers of the latest trends and technology that they needed to know about. Today, as marketers, we’re still using content marketing to grow our businesses, attract the attention of new customers and maintain relationships with current customers. Digital has only made it more important as a long-term strategy.

At next year’s summit I suspect we’ll be discussing how more and more, through content curation, brands are becoming both publishers and broadcasters for the best content relevant to their customer and their brand. I suspect we are heading toward competition between brands and traditional broadcasters and publishers.

Drew: If I’m a CMO and have been slow to the content marketing party, tell me a couple of mistakes I should try to avoid.

1. Don’t start by focusing on print. Focus on digital. Digital channels and their low cost barriers and ease of use are part of what has made content marketing explode.

Think of YouTube, WordPress, Facebook, downloadable articles, Constant Contact. Then consider paper, printing, shipping, warehousing, postage and on and on. Plus, remember that digital content is easier for today’s consumer to share with an audience of more than one.

2. Know that producing engaging content is a challenge that we all face and one that is most often learned through trial and error. Our instinct as marketers is to sell, promote, assert market leadership and hit home those branding messages.

Resist the urge to have all of your marketing speak directly to your products and services. Strive to balance the promotional aspect of your content with informational evergreen content. Remember that content marketing isn’t push marketing – it’s a pull strategy that can be thought of as the marketing of attraction. It’s marketing that is engaging, educational, helpful, entertaining and there when you need it.

Think of it this way: No one likes a one-sided conversation, so don’t be the guy on the date who only talks about himself. Instead, start your content strategy with a goal of establishing genuine customer-brand relationships by offering up content that your target audience would find shareable. Be the guy on the date that she wants to go tell her friends about, because he’s the guy who gets the second date, while the one who only talks about himself is in the never-ending cycle of first dates.

3. Remember that 90% of purchase decisions now begin with an Internet search.

Investing in Content Development

Leader_DPontrelliDelivering successful content is like having a conversation with a potential employer. If the jobseeker delivers a pitch that isn’t tailored to the needs of the organization, he will almost certainly be passed over for the next candidate. It’s no different for a company that is communicating with its customers. Cultivating a good content marketing strategy means moving beyond standard self-promotion and instead speaking to potential customers in an intentionally relevant way.

It turns out that Dominic Pontrelli, Sr. VP, Ricoh Americas Marketing and I are cut from the same cloth, in this view. In the following discussion, Dominic describes Ricoh’s content strategy, how Ricoh delivers highly tailored stories to its customers, and why investing in content development is, in fact, a very smart idea.

Drew: What role does content marketing play in your overall marketing mix?  Or asked differently, what role does the content you create play in the customer journey?
Content marketing is the compass in the customer’s journey to discovering a trusted provider of information.  Content is king.  We’ve always known that, but today it’s more important than ever for marketers to live by this phrase as the balance of power shifts from promotion to information.  Each and every communication with a customer, across all platforms, needs to be data-driven and customized to adhere to their pain points.  At Ricoh, we have a regular cadence with our customers via our customer touch strategies; it keeps our customer and non-customers aware of Ricoh offerings, services, and business-relevant thought leadership topics they may not be familiar with.   We are very sensitive to making sure we connect the messaging and content based upon what our audience is interested in.  Imagine if you worked at an online marketing firm and you received a direct mail piece from a company generally touting their latest product – and the next day received an email from the same company customized to you, with examples of the different solutions they’ve helped deliver that are relevant to you.  Regardless of how appealing the direct mail piece was, wouldn’t you turn away due to its irrelevance and lack of awareness?  I would.  And that’s exactly why consistent content marketing tactics need to be taken seriously.  With customers in such control, we can’t give them a reason to look in another direction.   At Ricoh, we leverage our vertical insights, predictive analytics and our customer successes to deliver highly tailored stories – not just marketing messages – that speak directly to the customer in the format that resonates most with them – print, email or social.

Drew: Are you increasing your investment in content?  If so, why?  Is there a competitive advantage to be gained with great content?
Most certainly.  Without relevant content, how will our customers trust that we know how to solve their issues?  They won’t and we know that.  As marketers, we must facilitate discussions that add value and build trust over time. This is why we’ve made changes within our marketing organization to ensure customer-driven content creation and management is at the forefront of everything we do.  We apply our “first touch” revenue methodology to how we build our customer prospect pipeline via our touch strategies.  Customers that we pull into a sales opportunity cycle via the influential content helps us identify the value of this content.  In addition, it truly assists us with identifying how influential marketing is at building our prospect pipeline.

The landscape is competitive and companies today must find new, creative ways to stay ahead of the curve. Take our vertical approach to solving business issues as an example.  We will fail if we communicate to a legal firm in the same way we do the federal government.  The pain points are different.  Our content must demonstrate that we know your unique needs, and we can fix your problems.  I’m proud to say that Ricoh is doing that today.

Drew: What kinds of content are you creating and are you finding some more effective than others? (If you can provide links to any of it that would be great)
To be honest, I’m finding that from a communications perspective, surveys are quite effective.  With them, we have the opportunity to entice both media AND customers.  Take our recent mobile workers survey for example- we saw media coverage ranging from Reuters to The Today Show and at the same time, traffic to our web site and social properties increased.

Content that involves numbers will always have power.  I think this is because each of us, at the basic level, is curious about opinions in aggregate – what the masses think.  And when we hear it, we then think about why we agree or disagree with the result.  Numbers spur conversations, and conversations related to mobile workers and helping businesses enable information mobility are conversations Ricoh wants to be a part of.  The additional opportunity is developing further content pieces out of the surveys.  White papers, e-books, viral video pieces, customer case studies all grow out of well developed surveys.  We find our customers and prospects find this type of content very compelling.

Drew: What metrics do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your content and how to you rank them in terms of importance?
We take a look at various metrics that center around the channels we use to provide content to our audience.  For example, in the social area we measure spikes in engagement based upon the content we have shared that month. This allows us to gauge what our followers are interested in, and adjust our content mix to those interest levels.

As I mentioned earlier, we leverage a “first touch” revenue methodology to how we build our customer prospect pipeline via our touch strategies.  Many studies have shown around 57% of the purchase decision-making process is determined online before a customer ever reaches out to a company.  So by designing compelling content that draws followers to Ricoh, and identify these prospects as they come into the sales pipeline, this activity is directly related to marketing and the compelling content we create.   Then with the direct connection to our CRM systems we can associate those contacts with opportunities that then lead to revenue.

Drew: With content, is it as simple as “build it and they will come?”  Or do you need to “market the marketing” either via media (paid, earned and/or owned) to generate significant viewership?  And if so, can you talk about how you “market” your content?
In marketing, it’s never as simple as “build it and they will come.”  In order to be an effective marketer, I’ve learned you must always set objectives, measure those objectives, determine which ones were met and evaluate why some weren’t, update accordingly and repeat.  Lacking that level of self-analysis will hinder a marketing campaign – or prevent meaningful learning from taking place.

We deploy nurture tracks that are educational efforts that assist taking our customers down through the buying cycle.  Each track is dedicated to various vertical or business object targets.  The targeted content is all created to speak directly to the business demands of the target audience.  Leveraging our marketing automation with well managed content is essentially a great way to “market the marketing” as you refer to it.  Create it once and share it to the appropriate audience what we practice at Ricoh.  Let’s take the example of a whitepaper.  We can pull content from that to write a blog post, perhaps use it in a demand generation campaign, pull media snacks for tweets and so on.  Let the content live and so will the conversations.

Drew: Do you think you need a different approach when creating B2B content versus B2C?
At the end of the day, all marketing is reaching a person.  So, I believe that approaches themselves don’t necessarily need to vary, but perhaps considering which approach deserves more emphasis should be varied.  For example, video resonates with both business and consumer audiences, but direct mail’s impact on both can be debated.  A B2B campaign may lead with a direct mail piece with a QR code that drives to video, but a consumer one may lead with the video that brings the viewer to a registration page, followed by a direct mail piece.

Drew: What recommendations do you have for other CMOs when approaching a content marketing program?
As marketers, we have to change our perception of how content affects a communications channel.  What works for one area will not have the same results in another.  So, while content is king, I’d say that content in the right context is really king. It’s import to make sure you maximize your investment in content development and create elements based upon your communications channel.  Also, realize the limits of your knowledge of content marketing – that’s extremely important.  This is becoming a growing area of expertise, and you need people to specialize in this.  Finally, there are many content marketing experts out there such as the Content Marketing Institute who can help educate marketing organizations on best practices.  There’s a marketing shift under way and in order to capitalize on it, we must embrace it.