Native Advertising: Content Marketing and Advertising Join Forces

Content marketing and advertising are sometimes presented as either-or.

Creating your own value-adding content and “channels,” some people argue, means you don’t need to “rent” others’ media to reach your target audience.

In other words, you can reduce or eliminate the need to advertise.

If you’ve taken that approach, you might have discovered that audience development is no easy task. One of the reasons marketers advertise, it turns out, is that there are a bunch of smart media companies already in the business of publishing great content. Very possibly, one or more of those media firms has already developed the audience you, as a corporate marketer, wish to reach and engage.

In other words, advertising can be an effective way to make a target audience aware of your content.

Publisher’s Online Platform + Sponsored Content = Native Advertising

If that idea makes some sense to you, then as you look for ways to jump-start a new content strategy, or to extend the reach of an existing content program, be sure you check with the media companies that serve the audiences you wish to reach. It could be they are making it easier and more attractive than ever for you to reach their audience with your content.

Some marketers are attaching a relatively new label to this idea: Native advertising.

Depending on the publisher, a native ad program might include the ability to “own” your own content microsite or stream within the publisher’s broader online editorial platform. To contribute sponsored posts to the publisher’s blogs. To benefit from a program of display advertising within their websites and e-newsletters. Maybe even to participate in the social media conversations they are creating with and among the audience.

One of the highest-profile native ad programs is Forbes’ BrandVoice, where the publisher is reported to be charging marketers a minimum annual fee of $1 million to showcase their content within Forbes’ broader online editorial environment.

Hanley Wood, parent company of Hanley Wood Marketing, serves multiple construction industry audiences with first-rate B2B trade magazines, trade shows and websites. One of those sites, architectmagazine.com, offers marketers the opportunity to sponsor an “Industry Center” and populate that microsite with content on a particular industry topic or solution category.

Here are four recent posts that provide informative looks into native advertising:

• Eric Wittlake’s post, “The Intersection of Content Marketing and Advertising”
• Digiday’s post on Forbes’ BrandVoice program, and another on what Zynga is doing in the realm of native advertising.
• AdAge’s recent post in which Buzzfeed’s native ad program gets a closer look

Evolving How We Think About and Use Advertising

Some of us never believed content marketing and advertising are mutually exclusive. Instead, content marketing lets us evolve how we think about and use advertising.

Rather than “rent” media to deliver purely promotional messages at an audience, we can leverage those channels to invite the audience to consume content we’ve created for them.

Native advertising isn’t a panacea. But if you’re a content marketer, it doesn’t hurt to see if the media companies serving your most important audience offer “native” opportunities to grow awareness and reach for your content.

And if they don’t?

Maybe you can partner with them to invent one.

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This post, originally published on Hanley Wood Marketing’s Content Is Marketing blog, is cross-posted here for subscribers to Touch Point City. For more marketing ideas and insights from my colleagues at HWM, subscribe to Content Is Marketing.

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Getting Marketing and Sales Alignment on Your Message

What’s the secret to getting Marketing and Sales alignment on your message?

Here’s a thought: Forget about the message for a while.

Focus instead on content.

Recently a firm called Corporate Visions surveyed more than 700 B2B marketing and sales pros on the subject of messaging development. They asked respondents whether their companies had a collaborative, repeatable process for creating their “message.” Further, the survey asked which of their organizations’ stakeholders were typically involved in message creation.

You can see the survey results here, but I’ll summarize  the two key findings:

• 33 percent of those surveyed said they do NOT have a collaborative messaging process, while another third said their process is only “semi-collaborative.”
• Of those involved in message creation, field sales reps — the people who presumably know customers and prospects best — were least represented in the process.

As marketing and sales challenges go, coming to alignment on a message is not a new challenge. Chalk it up to egos, silos, or honest disagreements. Whatever the cause, aligning around a message is a persistent struggle for many organizations.

But let’s take a closer look: Alignment around a message. Put another way…

What’s the best way to describe the benefits of our product? How can we position ourselves most effectively against the competition? What can we say to customers or prospective customers that will make them most likely to become aware of us, consider us, and ultimately decide to buy our service?

In short, coming to alignment on a message requires that Marketing and Sales agree on the answer to this question:

What can we tell you about us that will make you want to do business with us?

Try Alignment on Content

Therein, perhaps, lies the alignment challenge.

For starters, it’s a complex question. There might even be several good answers. But the thing to remember is this: More and more, your “message” is a fairly deep-in-the-sales-funnel consideration. By some estimates, today’s B2B buyers might get two-thirds of the way toward making a purchase before they are interested in, or ready to hear, a “what can we tell you about us?” message.

To help them arrive at that stage in the buying process, there are plenty of questions you can help them ask and answer. Questions that call not for your message, but for relevant information. Useful insights. Case studies. Research. Content.

Content that, done well, speaks volumes about your organization and its ability to understand and solve customers’ challenges, long before you have to come up with a message that tells them you understand and can solve their challenges.

Assuming your Marketing and Sales teams will spend time getting in alignment this fall, consider: It’s conceivable that the more time and effort you devote to understanding your audience, and then planning and producing great content, the less time you’ll spend sweating and struggling over a sales message.

Value your audience enough to provide them with great content, and don’t be surprised if they get your message, loud and clear.
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What say you, marketing and sales pros? Have you found the secret to achieving Marketing and Sales alignment on your message? Or are you spending more time focused on content, and not worrying quite so much about message?

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This post, originally published on Hanley Wood Marketing’s Content Is Marketing blog, is cross-posted here for subscribers to Touch Point City. For more marketing ideas and insights from my colleagues at HWM, subscribe to Content Is Marketing.

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Research as a Content Marketing Asset: Valuable or TMI?

As a marketer, do you sometimes find yourself more frustrated than illuminated by what passes for research about the practice of marketing?

Colleagues will attest to seeing me pulling my hair (what hair I have left) and hearing me bark colorful phrases at my computer after reading the results of yet another study that left me more infuriated than informed.

Often the source of that consternation stems from one, two or all three of the following:

• Loose language. The terminology on which survey questions were based is so loosely defined, you have no earthly idea how to interpret and apply the results. In fact, you’re pretty sure the respondents had no clear (and, as important, shared) understanding of what they were being asked.
• Quirky questions. The question(s) seems so poorly thought through and formulated, you wonder if the sponsor had any true insight or empathy for the information needs and gaps their audience might be facing.
• Blatant bias. Sometimes you can just tell which response a survey’s sponsor was hoping for by how a question were framed. Then, when the responses come in as you might have expected they would, you start to look askance at the legitimacy of the entire study, and the sponsor behind it.

I had one of those hair-tugging spells early this week, while reading an article by eMarketer about a new piece of research conducted by SEOmoz. Let me say, before levelling this critique, that I’ve found both of these organizations to be extremely valuable sources of information about online marketing trends and emerging best practices. So I’m going to chalk this particular instance up to someone having an off day.

But if you read the article, and take note of the first survey question it reports, I think you might share my frustration:

Judging by how the results are reported, this question apparently asked more than 4,000 marketers how frequently they “use select inbound marketing tools,” including SEO, site analytics, social, content marketing and conversion rate optimization. Optional answers included “daily,” “2-4 times a week,” “once a week,” “monthly,” “quarterly.”

Now right there, as a marketer, aren’t you stopping and shouting at…er, politely inquiring of your computer monitor: “Wait a minute. We don’t think about or approach marketing that way. Social media. Content. SEO. Conversion. These aren’t things we pick up and put down sporadically, like exercise equipment. These are integrated activities. Things we’re thinking about and doing — or at least trying to do — holistically, pretty much 24, 7, 365.”

If so, then don’t you wonder how any of the marketers being surveyed could have formulated an intelligent “choose one” response to that question? And don’t you then tend to doubt what value there is in learning that of more than 4,000 SEOmoz readers surveyed, 8.7% “use” conversion rate optimization twice per month?

Do they schedule doing it on the same days payroll checks come out?

There’s actually some potentially valuable information to be found in the survey results, such as which types of content are used most often by survey respondents. But then, two questions later, another hair puller: Reasons that online marketers use select social media channels. Glance at these results, and you might be suprised to learn that the reason 79.1% of marketers surveyed use Facebook is for…wait for it…”social media.”

Ground Research in Audience Empathy

Look, I’m an absolute advocate for research as a content marketing asset. Done well, it can be hugely valuable in almost any content marketing program, especially for BtoB audiences.

After all, what you’re trying to do with your content is create and serve a community, right? Typically, a community that shares business or personal interests, challenges and unanswered questions.

If any one of those community members had the time and the resources to commission their own research study, to get answers to those questions, they would probably do so. But by taking on the task of conducting research on behalf of the entire community, you can demonstrate that you understand them, value them, and are willing to invest in being a partner and a resource for them. And that you are willing to use your scale and resources to develop content that benefits the community.

But if you’re going to do research, then for the sake of your brand’s reputation, and your audience’s affinity for your brand:

• Make sure your research study is grounded in empathy for the information gaps and needs your audience actually has.
• Define your terms, both for people answering the questions and people reading the results.
• Evaluate questions and answers on whether they are likely to produce information your audience will find valuable, even actionable.
• If there’s any doubt, be sure and work with a professional research firm to craft your questionnaire.
• Maybe even vet the draft questionnaire with a few members of the audience you seek to serve with the research findings. “If we ask this question, and ask people to choose from these answers, would the responses we get back be interesting and relevant to you and your life or business?

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Are you using proprietary research as a core asset in your content marketing program? Are you seeing some of the same frustrating marketing research I’m seeing, and is it driving you just a little crazy, too? Comments welcome.

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This post, originally published on Hanley Wood Marketing’s Content Is Marketing blog, is cross-posted here for subscribers to Touch Point City. For more marketing ideas and insights from my colleagues at HWM, subscribe to Content Is Marketing.

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