How does your business use digital marketing to grab the attention of customers and prospects until they capitulate to your products and services?
Manchester-based B2B PR and content marketing agency, Metamorphic PR, tuned in to analyst firm, Gartner’s recent webinar for a fresh insight into content marketing and the “digital hype cycle”.
Gartner believes you can turn” attention deficit” into interest, engagement, emotional attachment and long-term customer retention through digital marketing.
But anyone trying to sell anything right now knows how hard it is to overcome the attention deficit of its target audience. According to Chicago-based BRIEF Lab 74% of professionals tune out within a minute if they fail to see the point of a presentation; nearly half (43%) abandon complicated emails in under 30 seconds.
Gartner’s recommendation is a blend of what you should be capable of doing now, combined with planning for what you will need to do in the next 10 years: or, as Gartner says, being ready for where your customers are in the “digital marketing hype cycle”.
Believe the hype – it’s about content
Right now, Gartner’s “hype cycle” demands you should be mirroring what the best performers in social marketing do: create “interesting, personalised, creative content”.
Jake Sorofman, Gartner research director, explained in the firm’s recent webinar that “Search Engine Optimisation is about content that people want to search for, consume and share” and that “true brand engagement” comes from “rich, engaging content experiences”.
To do this, you need:
CREATION: Blog posts, micro-blogging, multi-media editorial, video, etc.
CURATION: Discovering others’ great content, adding your perspective and distributing it.
CULTIVATION: Motivating your audience to generate and add their own content.
For the “manufacturing” phase, you may encounter a skills gap in-house, which means seeking out the relevant skills beyond your four walls, including what Gartner calls “Next Generation” PR agencies.
Mastering “distribution” is about the Ambient: the “daily drum beat” of storytelling; the Responsive: social listening and real-time engagement with the audience and, lastly, being Calendar-driven: creating an editorial calendar relevant to your business’ chosen themes.
But if all of the above should be reaching the peak of your digital marketing hype cycle, what challenges does the next 10 years present?
According to Gartner, it’s:
REAL TIME MARKETING
Gartner insists that marketers’ ability to respond in real time is becoming more critical, though real time marketing is supposed to be at only the innovation stage in a 10-year hype cycle. But, for now, the recommendation is for marketers to “go through each major marketing process and identify the fire-fighting moments when you failed to get business advantage through lack of speed. Where is ‘real time’ mission critical?”
The Digital Marketing Hype Cycle” study is packed with knowledge and advice but the immediate take-out for building your content marketing capability is this:
“Start a gap analysis for your content marketing strategy: start balancing outsourced content services with in-house expertise, building internal content creation and curation skills, while utilizing agencies for scale.”
1980s’ rappers, Public Enemy, were determined that you “Don’t believe the Hype”. But in engaging customers and prospects with the highest standards of content marketing, you really don’t have that luxury.
If your business needs help with planning and creating content, then please get in touch via this online form, email or that quaint tool, the telephone, in big red numbers at the top of the page.
Thanks to:
Gartner: Digital Marketing Hype Cycle for 2013
The Brief Lab: “Gone in 60 Seconds” survey.
