{"id":112768,"date":"2015-12-08T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T18:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/what-scotland-thinks-of-content-marketing\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T05:53:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:53:58","slug":"what-scotland-thinks-of-content-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/what-scotland-thinks-of-content-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"What Scotland thinks of Content Marketing\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of traveling around the country, armed with notepad and Dictaphone, to speak to some of Scotland\u2019s best and brightest Content Marketers for my thesis research.<\/p>\n

A wide variety of senior, experienced practitioners of content marketing volunteered their valuable time and expertise, coming from a varied range of industries, including: a national cloud hosting provider; a leading travel search company; and a digital agency on the forefront of content marketing (I bet you\u2019ll never guess where that was!). \u00a0<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019m sure you\u2019d love nothing more than sitting down with a (very large) cup of tea to read all 16,000 words of the resulting dissertation, I thought I\u2019d summarise the most interesting bits in a slightly easier-to-read form\u2026<\/p>\n

1. Nobody thinks Content Marketing is a new concept<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Seemingly in contrast to commonly held beliefs, almost every single expert interviewed criticised the idea that content marketing is a \u201chot new thing\u201d, which has sprung out of nowhere in the last few years.<\/p>\n

\"Antique<\/p>\n

The concept of creating something that your customers find valuable as a marketing tool has been around since at least the Victorian era, with tractor manufacturer John Deere publishing the first edition of the perennially popular \u201cFurrow\u201d farming magazine more than 120 years ago!<\/p>\n

Even the suggestion that content has only become truly relevant to modern marketing in recent years was rejected, with one interviewee citing the long and widespread Contract Publishing industry as evidence of the ongoing importance of marketing content.<\/p>\n

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2. Awareness isn\u2019t enough \u2013 Content is expected to drive sales (just like other forms of marketing)<\/h5>\n

In today\u2019s ROI-focused & data-led marketing environment, claiming that the considerable resources invested in creating and distributing high quality content have gone towards \u201cbuilding trust\u201d or \u201cestablishing thought leadership\u201d no longer cuts the mustard, according to the interviewees.<\/p>\n

Summing up the harrowing experience of a content marketer standing in front of their Board of Directors armed with nothing but \u201csoft conversion\u201d data, one interviewee said:<\/p>\n

\u201cBrand awareness is kind of fluffier and difficult to measure. You can\u2019t say \u201cwe went from 2.3 brand awareness to 4.5\u201d. There\u2019s no metrics for that kind of thing\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that these \u201cfluffier\u201d objectives have an important part to play in any content strategy, but leading content marketers have begun turn their attention towards harder objectives such as sales & lead generation, organic traffic & frequency of repeat website visits.<\/p>\n

This is being driven by two main factors:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • The challenge of convincing more traditional, sales-led decision makers to believe (and invest) in content marketing without any kind of demonstrable impact on the bottom line.<\/li>\n
  • The growing sophistication of tracking & analytics tools which allow the proper attribution of sales\/leads to website content.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    3. All content marketers experience four main challenges<\/h5>\n

    Despite plying their trade in a wide variety of industries within Scotland, practically all of the marketers we spoke to found common ground on the four main day-to-day challenges that they face:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The production of valuable, relevant content requires a huge amount of time and expertise, often making it the first thing to be cut when things get tight.<\/li>\n
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