When covering the state of content marketing in Europe in several posts, one thing struck us: despite many surveys it’s highly unclear how content marketing is used across different European countries.
Recently, some data were published about content marketing in Belgium and there have been surveys in countries such as The Netherlands but most of the time the reports set up by larger organizations look at Europe as a whole, with a clear – and understandable – focus on the usage of content marketing in the UK.
However, Europe is far from a homogenous market. A while ago, I wrote a small piece, along with other content marketing practitioners, for a HubSpot report on the state of content marketing in Europe. The report mentioned a few quotes, among others from Doug Kessler but the same phenomenon became clear. As Joakim Ditlev, who runs a popular Danish content marketing blog commented “There’s no such thing as a European market when it comes to content marketing.”
Time for the Content Marketing Conference
Before possibly doing some joint research, we thought it was more important to launch a Content Marketing Conference in Europe as there hasn’t really been one, at least not with an international focus as far as I can tell. Furthermore, isn’t it more important to do content marketing the right way, wherever you are based, rather than knowing the stats (even if these have value too)? After all, content marketing highly depends on the context of your business, industry, resources, audiences, culture and most of all…customers. One of the reasons we hope you will continue to send us content marketing cases (more below). And, in the end, previous editions of the Fusion Marketing Experience conference, our event brand the Content Marketing Conference is organized with, were about customer-centric marketing too.
Obviously we’ll have many cases to show on the spot as we invited a range of speakers from the US but also people from across Europe, including AJ Huisman, Doug Kessler, Eric Ingrand, Switzerland-based Kelly Hungerford, people who have conducted research in their respective countries and a bunch of local speakers with international experience (such as Danny Devriendt, previously EVP Social and Digital Media at Porter Novelli). The list of speakers is completed with local practice experts such as Tom De Baere, Deloitte’s Tristan Lavender, Xaviera Ringeling and many more, all with their own – and other – cases.
We decided to organize the event in Belgium and not just look at numbers but present a series of cases, masterclasses and keynotes from Lee Odden (who was at the event after having released his book ‘Optimize’ a first time, two years ago), Jay Baer, Doug Kessler, Mike Corak and others, who will share cases too.
The goal? A no-nonsense look at content marketing success, a better understanding of content marketing across Europe (and some evangelism) and most of all helping marketers create business value through customer value using content marketing in a customer-centric approach.
Send us your content marketing cases: we’ll treat them well
The fact that there is no real view on content marketing in Europe (yet) is easy to understand and is not the primary goal. In fact, one can even wonder if there is such a thing as the state of content marketing. As said, content marketing is a highly contextual and integrated thing and there is no one size fits all solution. The reason? It’s all about the customer. I guess the program of the event shows that’s our key focus.
And here’s the key call-to-action: please keep sharing your European content marketing cases as some of our readers have been doing in the past (by commenting or sending them by email to info[at]i-scoop.be).
