Curata, vendor of a professional content curation and content marketing software platform, recently conducted research on the tactics and technology over 600 marketers used to optimize the return from their content.
In the research the company found a group of marketers that seemed to stick out because of their more advanced mix of strategies to enhance content operations. Among these strategies: creating Center of Excellence (CoE) teams (a practice we see in many areas and comes from a BPM background), measuring the impact of content marketing on the bottom of the proverbial funnel (many indeed mainly measure at the top but the middle of the funnel needs loads of attention as well) and having someone who is responsible.
Curata decided to call this group of marketers content marketing foxes. And now there is an infographic describing these foxes.
Of course the question what makes you a better marketer or one that sticks out in optimizing content marketing operations and the impact can be responded in many ways. For us the key criterion is and remains how buyer-centric, customer-centric, relevant etc. the content or information is in the eye of the beholder, aligned with the goals you aim to fulfil with them, regardless of the place in the funnel or the overall customer life cycle.
Content marketing foxes
The different blocks in the infographic of Curata highlight what the company has identified as some success factors or in other words what makes a content marketing fox. Other traits of content marketing foxes: the development of a predictable content supply chain with more efficient internal processes and analytics needed for a more data-driven content marketing practice (yes, data-driven marketing is hot in content marketing too) and more as Curata explains on the research overview page (PS: you don’t want to be a T-Rex).
Some numbers from Curata’s content marketing research:
- 76% of marketers are increasing their investment in content marketing in 2015.
- 49% of companies have an executive who is responsible for content marketing.
- 69% of companies use an editorial calendar for content marketing.
To be a content marketing fox Curata (also) advises to:
- Use marketing technology to scale content operations.
- Use Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid framework to get the most out of every piece of content (repurposing seems key here).
- Go beyond vanity metrics – something we totally agree with.
More in the infographic below, the earlier mentioned research overview page and Curata’s eBook “2015 Content Marketing Tactics & Technology Planner“.
