There is no denying that our means of consuming and sharing content are drastically different today than they were a few years ago — let alone a decade ago. New digital channels emerge daily, and even traditional channels like TV are moving online.
At the 2014 TrackMaven Marketing Summit in New York City, keeping up with the rapid rate of change in digital marketing was the the central topic of conversation among top marketing executives.
TrackMaven Founder and CEO Allen Gannett kicked off the Summit by addressing this challenge head on, noting that “the pace of channel explosion keeps going up, and as marketers, we have to react to this.”
In his opening keynote, Gannett outlined three central adages for digital marketers to keep top of mind:
Hummingbird customers leave you vulnerable to competitors.
Citing Nielsen data, Gannett noted that the average U.S. internet user looks at 2,417 different websites every month, and only spends 1 minute and 12 seconds per site on average.
“Now, our customers consume content in a whole new way,” said Gannett. “The analogy I like to use is hummingbirds….Consumers are fluttering around consuming lots of little bits of content, from lots and lots of places. So even though we’re consuming more content than ever before, it’s more fragmented.”
For content marketers who invest significant time, effort, and resources into their brand’s creative capital, this hummingbird effect has made it imperative to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time. Fail to capture your audience’s attention at first glance, and they are likely to fly off to sample your competitors’ content.
You need strong leading metrics to test and optimize your marketing strategies.
One of the primary reasons why marketers are struggling to reliably create engaging content, Gannett explained, is due to a backward-looking, ROI-focused approach to measuring value that is quickly becoming outdated.
“As marketers, we always try to prove our value,” said Gannett. “But we’ve been so focused on proving our value, on justifying our existence, that we’ve actually done ourselves a disservice with data.”
Rather, marketers should look to leading metrics, which Gannett defines as metrics that measure initial customer engagement with content.
“Leading metrics give us an early indicator — or early warning — of if our content is working or not working, if we’re on the right track or the wrong track,” he explained. “These are things we can optimize in real time. Think about your blog: it’s about looking at page views, looking at social shares, and looking at engagement — not just looking for ROI. Because the only way to get to ROI is to create consistent, high-quality content every day.”
As channel explosion continues, data-driven marketing will win out over gut-driven marketing.
Despite all the talk about channel explosion, Gannett noted that marketers have by and large responded in the same manner: by broadcasting the same message across a variety of channels. Few, however, have taken advantage of the opportunities for audience segmentation that channel explosion has created.
Gannett’s advice is to use data-driven marketing to “efficiently deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time, in the right place.”
“The key word here is efficiently,” he noted. “How do we do this at scale? By moving from broadcasting the same message everywhere, to creating channel-specific content.“
In short: We are marketing to hummingbirds. Consumers are sampling little bits of content from a variety of sources and channels. Nimble marketers entice hummingbird consumers with channel-specific content and leverage leading metrics as early indicators of content success.
Watch Allen Gannett’s full keynote from the 2014 TrackMaven Marketing Summit here: