• by Michael Kahn , Op-Ed Contributor, November 3, 2015

Consumers have an insatiable appetite for content. And when it comes to engaging with brands, content trumps ads in authenticity.  In fact, 70% of people prefer to learn about products and services through content versus ads (Business Intelligence, 2014). 

Earned content is of special value, as it influences purchase decisions for the large majority of consumers.  This begs the question: If owned/earned media is so powerful, why are brands primarily focused on paid media?

For most brands, the answer is that owned/earned content isn’t yet accountable to performance.  According to Econsultancy, only 24% of marketers rate their ability to measure content ROI as “good” (2014).  This accountability falls far below established paid channels like email (53%) and paid search (51%). 

While there’s certainly room to increase accountability of all Paid, Owned and Earned (POE), Owned and Earned are of significant concern. 

It’s time to not only turn owned/earned content into conversions, but also reliably measure its influence on top-line performance.  This will enable you to adequately invest resources in this powerful means of engagement. 

A New Approach: Performance Content

1.     Give Content Its Due

Start thinking about content as a key driver of top-line growth—revenue, market share, conversions.  Content truly is the connective tissue in today’s digital ecosystem.  As consumers move across channels and devices, content is what stops them in their tracks, fostering discoverability. 

Content’s influence on discoverability cannot be understated.  Consider that every major 2015 Google organic algorithm update—Panda, Penguin, and Mobilegeddon—rewarded quality, highly consumable (especially on mobile) content, and penalized the opposite.

Brands that lack relevant content, delivered and personalized to moments, cannot and will not engage consumers as they move across the web.

2.     Know Where You Stand

Just like performance media marketplaces (paid search, paid social, programmatic display), your content is in a constant battle versus your competitors.  Leverage tools that (1) identify the content your competitors have and (2) quantify the visibility that content is achieving (e.g. where it’s ranking in organic search for your mission-critical keywords).

3.     Create Content Based on Intent

Focus on creating content that actually performs (e.g. performance content).  According to Eloqua, 44% of marketers identify content production as their biggest content marketing challenge, and 24% struggle to engage target audiences with content (2014).  It’s no surprise that many brands struggle to break through the clutter of the staggering volume of content shared online each day. 

As a starting point to creating engaging content, brands must understand consumer intent through data and analytics.  Mine insights from search queries, social data and first/third-party data.  Align/segment your various audiences based on interests and intent.  Then, develop a content matching and creation engine that produces highly relevant performance content—tied to these insights and intents—in all forms (text, image, video, etc.).

4.     Bring Rigor to Content Measurement

Next, bring quantitative rigor to content ROI measurement.  Measure owned/earned content in the same way you’d measure paid search or programmatic display.  This includes establishing and analyzing content KPIs, scoring and weighting each content touchpoint’s contribution to these KPIs and attributing each touchpoint’s value across the entire path-to-purchase. 

Allocate content resources/budget based on the value of each content touchpoint to performance.  Additionally, it’s often helpful to valuate content by measuring its relationship to paid media.  To illustrate, we’ve found that a $1 million investment in creating and optimizing content for performance in organic search can result in traffic valued at $10M in paid search costs.

5.     Develop a Content Optimization Plan

Lastly, optimize content like you’d optimize paid search ad copy or paid social creative, employing testing methodologies to determine the highest performing experience per audience segment. 

It’s time to move from a paid-first performance approach to POE cohesiveness, with relevant content as the connective tissue across the increasingly fragmented path-to-purchase.  Content is essential to performance; so let’s start treating it that way!