Following its 2013 membership survey, the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) revealed that 42 percent of marketers publish daily or at least multiple times per week, with 90 percent publishing at least monthly on up to six channels. The growing emphasis on multi-channel, content-driven marketing is at the heart of the modern marketer’s dilemma: how important is it to keep ahead of the field in the race to adopt new channels of communications? Is six channels enough?? Or is it far too many: is it better to focus on fewer channels showcasing only superior content?
Visit England’s report ‘Visitor Attraction Trends in England 2013’ revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that Facebook (43%) and Twitter (31%) are the most popular channels used by organisations in England’s heritage and tourism sector, with usage reported even within small attractions. Mobile apps experienced the strongest year on year growth, with 18% of attractions now developing these and a particular proliferation within heritage venues. 21% of venues now offer online ticket and event booking facilities; enewsletter usage came in at 17%, and YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, online blogs and mobile sites all racked up usage levels between 6% and 11%.
Attractions offering digital communications enjoyed higher revenues and admission figures, particularly among child visitors, highlighting the crucial importance of digital communications for family audiences. So which channels should you focus your efforts on – and how can you make them work for you?
As with every marketing riddle, there is no one-size-fits-all solution – but there are plenty of inspiring examples out there. Success in content-driven marketing comes to organisations whose communications campaigns concentrate on the channels where they know their customers are active, and make the very most of those channels through the creation or curation of content that’s developed with the channel in mind. It’s as simple as that …
Let’s start with one of the largest digital experiments ever attempted by a UK cultural icon, for a taste of the reach that cross-channel communications can offer. Between June 21-23, 2013 The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) partnered with Google’s Creative Lab for a digital production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dreaming” to be viewed by an as-yet-to-be-determined global Internet audience, and supported by communications across all of the RSC’s social media channels.
The RSC’s Digital Producer Sarah Ellis is quoted in Native, the magazine from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts, saying:
“The project reached 30 million people on social media through all channels: Facebook, Twitter and Google +. We had a core community of 1,000 people over six weeks. We uploaded 3,000 pieces of content, of which 1,000 were audience members uploading their own and 2,000 were RSC commissions.”
Interesting to note that fully one-third of content was generated by audience members, with the remainder emanating from the RSC team. RSC Executive Director Catherine Mallyon added:
“If we’re dealing with a sell-out house it’s 1,000 people, if we’ve got three sell-out theatres, we’ve got 1,700 people. But if we’ve reached 30 million people, what does that mean for us as an organisation?”
Stepping away from the cultural sector for a moment, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is, literally, on top of their social media game with over 172 million users across a range of platforms and accounts. At first glance, wrestling might seem worlds away from art and culture – but as a performance-based ‘product’ looking for audiences, it’s perhaps not so dissimilar after all. WWE receives less TV time than other sports yet more than makes up for this through its smart communications channel choice. Their communications strategy focuses on regularly sharing exclusive behind-the-scenes images and footage across multiple social channels, encouraging interaction with their already heavily-invested fan base. A prime example includes the September 2014 tongue-in-cheek “between bouts” “#Rockpaperscissors exchange between WWE South African superstar Adam Rose and The Bunny, his lifesize furry-costumed competitor – one of many such incidents involving these two popular performers.
WWE integrates all aspects of online and offline marketing, and every team member is actively involved. Twitter handles are displayed when wrestlers enter the ring; every live show has a hashtag and commentators plug the social channels, with everyone encouraged to tweet at major competitions such as their “Night of Champions”.
Back to the world of arts and culture, the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival scored a huge hit by teaming up with Virgin Money, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and East Lothian developer Hippotrix to create a free “Curate your own fireworks festival” app for the iPhone. The app comes complete with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as soundtrack, and allows visitors to choreograph then run their own fireworks finale in tribute to the famous fireworks which annually close the Festival.
Digital content that encourages engagement and participation is the holy grail for many marketers, and in social media there’s no substitute for ‘real-time’ reactivity: when customers feel that you’re living the moment beside them, that’s half the battle won.
Smartcar USA did it brilliantly in June 2012 when they picked up a cheeky Tweet from ad agency creative director Clayton Hove, who quipped: “Saw a bird had crapped on a Smart Car. Totaled it.” The Smartcar team rose to the occasion and whipped up a light-hearted Infographic comparing weights of “Pigeon, turkey and emu craps” before tweeting back “Couldn’t have been one bird, @adtothebone. Sounds more like 4.5 million. (Seriously, we did the math.)”
Pantene, meanwhile, scored their own Oscar night success by having an artist on hand to sketch the stars in real time as they stepped onto the red carpet, then tweeted out the glamorous drawings complete with #WantThatHair directions on how to achieve the same look using Pantene products.
Elsewhere, clever use of Vines is on the increase, including online behemoths such as AOL which opted for a simple talking heads piece from musical duo Husband and Wife which had racked up over 120,000 loops at last count. Closer to home, Dundee United FC nailed the Vine approach by featuring six seconds of adrenalin-fuelled crowd action that has already scored around 6,500 loops. Simple stuff and easily created – check out The Drum’s weekly Brand Vine Chart for regular inspiration.
Common to each of these examples are some fundamental principles. They are the work of marketers who have harnessed every nugget of available data governing the tastes and behaviours of their target audiences, before serving them up with a piece of killer content. So, how many channels should you use? How should you use them? There may be no magic solution, but if you know your brand and you know your audience, there’s nothing stopping you from using the channels that you’re already communicating on right now to become content marketing’s next runaway success.
Main image credit: Publish by Sean MacEntee via a Creative Commons license