How to use content to build relationships

Kristina: How can a brand successfully use content to engage with consumers?

Adam Weinroth, CMO, OneSpot: If you think about how a relationship works, you need to take the time to get to know your partner and understand their likes and dislikes and eventually a bond will form between both parties. Brands have the ability to build relationships and data-driven dialogue with consumers through content marketing. Using technology, there's a wealth of data that can be obtained in the "get to know you process" that gives brand marketers an ability to better understand who they're targeting, what their specific interests are and the best time and touchpoint to deliver content to them.

Kristina: What does it mean for a brand to be in the business of "relationship building"?

Adam: It means that brands should have more long-term vision and a plan for interacting with the consumer. It also means moving past the purely volumetric obsession with anonymous clicks and pageviews. Like a long-term relationship, there is a bond, there's trust and a consumer that trusts a brand is more likely to come back again and again. The success of a content marketing campaign often times depends on how well a brand gets to know the consumer and personalizes content based on their likes and dislikes.

Kristina: Kristina: How are brands incorporating content marketing into their initiatives?

Adam: Some marketers have started their content marketing efforts as a one-time or campaign driven exercise for engaging with consumers, but we're seeing some change here. Increasingly brands are more deeply integrating content marketing with the overall marketing mix, as an always-on discipline. The brands are moving to a more ubiquitous, ongoing approach to help drive more sustained engagement and relationships with consumers.

In addition to regularly connecting with consumers, brand marketers are constantly looking for ways to tie together all aspects of a brand's marketing efforts into one cohesive stack. The days of content marketing, display advertising, social marketing, email and mobile working in loose connection with each other are going to be a thing of the past. Content marketing is no longer an add-on to a brand marketer's campaign but it is now a welcome addition to the family of marketing technologies and programs working to meet specific business goals.

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Tags: ad trends, advertising, content marketing, content trends, OneSpot