The Digital Balancing Act: Content & Distribution

They are 2 of the hottest buzz words in digital marketing…content & distribution. Everyone’s talking about them, trying things, learning. We all want to build engagement with customers by delivering high value content directly to them when / where they want to consume it.

The accelerating level of discussion at conferences and executive interviews illustrates an increasing interest & investment in:

• Brands developing their own content
• Brands owning their content distribution channels vs renting someone else

I attended the Art of Marketing conference in Toronto this week (great event by the way), where Morgan Spurlock provided fresh and terrific examples of brands embracing new content strategies to produce content like GE's Focus Forward series which delivered +10,000,000 views on YouTube and many more through syndication across cable networks & Netflix. I was fascinated by the sophistication of 20 year old Bethany Moda as she shared the story of how she built her +20,000,000 “brand” followers across 5 social networks, and her ongoing challenge to deliver content her audience values. Must be working as she’s had +850,000,000 views of her YouTube videos, with recent ones averaging 2,000,000 views each!

As brands embrace the opportunity to become media companies by building their own digital channels and filling them with content their audience love, they must understand and operationalize the “Yin & Yang” balancing act between Content & Distribution. Expensive content that no one ever sees, or empty channels with nothing to keep audiences tuning in become potential pitfalls to plan for.

In my experience, as companies start to explore branded content, executives get excited about idea of having a mini Hollywood type operation with celebrity video shoots at exotic locations (who wouldn’t really). In most cases, that interest fades as they see the budgets, and their marketers struggle to provide a solid business case for the whole thing.

Those brands who successfully press on build a strategic business case for a program with 4 parts:

1. Clear business objectives (What does business need us to deliver through this?)
2. Content investment strategy based on customer insights (What do they want? Trends?)
3. Distribution channel plan (How do we get the content to the target audience?)
4. Measurement & Learning (Are we achieving objectives? How do we make this better?)

Measurement & insight are core elements of any strong marketing program, and even more critical in the content investment. Building your own media program (content + distribution) is potentially a large ongoing investment, so understanding the new economic relationship between content impact & reach through your brand controlled digital distribution channels is key. You need content + distribution to win. Investing in content without the channels to deliver it to your target audience is hard to justify, and digital distribution channels without a regular stream of engaging, high value content doesn’t keep an audience for long.

Netflix is great example of the economics around the balance between brand owned content & distribution. Netflix built a huge digital audience by providing unlimited access to high value content for $8/mth….but most of the revenue went to the content owners in license fees. The Content / Distribution model needed tweaking, so Netflix started producing their own content based on knowing what their audience wanted. House of Cards is one of my favorites. This changed the economics of Netflix by keeping content $’s for their shows and renegotiating licensing for other content. 

So as modern marketers, what we do with this observation? Part of my work leading Digital Branding @Manulife and as Board member at @Itracmarketer, is working with our teams developing a model to illustrate this cycle to our stakeholders. We’ve given it the exciting name of “Modern Digital Marketing Framework” and use it as simple education & strategy tool to frame up how the cycle approach to balancing of content & distribution works.

Key to the successful implementation of this model is to keep the content investment in constant balance with the distribution channels you own. If one gets too far ahead of the other the program struggles to drive required business impact and ROI.

If you have some distribution now (email / blog / social channel / sales people sending out info), understand what content your audience values based on past content performance and other insights (eg. surveys, sales feedback, search & social topic trends). Start with the basics then scale your content investment into new areas as your distribution channels grow.

Initial content we’ve found works is thought leadership from company execs, interesting stories about the people who work at the company (including how they help customers or community) and useful tips / inspirational nuggets.

You’ll notice product info is not on that list. Product / services info is like 30 second commercial in traditional media. The brand can be integrated into the content (eg. Redbull) but you’ll likely find it difficult to build an audience around product only content.

Please remember…there are lots of interesting places to learn and be entertained on the internet….and as a content & channel owner you are competing with all of them!

Good luck and I look forward to tuning in!