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In my last column, “The Digital All-You-Can-Eat Buffet,” we explored the necessity of discipline in narrowing your digital tactics to those that you can afford and support. We may long to incorporate every device, channel, and targeting program available to us now in our expanded opportunity set, but it’s rare that we have the required budget available or can pull off such a fractured approach successfully. There is another kind of companion discipline that marketers have to exercise and that’s in moderating their consumer touch points so that targeted audience segments are not uncomfortably or unproductively bombarded with messaging at all points in their digital day.

Without citing a million studies, let’s start with the premise that consumers are spending more of their day connected. They use multiple devices and are more reliant on them, have more usage occasions as tools and apps have become more relevant to more daily activities, and share more information over time as they trade some personal or contact information in exchange for the functionality or content they desire. Consumers use multiple screens at once, have new social patterns of interaction online, and generally consume more content online with each passing day. All of the trends are up and the impact for both consumers and marketers is a growing set of opportunities to reach and influence consumers online.

The trick for marketers is to moderate those touch points so that the consumer continues to have a comfortable online experience that also motivates desired actions at a rate that justifies the marketing spend that supports the ecosystem. Picture a ledge balanced on a razor-sharp point. On the one side, you have happy digital consumers weighed down with some ad exposures and information sharing. On the other side, you have marketers stacking up their conversions and spend. It’s far too easy to tip that precarious balance, and once you find just the right balance, it’s gone in an instant as new circumstances or sensitivities rock your consumers and your carefully constructed plan.

We need a few rules if we are to achieve a productive, lasting balance.

1. Protect your customers. Within your own microcosmic world of your customers, err on the cautious side. Factor in all of your consumer touch points in a conservative approach that limits contacts and treats consumers differently based on the relationship you have with them. Some consumers may have a higher tolerance for multiple contacts or contacts of a more personal nature depending on who they are, what you’re offering, and whether you have earned a deeper level of trust.

   Remember that it’s not just online ads. It’s also the emails you send and the catalogs they receive, and the time they spend in your social communities and all the traditional ad exposures they have every day. If you’re seeing email open rates decrease or opt-out rates increase, pay attention. If you see decreasing engagement rates in social communities or click or conversion rates decreasing in ad spend, consider frequency as an important variable that deserves scrutiny among the other obvious candidates.

2. Accept responsibility for your role in the broader consumer experience online. “Your” ideal target segment has a bunch of other targets on their backs as well. And even if your small budget is a drop in the ocean of online spending, the cumulative impact of all the marketing exposure/noise needs to be factored into your approach. You have no control over the discipline, or lack thereof, exhibited by your fellow marketers or competitors in their approach, but it does impact you directly. If more marketers exhibited good citizenship in the online marketplace we share, both consumers and marketers would benefit.
3. Be judicious in using collected information. You can selectively use collected information for targeting without exposing the information in messaging. The “skeeve” factor for some consumers is high when they receive specific, retargeting information in ad messaging or personalized addresses in other communications, even email. This will vary by group, but tread lightly with older consumers or those with whom you have no relationship or only a casual relationship.
4. Be transparent and offer choice. Social media has heralded a new dynamic between advertiser and consumer built on expectations far different from the old school of manipulative advertising techniques. This thinking needs to be extended into non-social areas of interaction. Allow consumers to choose their level of participation and relationship with you wherever that is possible; for instance, through an email preference center or using ad choice ad units.
5. Give more than you get. Content is often the perfect way to get in front of your audience without creating fatigue. When devised and delivered strategically, content is naturally weighted in favor of the consumer as you are offering relevant, valued experiences or information. As the hunger for online content increases, your content strategy becomes an increasingly critical factor in your digital success. Make sure it’s part of your marketing strategy and is balanced against the more straightforward ad spend.
6. Think long term. Building any relationship takes time. Consumers need to be wooed along the way and will have different messaging and contact needs depending on where the relationship stands. You might be able to affect a short-term spike in results by dramatically increasing volume and frequency of contacts in a short period, but at what long-term cost? And what happens to the consumer experience when marketers decide to concurrently ad bomb?

Consumers are reacting to the sometimes overwhelming volume of messaging online and both overly aggressive online marketers as well as careful marketers are sharing the pain of the consumer response. Truly, customer-centric marketing places a priority on protecting the customer experience online. This is not only the responsible way to market, but the smart way that maximizes the impact of your efforts and builds toward long-term success.

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Content Marketing Institute

At the office, at home, and on the go, consumers are digesting and interacting with content on multiple platforms in increasing numbers. As marketers and content strategists, we need to be able to anticipate and meet their needs to engage, connect, and motivate them — whenever and wherever they need information. At the heart of our ability to reach this goal is developing a consistent transmedia content strategy.

A consistent transmedia content strategy will not only help facilitate stronger and more meaningful connections with your customers, but it can also significantly extend the value of your content and amplify its overall impact.

While the best practices for content strategy are still evolving, there are steps you can take now to implement an effective transmedia content agenda that can be updated as content marketing practices continue to take shape.

Here are a few tips to consider as you get started:

1. Establish content strategy as a practice and discipline in your organization

While companies are starting to hire “content strategists,” the discipline of “content” itself is still evolving, and its practices vary — even the very definition of “content” is still under debate. Content can be audio, video, a logo, words, pictures, a button, meta data, tags, a tweet — anything that conveys meaning to spur action to achieve business goals. Or, said in another way, content is anything that is at the core of what makes and supports meaningful, interactive experiences.

Establishing a content strategy practice begins with a universally understood and accepted definition, so that it can be applied consistently to all your company’s efforts. Content strategy may very well exist in your organization already (even if it’s not defined as such). But establishing a universal company perspective, focus, and definition right from the start will help rally the troops to produce more unified and consistent efforts. Elevating its relative importance as a means to reach overall company brand and marketing goals is critical to gain the required support, buy-in, and participation for your efforts.

After you’ve defined what content means for your brand, your next step is to outline a process and methodology to standardize content development across your company. This will help bring clarity and drive the creation of more effective solutions.

How you go about this will vary depending on the nature of your business and how the organization is currently aligned around content, but it’s imperative that you start with one key concept:

2. Connect your content efforts to existing brand and/or marketing goals

To be consistent, your content strategy must evolve from the core, centralized, and overarching brand and/or marketing priorities that your company has in place. A consistent transmedia content strategy is not just about making sure you have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a website, a mobile strategy, a URL in your TV commercial or print ad, and so forth. It’s a common error that companies can integrate a content program by tacking on platforms or channels, or idly placing links across the web.

Forging a content strategy that flows through and supports your overall brand/marketing strategy will not only facilitate consistency but also helps encourage seamless integration. Furthermore, it will reveal superficial connections and identify wasteful or misguided content executions to help craft more productive solutions moving forward.

To make this actionable when developing your content strategy, ask yourself a few key questions:

• Are your content ideas consistent with your current brand personas and marketing goals?
• How will your content fit into, support, and advance your overall marketing strategy?
• Are your messages on brand?

Also look to develop content guidelines (much like brand guidelines) and style guides to help facilitate, guide, and direct future efforts for all your team members in content and marketing, so that your efforts will all speak to your overall branding and outreach goals.

3. Identify, analyze, and prioritize

Know what assets you have at your disposal, and what additional resources or materials you will need to do the job right. More often than not the work involved in content strategy development and deployment spans an entire organization, so it can require participation from multiple, cross-functional teams — even those that may not always be obvious.

For example, content can come out of IT, PR, marketing, advertising, and other departments or practices within an organization. So it’s important to determine, in advance, who is responsible for developing your mobile strategy, your SEO, your social media communications, your advertising efforts, and your website, and bring them in on your content strategy meetings and brainstorms. Many organizations haven’t yet taken this global view of the materials that already exist or have been planned. Consistent guidelines, processes, and methodology cannot exist in a vacuum, so it’s essential that you identify existing content, analyze its potential effectiveness, evaluate the quality, and map its importance and effectiveness to company objectives before developing new content.

And it all starts by performing an overall audit and analysis of existing content.

An audit of existing content will not only help fuel your content strategy but will also help identify content sourcing resources and opportunities to maximize those resources. Consider how content might be redistributed and/or repurposed in other channels of delivery. Look to identify and mark content life cycles to create a system and processes that govern the development and management of content. Putting these processes and systems in place will help support consistency later on, as you execute on the content strategy you develop.

4. Make content findable, distributable, and extendable

While consistency in message, form, and voice is borne from connecting to overarching strategies, process, and practice guidelines, it is at the media consumption level where you get to truly savor the impact. So once you have your content, you need to determine where you will distribute it, how you will make it findable by your consumers, and how you will enable those consumers to share it across their networks.

The rapid growth of multi-platform media consumption and the rise in media audience fragmentation underscore the importance of understanding where and how our customers are consuming content. Most media strategies transverse platforms and channels to include both paid and earned media — including user-generated content. Your customers are seeking your content, distributing and sharing it as well as creating their own content that relates to your brand, so a consistent transmedia strategy may require you to modify or create new content so that it can be found, consumed, and shared across platforms.

Top brands, like in the Black & Decker example above, encourage and enable transmedia participation in their content campaigns. Even coupons, such as the ones offered by Airborne (below), can be re-purposed on platforms such as Facebook to help drive engagement, sharing, and email sign-ups. While some of these considerations lie more in the execution phase of content development, understanding where and how to implement your content strategy — and figuring out how everything will work together — will feed and inform your entire strategic process.

Did it work?

Even after you have your core content plan laid out, there’s still the very important consideration of measurement. A comprehensive transmedia strategy needs to establish the success metrics that will tie back to your overall goals, ensure effective consistency, and validate the results of your efforts.

Make sure you build in checks and balances, set benchmarks, and be prepared to apply a number of different measurement scenarios and tests to help you gauge how well your content efforts performed. Some common measurement guidelines you can use include:

• conversion rates
• engagement rates
• new customer acquisition rates
• cost per sale calculations
• earned impressions
• changes in the number of “shares” your content generates

To be sure there are a number of different ways to approach developing a consistent, transmedia strategy. Use the tips and approaches outlined here as thought starters and actionable insights that can help you advance and elevate your efforts. If you have additional ideas for maintaining consistency and quality across your multi-platform content efforts, we would love to hear from you in the comments.

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When presented with 30 feet of sumptuous choices, the tendency for many buffet restaurant patrons is to pile their plates with a little of this and a little of that until their plate is overflowing. We are just not good at prioritizing, making definitive choices, and walking away from some that aren’t as satisfying. While the visual and other sensory inputs spur consumers to gluttony, the food is usually inferior and warmed over – and probably sneezed on a few times by the passing hordes – ick. Give me a quiet table in a nice restaurant where I can enjoy the company and choose my made-to-order repast with care. I don’t need to sample the entire menu to maximize my experience.

Likewise, our digital buffet of communication and marketing options is growing. One of the hardest jobs of marketers is prioritizing our efforts and matching them to business goals while letting go of some things that just don’t fit on our budget plate. Budgets, if they are growing, are growing at a fraction of the rate of our option set. Most digital strategies need time, budget, and attention to scale to a place where they can impact the business, and when you have multiplying and different options to review, manage, optimize, and support, you cannot do it all and still do it well. Video, mobile, apps, games, e-commerce, social sites/promos/advertising, email, and more are all competing with the foundational programs that have likely been honed over years in organic and paid search and display advertising across a bewildering array of targeting and technology approaches. We want it all. But unless there is unlimited budget and staff support, we can’t have it all without sacrificing quality, scale, and results and muddling the strategy in the process.

There are many factors driving this perceived need to be represented in all channels, across all devices. Some of it is the shiny object factor where your team or C-level wants to know why you don’t have a mobile strategy or whatever has not yet floated to the top of your list. That kind of pressure can lead to poor decisions and an artificial priority set that has nothing to do with results.

Competitive pressure is another factor. If your key competitors are racking up a huge social media following or just released an awesome app that is getting attention and lots of downloads, that is certainly something that you should be watching, but you can’t let competitor strategy drive your decision making or you will constantly be following their lead and playing catch-up. Their budgets, margins, priorities, and results are different from yours, and what makes sense for them may not be your best course, even if it kills you to watch their success. Carve out your own successes.

A fractured audience profile can also lead to a fractured strategy. Consumers have many more options and they are increasingly splitting their web time across sites, hardware, and experience types and multitasking to boot. Do you need to surround that target audience at all digital points? That might be appropriate for niche audiences of particularly high value, but in most cases that would be overkill, a poor use of budget, and a bit creepy and therefore counterproductive. Look to match your goals with the targeting options available, frame of mind of the consumer, and the overall results. Choose the right places to engage with the right frequency and concentrate on making that a quality experience that can be extended in some fashion or is sharable.

None of this is to suggest that a currently performing plan should be laid in stone and never changed. New opportunities will come along and testing should be a regular part of your plan, but “I want it all” is not a strategy unless you have truly unlimited budgets. If you can’t make the hard choices, if you sacrifice thinking and scale for a little bit of everything, you end up with a set of underfunded tactics that cannot get the attention and optimization needed to make them work for you. This is anything but strategic. Marketers who will thrive in this environment are those who can analyze, prioritize, and make hard, strategic choices that are reflected in their plans. It doesn’t mean you can’t choose a few new tasty items from the digital buffet. It just means you have to be discriminating and apply logical criteria to your planning process.