The proliferation of marketing channels means straightforward sales messages need to be very special - or lucky - to cut through the noise, according to a report compiled by Waggener Edstrom on content marketing.
To put its findings together, the company spoke to more than 150 marketers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and asked them for their content marketing experiences and opinions.
Ricardo Adame, corporate VP of one of the companies polled, AVG Technologies, believes content marketing holds enormous potential, particularly when combined with the ever-increasing reach and variety of digital channels.
"For content to fulfil its true potential, the traditional 'tell' approach - a one-way communication tactic - has to give way to an interactive conversation. This is understandably unsettling for some brands, especially those that have always held tight control of their identity, but it is integral to today's socially enabled Internet era," he says.
Adame says this transparent two-way approach is something AVG now does on a daily basis, through social channels such as Twitter and via the company's 2.2 million-strong Facebook community.
Barbara Borrel, senior manager of EMEA field marketing at finance software firm Kyriba, reveals why content marketing is a crucial tool for lead generation.
"In the past, there was no real marketing activity at all at Kyriba, so when I joined the business, some of my colleagues didn't fully understand why the team and I were so focused on writing white papers, or putting out articles through different online and offline channels," explains Borrel.
She adds that content marketing is now well established and a key component of the firm's marketing strategy.
"Each time we launch an integrated marketing programme, we develop campaigns around content - this is our foundation. Most of the time, we therefore find ourselves behaving as authors and publishers."
For Microsoft, content marketing is critical to establishing the company as a trusted, relevant source of information.
Dora Mbuyi, Microsoft SA's integrated marketing and communications lead, states that real-time momentum and the value of audience insights are important.
"No longer is marketing about pushing information out to our customers. This is why we've introduced the always-on momentum; customers have matured to such an extent that they now decide when and where they want to find information, and we need to cater for that," notes Mbuyi.
Avanade's global sponsor manager, Katy Shrimpton, says content is a valuable way of showing thought leadership and letting customers know they are working with a partner that is actively thinking about challenges facing CIOs today.
"Because our customers aren't so much buying a product but a solution to their challenges, we need to show insight into the growing trends in the IT market," she concludes.
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