Why Content Marketing, Marketing Automation & Marketing Orchestration Is Like Making a Hollywood Blockbuster

By Fahima Miah

We're living in a society where films are already becoming the new face of content marketing, without consumers even necessarily realising it. We've blogged previously on this subject [see: here] in terms of how Lego have used their brand to manipulate consumers into viewing their own gated content through the release of The Lego Movie earlier this year and this just goes to show how content marketing already has a presence in the film industry. In fact, even TV advertising is becoming more and more “contenty” as old media desperately tries to jump on the content marketing bandwagon. This is something else we blogged about too [see here] not so long ago. 

This blog – written by our new content marketing intern Fahima - is a bit of an observation piece really which focuses on how the process of executing a successful content marketing campaign using marketing automation and marketing orchestration is uncannily similar to the process of producing an Oscar award-winning movie.  It’s actually a really interesting and incisive analogy from Fahima on what we actually do here at Superfluity Towers and why we're the difference between being an agency who creates The Godfather and those who create straight to DVD fodder like that on the left! 

As with many things marketing - and film making - there is usually some sort of roadmap to success – a blueprint if you like. Likewise, there are certain similar stages that come to mind when one embarks on making a movie or a content marketing strategy, including:

 

1. The ideas stage (the script)
2. The planning stage
3. The production stages (pre-production, production, post-production)
4. The distribution elements
5. The tracking and measurement of the outcomes (the sequel)

We’ll cover each in turn:

(1) The Ideas Stage

When directors conjure up an idea for an amazing new movie, they will generally have a rough idea of what the theme is going to be.  For example; if the film is going to be geared towards children then there’s no point creating an 18 rated horror movie. If the film is going to be geared towards 18 – 35 year old males then a rom-com is probably not the right way to go. They’ll have their fingers on the pulse of what movie goers are actually looking for (and this can be equated to some extent with SEO and SEM).   

Similarly, in the planning stages of a content marketing campaign, content marketing specialists like Superfluity  will usually have an idea of what kind of market the content will be targeted at. This will be done using the information gleaned from the client's bespoke customer persona's created by Superfluity which gives us a clearer idea of what sort of person/company the client is looking to attract - and engage with.  The persona's help create an end product that is designed with the individual in mind.  

So, with both film making and content marketing -  the theme must be appropriate for the ideal customer segment. Some content will be designed to be what Hollywood describe as having four quadrant appeal (i.e. it appeals to males and females, young and old), especially if it’s demand generation content aimed at a broad audience. You could call this the Michael Bay approach. Other content will be the equivalent of an arthouse movie because it is intentionally niche and specific. You could call this the Lars von Trier approach. Most content though will be somewhere in the middle – relatively broad in appeal but very, very high quality production values and an intelligent script. This is the Michael Mann approach.

"@SuperfluityUK are the Michael Mann of #ContentMarketing & #MarketingAutomation. It's about script, production values & smart distribution"
TWEET THIS

(2) Planning Stage

At this stage, the Superfluity team starts to really plan and map out the key features of the content.  This is a crucial part of the process because professional marketers and film makers alike both aspire to create content that will capture the audiences imagination through the art of storytelling.  

Conducting research in the film-making industry includes many things such as location scouting, finding the ideal format for the movie (digital, traditional film, hand-held etc.), costume design, speaking with subject experts etc.  For any director, finding the best location to shoot the movie is also imperative.  Shooting 'The Lego Movie' on a hand-held camera in the middle of the deepest, darkest, woods "Blair Witch Style" would be entirely inappropriate for both the audience and the theme. The same goes for a piece of content.  Good content marketers like Superfluity know from experience where the best locations to place any piece of particular content. At Superfluity, we know that if you're on a train and you open up a chunky PDF on your iPhone then you're probably not going to view it. In this situation we would instead maybe send an infographic or a meme since they’re both optimised to be more consumable from that location.  At Superfluity, we believe that content, context and format must always flow in unison. It's probably the same with a movie. Would you prefer to watch Gravity in 3D either at an IMAX or with BlueRay on a 70 inch LED TV or would you want to struggle to watch a tiny pixelated version of it on your smartphone?

"@SuperfluityUK we believe that content, context & format must always flow in unison #contentmarketing #marketingautomation #orchestration"
TWEET THIS

Given the complexion of our clients – many of whom are in the cloud/IT/technology sector (and thus often have highly technical products and services) – research really is a key element of what we do at Superfluity because our aim is to always create killer content no matter how complex, niche or technical the subject matter. It’s quite an art actually and is something that most agencies fall down on (by creating fluffy content that serves little or no purpose). However, given our unrivalled experience and our unique approach then it is something that we have proven to be tremendously good at - whether it’s writing content about Citrix XenApp hosting, creating guides on the environmental benefits of Microsoft SharePoint or demonstrating how Desktops-as-a-Service using VMware is the next big thing! We never forget too that you cannot sugar coat marketing content as content marketing because that’s the equivalent of a film that is absolutely littered with product placement!

(3) Production

During the pre-production stage, film makers begin to think about the cast that they want to feature in the film.  In content marketing terms, casting relates to the tools, techniques and resources we may use in order to achieve the desired results. For example, what marketing automation software will we use (e.g. Eloqua or SilverPop or Hubspot)? It's all very well paying £20m to have Sylvester Stallone in your movie (think Marketo) but if you're making a niche film which requires actual acting and a stellar, multi-layered performance then isn't it actually better to cast someone like Christian Bale for a tenth of the price (think Act-On Software)? Big and expensive is often not better.   

Film makers (the producers) then start to think about hiring an experienced, successful director suitable for their movie (along with other key team members like cinematographers).  They will look for directors who can give their film the right kind of look and feel in line with their vision for the movie and this is just the same for businesses looking to outsource elements of their content marketing because, naturally, they will always wish to retain experienced content marketing firms like Superfluity who can produce high quality, high impact content that fits seamlessly with their own brand.  

Production wise then, just like a movie, it’s rarely one person who does everything and the production will also need to have a solid start and finish date – deadlines for movies are just the same in the content marketing world! Depending on the content, the actual production team may straddle several areas – from someone working on the creative design to another person building the assets to frame the content (like landing pages and forms) to someone else creating the main content piece and then someone working on all the social media messaging. Like a movie production though, there is always someone who directs and oversees everything so that their vision is achieved. The vision must match or exceed the expectation of the films financial backers who, in Superfluity’s case, are the clients. Some film backers wish to remain at arms length and just trust the production team to create the movie with little or no involvement from them while others prefer a more collaborative approach. It’s just the same with us and our clients and we’re comfortable working either way. 

There’s no point making a Gandhi (which used something like 300,000 extras alone) if what you really need is a cost-effective yet incredibly successful film like Slumdog Millionaire so production budgets are very important too. We excel at making the most for yours and we really work hard and focus on the detail so that your movie looks like it has Avatar level budgets and production values even if it only cost the same as The Kings Speech. 

In terms of post-production, once the content is completed (i.e. the film has been shot) then the tools we use, like marketing automation, allow us to edit the content into its final format and really fine-tune the movie so that it’s ready for multi-channel, omni-directional distribution.  One of the greatest things about our overall "Mission Control" approach to content marketing, marketing automation and marketing orchestration is that - given our unparallelled experience of filming and releasing more ‘’blockbuster movies’’ than anyone else in Europe – we can produce superb quality films faster and probably better than you ever could yourself because we have all the kit, all the hard fought-for best practice, all the crew and all the bleeding edge technology already in place.

(4) Distribution

When it comes to distribution, film makers have to think about whether they want their movie to hit all the big screens or if they'd prefer it to go straight to DVD (or even just exclusively through something like Netflix). Should the movie only be released in certain countries? Is it some kind of viral, guerrilla movie that’s only going to appear on social media? Will it be showing on the screens of every multiplex or at just a handful of key locations? 

Content marketers like Superfluity think just like this about how and where your content should be released. We consider different time zones, different geographic markets and locations, different formats for different audiences and we always look to optimise the content distribution across all the right channels (including email, social media, watering holes, SEO, websites and mobile). We even think about whether we spell words the English or the American way depending on the audience. We also have to consider things such as the buying cycle because we get the fact that customers at different stages of the cycle require different types of content if we’re going to help them efficiently move through the buying process with velocity.  

Although trying to package marketing content as marketing content is a no-no, there’s still a place for calls-to-action once you’ve got the viewers attention so we always ensure that our movies are 3D i.e. that they are interactive. Think of it as all the popcorn and sweets you buy at the cinema.

(5) Tracking & Measurement

Ultimately, there’s no getting away from the fact that everything boils down to the number of leads created and converted or, in movie parlance, how many bums on seats did we achieve and what was the box office take?

After successfully releasing the film/ the content, we always start planning ahead for the sequel. Marketing automation technology allows content marketers like us to know: 

a) Who looked at the movie trailers/adverts
b) Who walked into the cinema (and what their contact details are) or whether they saw the content through another medium (device) 
c) Precisely what they thought of the movie/the content 
d) All their behaviours and attitudes before, during and after the film
e) Whether they told anyone else about the movie – and then whether they saw it
f) Where that viewer ranks in the food chain (lead scoring)

In fact, every single thing we do is 100% measurable and all of this tracking information is scrutinised, absorbed and then used to help shape the next piece of content i.e. the sequel. Best of all, demand generation, lead nurturing and drip marketing using our marketing automation and marketing orchestration allows us to drag precisely the right audience into see the movie and ensure that the movie is totally personalised towards them in terms of their needs, their sensibilities, their preferred viewing habits and their previous behaviour. We effectively make hundreds (or even thousands) of versions of the same film which are all optimised to the individual viewer. This is just one of the reasons why people queue to see our "movies", it’s why they virtually never walk out or complain, it’s why they tell their friends and peers about it, it's why they visit the movies website and it's why they can't wait for the next instalment.

At the end of the day, if your business wants to ‘make movies’ (i.e. deploy content marketing) then of course - you can do it yourself. However, audiences have a voracious appetite for content and you may either just not have time to keep up with demand or even have the right tools. If that's the case then we can help you to “top up” your content on top of what you already doing yourself (and even re-task old ‘movies’ that you’ve made to suit a contemporary audience). Alternatively, you may just want the viewers and outsource the whole process to us for a very economical price. Maybe you need help on distribution and want to leverage our pioneering watering hole marketing techniques or social media expertise. Either way, it's absolutely essential for any business to employ the right content marketing specialists with the right tools. Not doing so is often the difference between you winning an Oscar and smashing all box office records or having your movie go straight to DVD (and end up being stuck at the bottom of the £1 bargain bin at your corner shop!). 

Why Not Identifying & Engaging With Unknown Website Visitors Is Commercial Suicide

Imagine your website was a plush high street store. You’ve spent the time building it and you have invested a relative fortune in its construction, its layout and its valuable inventory. Furthermore, you’ve spent a wad of money making sure that your store can be found by your potential customers (think SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media and even the url’s you litter across all your sales collateral). So you’ve done all the hard work and shoppers walk into your store…

Wouldn't it defy commercial belief that in this scenario you would ever even dream of not having any staff in your store to welcome visitors, observe their buying behaviour and take their contact details before they walk out the door (so that you can then engage with them and encourage them to purchase either then or at a later date)? Okay, so you may have Google Analytics but that’s not the paragon of virtue since it’s the equivalent of just having a little bell on your shop door that merely lets you know an anonymous person has walked in - and walked out. You even may have something like Lead Forensics, Wow Analytics, Ruler etc. but they at best only tell you, in a percentage of cases, if a particular company has visited your website. While these products are fantastic (and we use them a lot in conjunction with other tools and techniques plus our automation platform allows us to track unknown visitors anyway) that is sometmes not ideal because they can only identify company level visitors (which some would argue they do in a non-permissioned way). How useful is that information in terms of you being able to drill down to the actual person who came into your store to spend money with you? Not much unless you can stitch that together with other individual level data (like we do). Web-help style pop ups that allow visitors to speak to someone online, there and then, are great but often (especially when ‘shoppers’ are in research mode) they expressly want to avoid direct contact with a human being (although facts show that they are usually happy to leave their contact details in exchange for getting the information they came looking for - exchanging their credentials for content).

Carrying on this analogy, what if the person keeps coming back into your store and you still don’t know who they are? What if they go to your other trade outlets and you keep blanking them? Worse still, what if they came looking for information - information that you readily have available and could send by email perhaps - but they couldn’t find it so just left to go to one of your competitors stores instead? Do you think you would be in business long? At best you certainly aren't maximising your profits and potential. What if your competitors do have the tools to do what you're not doing?

They're taking food from your table...

Also, there are different types of shoppers who all need to be treated differently depending on where they are positioned in your buying cycle. Should tyre kickers be given the full personal shopper service while the big spender standing impatiently at the till with a cheque book in their hand is ignored? If someone has visited your shop several times and you’ve observed them look closely at your pricing and other key areas of your store - areas which indicate genuine buying behaviour - then wouldn't you want your staff to make sure the customer was immediately given relevant and personalised information that helped tip them over the edge? Think case studies, testimonials, special offers etc. (marrying content with context).

So what’s the solution? 

Professional marketing automation and marketing orchestration dovetailed with harmonised, omni-directional content marketing is the only sure-fire way to put in place all the mechanics to identify, track, lead score and proactively engage with your online shoppers and do so regardless of device or channel. The contemporary techniques, technology and tools used by Superfluity for our clients allow us to turn an ever increasing percentage of your unknown digital visitors into known visitors and then ensure that you can not only track and lead score them but that you can immediately pull them into lead nurturing and drip marketing programmes and/or contact them directly by phone, email, social media etc. In doing so you can then pull these opportunities through your sales funnel with higher velocity, higher conversion and higher spend. You wouldn't believe the impact we could have on your business in this area and many others.

Superfluity specialise in bleeding edge, cross-channel visitor identification, lead nurturing, drip marketing and customer relationship marketing. We’re also experts in making sure new customers come to your store in the first place and that all your online outlets are linked and working in completely harmony. Why not book a short and friendly Discovery Call with us below and we’ll show you precisely how it all works and how we can completely change the game for you when it comes to social, digital, automation and orchestration – and how we do it economically and with agility.

BOOK NO-OBLIGATION DISCOVERY CALL

No matter how big or small your website and no matter how low your current visitor traffic is; don’t be the person who runs a shop with no customer facing staff. Speak to Superfluity and get the equivalent of the worlds best digital and social concierge who will also drag customers into your store who are ready to buy at a rate of knots that will blow your socks off. At the very least, even if you're not ready for the full suite of marketing automation, do get some basic website visitor tracking technology onto your web site quickly and begin the process of using that kind of technology to turn some of your unknown visitors into knowns.

Sorry To Break The Bad News But BANT is Dead...

Remember how fashionable the acronym BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timescale) became a few years back in sales and lead generation?

Remember how everyone jumped onto it as the saviour of lead gen?

Well, after a long and painful illness, it’s dead. It's deceased. It's non-living. 

Sorry. 


If you’re still relying on the BANT acronym then you’re essentially like the people who still say “wazzaaaaaaaap?” off the back of the annoying Budweiser adverts from about 10 years ago [tweet this]. Despite this, most lead generation providers - including half those agencies now desperately trying to superficially reposition themselves as marketing automation providers - are still trying to peddle BANT as the paragon of virtue behind the scenes. At best, they’re possibly using a bit of basic marketing automation to maybe add in some lead scoring but that’s about it - BANT remains the lead gen mantra. In today’s multi-device, always-on, connected world - a world where different buying behaviours and non-linear purchase journeys are the norm - they’re selling something antiquated that just doesn’t work anymore and we're unsure if it ever really did (although it was better than nothing).

It is true to say that if you or your lead gen agency fortuitously stumble into one of those needle in a haystack situations where you/they just happen to catch someone who is ready to buy - and who is also prepared to answer honestly - then BANT probably still has some latent ability to at least identify that a prospect is in buying mode. It’s more by fault than by design though. In reality; most BANT responses provided by prospects - who usually only squeal because they’ve been cornered and browbeated into providing answers to leading questions - is inaccurate, misleading and frequently incorrect.

So what are the biggest problems with BANT? 

Well, BANT generally presupposes that you physically speak to the prospect but with salespeople today having just a 9% chance of even getting a prospect on the phone - let alone “pitching them” - then it’s excruciatingly limited. Besides, in today’s digital landscape, assuming your prospects even want to be sold to over the phone is at best nostalgic and incredibly assumptive. 

Secondly, aside from just not being an engaging, contemporary or even sustainable approach; BANT completely ignores behaviours. That's the sword to the heart right there folks. There’s a hell of a lot more to qualifying leads and opportunities than just kettling potential prospects into answering abstract and leading questions. Observing and stitching together granular, observable and multi-channel behaviours and interactions of prospects is what really matters and it’s this (coupled with the fact that it’s almost impossible to get genuine answers from telemarketing-led lead generation) which holes BANT under the waterline. As way of an example on just how tenuous and counter-productive BANT really can be, let us give you a true example of how an agency we consulted with not so long ago were happy to class a lead they’d generated for a CRM company (which they actually then sold to several other CRM companies too at around £350 a pop) as being sales ready based on the BANT scale.

We’ll paraphrase the call recording for you: 

Agent: Are you the budget holder?
Prospect: No
Agent: Ok, does the business have a budget for things like this?
Prospect: No
Agent: Well, if everything stacked up then I’m sure it’s fair to say you would somehow find the budget yes?
Prospect: Yes I guess so.
Agent: So you’d at least be able to speak with the budget holder for us, great. Now are you the decision maker for this type of thing?
Prospect: No, that would be the MD
Agent: But you’re a decision making stakeholder right?
Prospect: What does that even mean?
Agent: Well, I mean it’s fair to say that you must talk to the MD and can make recommendations?
Prospect: Yes
Agent: Brilliant so you are a stakeholder in the decision making process. Now we’ve talked about the fact that you, at sometime in the future, may potentially be interested in maybe implementing a CRM platform for your business. Would you thus say you have an active CRM project in place?
Prospect: Errr, no.
Agent: Uh, well, ok, but can we say that you’d be happy to at least look at the solutions that are available - even if it’s just to satisfy your curiosity and see how it could help you?
Prospect: Yes
Agent: So there’s definitely a potential project there, that's good...
Prospect: Ah well I didn't say...
Agent: Let's just move on as I know you're busy...if everything stacked-up in terms of price and suitability for your business and if at the appropriate juncture you decided as a business that you did want to buy it then is CRM something you could feasibly make a decision on within say the next 3 months?
Prospect: It’d have to blow our minds but yes, feasibly. 
Agent: Fantastic, that’s great news.

And, incredibly, this (and many others of a similar nature) was classed as a "sales ready lead"! They said “the guy sounded really positive and polite” and they argued that the vague responses he was coerced into providing following their leading questions still checked all the boxes in terms of the clients minimum criteria (even though that was clearly because they coralled him into saying yes to certain things). They knew full well that even if their client accepted their well positioned lead pack and their "abridged" call recording" that the lead was highly unlikely to actually buy but they still felt like they’d done their bit. More importantly, because they sell pay-as-you-go style leads (and they thus don't get paid until they get a prospect over the line as a qualified opportunity) then they look to shoehorn everything into becoming a lead because the onus is always on them to do so. Once they do, they can then charge £350 for the lead (and then secretly spin it to 3 or 4 other CRM companies). It’s no wonder they spend half their business lives sat round a table with clients arguing over what was and wasn’t a lead - and constantly trying to collect payments!

As professional users of marketing automation and orchestration then for us this would simply never happen. If buyers aren’t ready – based on their actual empirical behaviours and not misleading sales tactics – then there’s no need for us to ever force square pegs into round holes. We simply put them into back into then nurturing pot and strategically drip and nurture them until they are ready to buy.

People often can’t (or more often won’t) answer BANT questions accurately or honestly which is a major flaw in the lead generation/interruption marketing model. Prospects often don’t know the right answers to BANT because they are either too early in the buying process (in which case drip marketing and lead nurturing becomes essential) or because, like most businesses, they are fluid by nature and have constantly changing timelines and budget priorities. Only 20% to 30% of purchases are now pre-budgeted* and 70% to 80% of buyers obtain approval for their expenditure after they have evaluated whatever it is they are purchasing*.  Worse, if the prospect is indeed in buying mode then insisting they state the obvious to BANT questions simply irritates them! 

*DemandGen

Sticking too closely to the BANT formula can have additional negative effects. It can cause you to ignore other potentially high impact leads, especially if you are overly conditional and prescriptive with the qualification criteria. Things like budget, need and timeline can and do change dramatically at any given moment so being reliant on a prospects responses from one single moment in time – while ignoring (or not even seeking to observe) their actual behaviours before or after – is acutely short-sighted. Any salesperson worth their salt will prefer to be engaged with a prospect before they’ve become too fixated and rigid on things like budgets and timescales because they want the opportunity to influence and guide those areas (and help their client establish buying criteria which is favourable to them). Remember too that it often takes a fair period of time and multiple interactions for a lead to even qualify on the BANT scale and if you (or your agency) are ignoring all those targets who are genuine buyers but who are just not ready to buy on the spot then you really are being short-sighted. Prospects no longer follow a linear buying path and you have to nurture them and respond to their needs. Being too prescriptive with things like BANT only serves to actually extend your sales process and worse still; if your competitors are working parallel to you they may have much easier criteria. While you ignore an opportunity because it didn’t meet your inflexible criteria, they swoop in. BANT is almost an anti-sales strategy designed to stop you speaking to anyone who doesn’t represent the dream customer [tweet this].

Modern tools and techniques like marketing automation considerably mitigate the limitations of BANT and traditional lead generation because it incorporates buying behaviour. Rather than someone giving you incorrect or misleading BANT information off the back of interruption marketing (usually done to avoid being inundated with further sales calls), they are far more inclined to engage with you and provide accurate information when they are trying to access content that they are interested in - especially when they feel like they have sought it out themselves. Inbound marketing will always trump outbound. The simple fact of the matter is that until a prospect chooses to engage with you then decision makers will always care more about their own problems and challenges than they will ever care about you. Bashing them over the head with BANT criteria just because it suits you is doomed to failure because prospects who aren’t truly engaged with your brand could really care less about ticking your BANT boxes. Why on earth should they? It is essential therefore that, using content marketing among other things, you first crystallise your expertise in a unique way – a way that actually helps your potential customers do their jobs. In doing so you will respond to their business problems and earn the attention of your audience (instead of assuming you will just get it through a traditional, scattergun, interruption marketing approach). Once you better align the modern buyer journey then you will quickly find that BANT just isn’t necessary because you will clearly observe from their behaviours and interactions when they are ready to buy and customers will naturally open up to you with honest responses.

In summary, we think it’s time to change the acronym of BANT to the following:

Behavioural tracking
Automated marketing & orchestration
No interruption marketing
Triggered communication