Every Friday, the Modern Media teams picks some of the week’s most interesting media stories to discuss over a martini. Here’s this week’s lineup — let us know what you’re talking about!
1. Content Marketing? Publishers Want to Help You Avoid Marketing Fluff.
“Publishers have the DNA and passion to serve B2B professionals with all forms of information, insight and commentary – professionally packaged, delivered and aligned with clients’ solutions,” writes UBM TechWeb CMO Scott Vaughan in eMedia Vitals last week. Scott cites this estimate from research firm Outsell: “over the last six years $72 billion in marketing spend has shifted from B2B media and advertising to marketers’ own digital initiatives.” Scott outlines what it takes for the “savvy, nimble publisher” to help B2B clients meet their new needs — “mammoth goals and the expanded requirements that come with them.” That 77% of buyers see vendor content as “marketing fluff” is a clear indication of an opportunity for publishers to integrate marketing services into their traditional advertising offerings.
2. Video: Should You or Shouldn’t You?
Adam Westbrook created the “video decision workflow” you see at right for journalists, but points out in his accompanying post that B2B media and agencies are also among those “wanting to use video but doing it ineffectively.” Video as a medium “can do some stories, issues and subject matter really well. Everything else, it does badly,“ he writes. And what makes a video interesting is presented in a neat list: .01 humanise .02 visualise .03 surprise .04 be useful .05 be short — two minutes! A very useful guide – and we think more people should use it!
3. How To Turn a Relationship Into a Sale
“Relationship-focused [sales] teams grew their accounts at least twice as fast as regular transactionally-focused account teams,” according to research by consulting and training firm Ferrazzi Greenlight. In a Harvard Business Review post, CEO Keith Ferrazzi covers the why. “Transactions often happen as a matter of course when sales teams focus on building great relationships,” he says, and expands that unsurprising fact with his theory that truly successful sales teams focus on building relationships “with generosity –generosity without expectations of tit for tat.”
4. Digital Strategy in the Fast Lane
In an interview by TheMediaBriefing, Wall Street Journal digital chief Raju Narisetti says he is generally dissatisfied with the industry’s history of staying in the slow lane when it comes to matching technology with audience needs. Narisetti outlines why he thinks the pace needs to pick up–and gives an insider’s look at the Journal‘s “WSJ Everywhere” digital strategy. On newsroom integration between online and print: “I get very irritated when people say they are platform-agnostic.” On change: ”One of the mistakes newsrooms make when they have big change is for it to be an IT project. I think that’s fatal.”
Cheers — and enjoy the weekend!
