Exciting Takeaways from Epic Experts

Just over a week ago, InfoCision sponsored and attended the InterAction 2014 marketing summit at The Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing—and the highly anticipated event did not disappoint!

This year’s conference was particularly exciting, as it featured contributions from some of the leading voices in the marketing space. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), gave a keynote address, as did Lisa Arthur, CMO at Teradata, who was also presented with the prestigious Direct Marketer of the Year award.

These two Epic Experts provided a wealth of thought-provoking insights that we at InfoCision have been discussing since the conference ended. As difficult as it was, we’ve narrowed them down to a few of our favorites:

Do you document?

Only 39 percent of B2C organizations and 44 percent of B2B companies have a documented content marketing strategy: and that is a major problem. As Joe said during his keynote address—and as he has written on numerous occasions—a documented strategy is the best predictor of how effective a company’s content marketing will be. If you don’t have concrete goals and objectives, you can’t possibly create successful content because you can’t even define success.

What’s your data doing?

Lisa talked at length about how important it is for businesses to use big data to gain a better understanding of how their customers think and feel. Customers today expect relevant and timely interaction, something companies can’t provide without the tools to recognize trends and patterns in customer data. Most businesses are aware by now that they need to be collecting customer information; the next step for many of these companies is investing in solutions that help make sense of it all.

Consistency, not campaigning

Marketing efforts have long been referred to as “campaigns,” but Joe is urging marketers to think about content marketing more in terms of an ongoing conversation. Maintaining positive relationships and retaining customers requires content creation that lets customers know they are front-and-center in a company’s mind at all times. In other words, content marketing doesn’t have a concrete beginning, middle and end.

What are your thoughts about our takeaways from InterAction 2014? Let us know in the comments section!