Marketers ‘completely crazy’ for looking to web traffic as content marketing success metric
Australia’s marketers have been labelled “completely crazy” by the founder of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) after a study found that website traffic remained their key measurement of a successful content marketing strategy.
Joe Pulizzi said the measurement was “meaningless” and underlined the immaturity of content marketing.
Six out out 10 marketers in the CMI research – which questioned 251 Australian CMOs – said web traffic was key while less than half named conversion rates or sales as a pivotal ROI measurement.
“My main concern is the number one metric was web traffic. That is completely crazy as it means nothing,” Pulizzi said. “Content marketing is a very old discipline but it remains immature in Australia and all over the world.”
The survey, produced in collaboration with the Association of Data Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA), also found that Australia’s marketers believe they have become worse at content marketing over the past 12 months with only 29 per cent saying their company operates an effective strategy, down from 33 per cent last year.
In addition, only one in five firms successfully track their ROI. Five per cent rated themselves as being “very successful” and 15 per cent successful, but a quarter said they were poor at tracking with nine per cent admitting they were “not at all successful”.
An alarming 13 per cent told the CMI they simply have no idea if their content marketing works because they don’t track the results.
The study again exposed the general absence of expertise in content marketing and highlighted the failure – or inability – to track results.
It revealed that 37 per cent of marketers who have a content marketing strategy document it, 46 per cent do not, 12 per cent do not embark on the practice at all and five per cent are “unsure”.
“Too many marketers have the strategy in their heads and do not have a plan written down,” Pulizzi said.
Web traffic is still regarded as the key measure of success with six out of 10 marketers followed by higher conversion rates and sales (both 46 per cent), SEO rating (39 per cent), time spent on website (38 per cent), sales lead quality (37 per cent), qualitative consumer feedback (37 per cent) and subscriber growth (32 per cent).
Pulizzi added: “There are two critical factors that differentiate effective content marketers over the rest of the pack; having a documented content marketing strategy and following it very closely. Those two things make all the difference.”
He said the results differed little from the US, despite Australia’s marketers thinking they were behind their counterparts in North America.
Steve Jones
topics
ADMA
Association of Data Driven Marketing and Advertising
content marketing
Content Marketing Institute
marketers
Marketing
Well, what do you expect? They, advertisers, sales, PR and media people from Australia don’t want to use people involved with ICT.
Australian marketers, advertisers, sales, media and PR personnel maybe good at adapting various technologies but how many are good at integrating the technologies, using them for analytics and strategies? How many actually understand technologies in-depth and not just the tip where they are all kept in silos? Yes, just keep ignoring advices and suggestions from Aussie consumers as well as ones from marketers, advertisers, sales, media and PR personnel from abroad. And keep accepting the business failures and takeovers by foreign firms as well as the brand failures and take-overs by foreign ones too.
Gone are your traditional days and digital world involves innovations and ICT. If not, good with ICT and innovations, either can update the skills or be satisfied with low paid jobs.
REALITY is Australian Marketing, Advertising, News, PR and Sales FAILS BIG TIME due to using old techniques and not adapting to ICT
If one looks at the article that Marketing Magazine (Australia) came out with ‘How to create a customer-centric culture within your organisation’, it shows that the country still wants to depend on a relationship-building culture.
This would have been good if Australia was succeeding in Marketing and Sales as relationship-building is also needed but sadly, the country does not do well in many aspects of Marketing and Sales.
WHAT ARE THE ASPECTS THAT AUSTRALIA DOES NOT DO WELL IN MARKETING AND SALES
Let’s have a look:
1) Taking customer-centric area like relationship-building which the country focuses on so much as can be seen under job sites like seek.com.au, mycareer.com.au, careerone.com.au, oneshift.com.au, Airtasker and many more, Australia doesn’t do so well in the Global Customer Satisfaction Benchmark. According to Zendesk Customer Satisfaction Benchmark, Australia has been falling behind while New Zealand has been beating the country. Also, taking after-sales service amongst vehicle owners alone, Australia does not perform well according to J.D. Asia Pacific 2013. In addition, according to the Brandshare study, brands are failing to build meaningful customer relationships;
2) Taking the following examples, which are genuine Australian sources, it will show that the Australian organisations do not perform well or adapt fast to various information and communication technologies (And why is it important amongst SMEs? It is important amongst SMEs because SMEs represent more than 99% of businesses within Australia which is why Australia is called a small business nation):
a) Australian marketers lagging behind in technology
b) Marketer study warns of skills shortages in digital marketing in Australia
c) Two-thirds of Australian marketers aren’t effective at digital
d) Is Australia lagging behind the rest of the world in big data?
e) 65% of Australian firms lack integrated data management
f) Australian businesses struggling with cross-channel marketing
g) Aussie marketers still struggling with single customer view and ROI
h) Aussie retailers fall behind content marketing trend
i) Drowning in data: Marketers’ big data complacency
j) 3 in 10 marketers don’t understand Customer Behaviour
k) Are Aussie marketers scared of mobile?
l) Accenture Study: Australian Organisations Lagging in Data Satisfaction
m) Being left behind by big data: How tech illiteracy can kill small businesses
n) How Small Business is Missing the Tech Revolution
In addition to above, Australia ranks low amongst world brands (Brandirectory.com of Brandfinance.com or Interbrand of Omnicom or BrandZ of WPP would show that).
Furthermore, Australia ranks low for global start-ups. Lastly, Australia ranks low on Alexa and Socialbakers in comparison to US, UK, China, India, Philippines, Thailand and many more.
WHY DOES AUSTRALIA NOT DO WELL IN MARKETING AND SALES
Is the answer due to the fear in change or the fear in Sciences including Mathematics and Technology or is it a combination of both?
Taking the following examples, which are genuine Australian sources, it will show that the Australians lack Science skills including Mathematics and ICT while Aussie marketers, journalists, advertisers, PR and sales personnel including leaders and managers lack analytical skills, good reading habits, innovative skills and many more:
1) Google chief warns of skills shortages
2) From clever to complacent: Australia falling behind on innovation, says chief scientist
3) OECD report finds Australian students falling behind
4) Australian women lag behind men in numeracy skills: ABS
5) Two-thirds of Australian businesses aren’t prepared for 2020’s workforce
6) Alarming lack of workplace training opportunities in Australia
7) Growing fear of outsourcing in IT sector
8) Online hiring – Australian businesses lead the world
9) Traditional marketers thinking that the new types of marketing are nearly similar to the old types of marketing when they are not (outbound or traditional marketing techniques not similar to inbound or new marketing techniques and integrated marketing). Also,inbound marketing takes time
10) Aussies spend big on technology, but don’t know how to use it
11) Fear of the computer nerd is leaving gaping hole in Australia’s $36 billion IT industry
12) If Australia Could Get Over Its ‘Fear of Failure’ Tech Startup Firms Could Contribute $109B to Economy by 2033, Create 540,000 New Jobs – Google Study
13) Australia behind in teaching kids startup skills
14) Australian workplaces need much better leaders and managers
Additionally, many of its innovative firms have left for US, UK and some of the Asian nations which includes Atlassian that left for UK (Atlassian is one of Australia’s leading start-ups).
This has eventually led to Australia depending on foreigners for its survival. If one looks at it, out of the top 2000 Australian firms, 700 or so are foreign owned which includes BHP with 75% foreign ownership, Rio – 85%, Xstrata 100% and so on. And this continues with brands where 85% of the products within a supermarket trolley are either from an imported country or from a foreign owned company. The same has slowly started occurring with Australian properties including farmlands.
Even export wise, Australia’s 4th largest export sector after iron ore, gold and coal happens to be the tertiary education where it gets most of its revenue from international students. That includes the housing where international students are cash cows.
Thus, will Australia be able to change its complacent, laid back style or would it become part of some other nation?
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