'Try!' by Erik Hensel

‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.’ Erik Hensel [30-year-old serial entrepreneur and founder of LIfeHunters] starts his passionate talk about advertising and strategy. ‘Thanks to all available data and globalization, the experience with the brand becomes more important. You need to stand out, be different, be trustworthy to win the customer. And that is where content plays a major role.’

‘Content doesn’t directly and immediately add to your sales volume, yet it should be a bigger part of your marketing strategy than you imagine.’ ‘Content shows who you are and is more than just your attention-grabbing and sexy posts on social’.

If you want your audience to consume your content, you have to think like a publisher. Step away from the old school campaigns in which the TVC is the hero. Start publishing your digital magazine with continuous content in line with the help, hub and hero model to spice it up.

Align content with webcare

Within most brands and corporates the webcare is too much stand alone. Marketing creates a campaign, informing the webcare department is the very last step in the process. Instead of the first step to involve them in the concept phase. As webcare is the reflection of the customer experience, it should be an integrated part of the business. The webcare and customer care agents are the first lines of contact with your customers. They know what is going on. Not always backed up with stats and data in top 10 lists of FAQ’s, always founded on their gut feeling and intuition.

Quite a simple hack is to have the C-suite work along with the webcare team for a few hours. That input is golden. It closes the gap between the strategic philosophy and the hands-on realization and experience by the customer. Practice what you preach. If you preach you are customer-centric, bring it into practice by incorporating your customer care department in every campaign you make.

Read more on webcare integration in Case: Webcare for Content, Case: KLM Webcare and Content and Case: Nuud on Customer Care.

Don’t over-engineer content

Just try it. Start small. And be pragmatic. Make mistakes. And learn from them. If you do what you always did, you will get what you always have gotten.