Four wave of content marketing: text, pictures, personalized, the next step is marketing applications?

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Content marketing has gone through four waves, from the initial simple text, to later pictures, to personalized customization content, then the next round of the trend is what, will be mobile applications?

Scott Brinker, who is behind the chiefmartec.com of the popular marketing website, Brinker is an extremely devoted and patient person who can see as many as 947 companies on his website. At the same time he is the CTO of Ion Interactive, who have decided to put their future development in the marketing app. Recently well-known science and technology blog VentureBeat interviewed him, the article is roughly as follows:

VB: You talk about the content marketing experience of the 4 wave of development, then what is the front of the tricycle?

Brinker: The first wave is a simple Web page, which is mostly text, and the second round has more content and form, such as videos, slides, beautifully designed e-books, and so on. The third wave of the time, is personalized technology in the field of marketing applications.

VB: What are the characteristics of the first and second rounds? How do they work?

Brinker: The first round of the wave in two aspects of the revolutionary advance, first of all, the cost of content transmission almost to zero, in addition to the emergence of search engines, so that users can find the content of their own needs. It is because of the first wave of the development of the Search engine optimization SEO concept, of course, including content marketing, now all the companies are trying to launch more content.

And the second wave is accompanied by more visual effects of the image, which is associated with the emergence of social networks, it has become the main content distribution and dissemination methods, at this stage companies are not only to pursue more content, but better content.

Of course, with the development of content marketing, there are more and more natural information, so the biggest problem now is how to find what you need from a lot of noise.

VB: The personal third Wave has the ability to change the rules of the game?

Brinker: As I said above, the problem now is that there is too much information and content to exceed the needs of users, so it makes sense to use personalized technology to filter out useless information.

But personal is not a weapon of omnipotence, we cannot expect to predict his future behavior and make recommendations simply by using a few clicks from the user, we need a lot of information, and not superficial information. and simplistic speculation and assumptions can only lead to incorrect content and direction of incorrect marketing.

Of course it's important to be personalized in the context of content marketing, but it's better suited to the kind of marketing that Amazon users recommend, because the cost is low even if it's wrong.

VB: What do you think the fourth wave tide is?

Brinker: I think the fourth wave is more interactive content marketing and larger. The form is casual, such as online tools, games, evaluation software and so on marketing applications, covering a variety of entertainment and educational experience.

VB: What's the benefit?

Brinker: There is so much information now, and the advantage of marketing is that it can bring more innovative ways for potential consumers to get in touch with what they like. For example, through marketing applications they can see the most inspired video, and this experience can better spread the concept of the brand. And for marketers, users in the application of the behavior, can bring a lot of meaningful discoveries.

In general, there are two forms of content marketing, either completely free of charge, or you must first fill out personal contact information in exchange. Marketing applications can be integrated into two models, with free content to attract a potential customer, and then provide more valuable content.

VB: This model and mobile applications to take the free value-added model is very similar, right?

Brinker: That's a good contrast. Use free content first to attract users, and then at the end to set the means of information extraction, so that users can get the rest of the content. For example, an intelligence test game, everyone can start free, but the final hope that the full results of the person, need to submit personal contact information, and then can get a copy of the mailbox and other users of the comparison report. This method can get a lot of useful information if used properly.

VB: This model has a long history, right?

Brinker: Absolutely. and previously want to develop these applications, need a lot of input, such as professional IT staff, need a lot of maintenance costs. But now there are many software services SaaS products appear, marketers can easily use, greatly reduce economic costs. In addition, innovations in this field continue to appear, such as my own ion interactive company to provide marketing software platform.

VB: This new marketing model is only suitable for a certain kind of company?

Brinker: I think, like the other three waves, the fourth wave of content marketing is universally applicable. Of course, different companies should adopt different styles of app.

VB: About marketing app What else do you want to say?

Brinker: I think the interactive web site works better than mobile apps. Users can use directly, without downloading, in fact, whether the app or Web page, the marketing staff are the same as each has its own role.