BIA/Kelsey Senior Director of Industry Strategy and Insight Abid Chaudhry has written our latest Leading in Local Insight Paper, Content Marketing: the New SMB Paradigm. In the paper, Chaudhry argues that the growth of content marketing derives from changing consumer purchase behavior. He also describes the new ecosystems that has emerged to create and distribute original SMB content.

BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor survey showed SMB advertisers are more engaged with content related media channels which leads to more involvement with online content marketing. As a result, SMBs are engaging more with their consumer audiences in two-way conversations.

The executive summary for the report is below along with video clip from a recent BIA/Kelsey analyst roundtable we did on the topic. The report is available to BIA/Kelsey clients as well as for individual purchase.

Executive Summary

Content Marketing has always been around in some form. It’s the collection of techniques and practices marketers employ to get relevant content in front of the right audiences. During the pre-internet dark ages content marketing came in the form of direct mailers, brochures, product catalogs all designed to capture audience attention and drive it to some form of call to action (usually to fill out a form or pick up the phone).

The purpose of content marketing hasn’t changed much since then. The way it is created, distributed, and tracked has drastically evolved. The modern content marketing campaign is now multi-channel — combining offline and online media to drive highly targeted messaging to consumers, on whatever screen or device they happen to be on at the moment. SMBs have taken to the new content paradigm with gusto, with 74 percent reporting that they used some method of content marketing to promote themselves online in 2013.

While SMBs have been quick to embrace the content switch over from offline to online, content marketings relative importance within the broader digital marketing mix has taken time to evolve over the years.

Trevor Sumner, co-founder and CTO of LocalVox, noted that there have been multiple factors explaining why SMB content marketing has recently regained important. One is the movement toward original content and media. Suddenly SMBs have direct lines to their customers. What are they going to say?

Other factors, notably the rise of social media and rapidly increasing mobile device usage, have also played key roles in re-establishing the importance of content marketing with both driving massive growth in both content creation as well as consumption.

This BIA/Kelsey Insight Paper dives into SMB content marketing. It examines the market and technological factors that have led to content marketing’s resurging popularity with SMB merchants and the companies, technologies, and products that support them.

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Content marketing has been around a while among SMBs in analog form — after all direct mail, product catalogs and brochures are all about using rich content to promote a business and drive sales. The growth of the Internet, and in particular social media, as a marketing channel, has elevated content marketing to greater importance. This has led to a new paradigm for how SMBs build their brands and reputations, and how they get discovered by potential customers.

BIA/Kelsey Senior Director of Industry Strategy and Insight Abid Chaudhry has written our next Leading in Local Insight Paper, “Content Marketing: the New SMB Paradigm.” In the paper, Chaudhry outlines the case for content marketing — it derives from changing consumer purchase behavior. He also describes the new ecosystems that has emerged to create and distribute original SMB content.

The following is a brief excerpt from the upcoming Insight Paper:

Managing content online has become a critical component for SMBs — the value conveyed from a robust content program reaches beyond exposure to apply value to discovery, customer engagement, and performance across all digital channels. Increasingly, content marketing tactics like social media posts or blog entries can prompt engagement with potential customers, creating new opportunities for SMBs with a minimal amount of effort.

As engagement and usage of the Internet and mobile web continues to increase, consumer taste and expectations have also evolved. Consumers are increasingly becoming accustomed to rich, targeted and contextual advertising and marketing experiences. While brand and agency advertisers have been able to respond to this new paradigm quickly, SMBs are finding that a lack of fresh content and relevancy can cost them.

Increasingly SMBs are applying greater value to lead sources derived from content marketing based sources, and this trend is likely to continue as the gap between traditional and digital advertising acceptance narrows.

Watch the Local Media Watch blog for more excepts from “Content Marketing: The New SMB Paradigm” leading up to its publication in mid-April.

Also, check out this clip from a recent BIA/Kelsey Analyst Roundtable, where Chaudhry talks about the big ideas driving SMB content marketing.

Request a briefing for more information on BIA/Kelsey research and insight.

The post A Look Ahead at “Content Marketing — The New SMB Paradigm” appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Content marketing has been around a while among SMBs in analog form — after all direct mail, product catalogs and brochures are all about using rich content to promote a business and drive sales. The growth of the Internet, and in particular social media, as a marketing channel, has elevated content marketing to greater importance. This has led to a new paradigm for how SMBs build their brands and reputations, and how they get discovered by potential customers.

BIA/Kelsey Senior Director of Industry Strategy and Insight Abid Chaudhry has written our next Leading in Local Insight Paper, “Content Marketing: the New SMB Paradigm.” In the paper, Chaudhry outlines the case for content marketing — it derives from changing consumer purchase behavior. He also describes the new ecosystems that has emerged to create and distribute original SMB content.

The following is a brief excerpt from the upcoming Insight Paper:

Managing content online has become a critical component for SMBs — the value conveyed from a robust content program reaches beyond exposure to apply value to discovery, customer engagement, and performance across all digital channels. Increasingly, content marketing tactics like social media posts or blog entries can prompt engagement with potential customers, creating new opportunities for SMBs with a minimal amount of effort.

As engagement and usage of the Internet and mobile web continues to increase, consumer taste and expectations have also evolved. Consumers are increasingly becoming accustomed to rich, targeted and contextual advertising and marketing experiences. While brand and agency advertisers have been able to respond to this new paradigm quickly, SMBs are finding that a lack of fresh content and relevancy can cost them.

Increasingly SMBs are applying greater value to lead sources derived from content marketing based sources, and this trend is likely to continue as the gap between traditional and digital advertising acceptance narrows.

Watch the Local Media Watch blog for more excepts from “Content Marketing: The New SMB Paradigm” leading up to its publication in mid-April.

Also, check out this clip from a recent BIA/Kelsey Analyst Roundtable, where Chaudhry talks about the big ideas driving SMB content marketing.

Request a briefing for more information on BIA/Kelsey research and insight.

The post A Look Ahead at "Content Marketing — The New SMB Paradigm" appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Content marketing is fast becoming core to many SMB marketing strategies, to the point that it threatens to crowd out more traditional media spending. And call monetization is getting more attention as growing smartphone use spurs a rapid rise in low funnel (high purchase intent) mobile generated calls to SMBs.

These two hot topics in local digital media just happen to be on deck as the next two BIA/Kelsey Insight Papers. Last week we launched a Google Hangout with the authors of these two upcoming reports to get a preview of what they are all about.

First we asked Abid Chaudhry to tell us about his upcoming piece on content marketing. His central contention is that “Content marketing is beginning to take over as the primary advertising budget spend of most SMBs.” His view is the growth of mobile and social as marketing channels for SMBs means that content marketing, broadly defined, is threatening to crowd out more traditional forms of digital advertising, such as pay per click.

“The name of the game now is consolidation,” Chaudhry said. “Folks that used to do direct marketing only vs. social vs. reputation management are all coming together to offer integrated solutions. That is the future of content marketing.”

Mike Boland also joined the hangout to preview his report on call monetization, which in many ways will be a follow up to the 2012 report “Call-Based Ads: Eliminating the Unknown from Advertising.”

Boland contends the big change since the 2012 paper has been the even greater influence of smartphones on call monetization. Today, smartphones are in the hands of about 63% of mobile users.

“If you pan back, pay per call has been around a while…but it was physically separated from the phone,” Boland said. “Now, with the search device literally bolted to the phone, we see an explosion of call volume.”

BIA/Kelsey estimates mobile call volume will reach 65 billion by 2016. And mobile calls by their nature tend to have a higher purchase intent, and thus higher conversion rate, than calls generated from desktop search.

“Businesses want calls,” Boland said. “Our data shows that calls are the most valued form of lead for small businesses.”

Check out this video to hear both analysts discuss the key themes in their upcoming reports, Chaudhry goes first, with Boland’s discussion of call monetization beginning at the 5:20 mark:

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One theme that emerged at BIA/Kelsey’s recent SMB Digital Marketing conference was the emergence of content marketing for local merchants. This was kicked off in a session by Jed Williams and popped up a few more times.

As a retrospective on some of those themes and a look at their future implications, my Street Fight column this month unpacks it further. As a bonus, I even found a way to incorporate Twerking, speaking of trend analysis.

The column came out yesterday and an excerpt is after the jump, with the full article available here.  We’ll continue to keep a close eye on this topic (but likely not Twerking).

In the pantheon of buzzwords overtaking pitch decks and CMO-speak, “content marketing” is the new darling. The term has legitimate grounding to be fair, but like “long tail” and “web 2.0″ in days past, its overuse precedes it.

Content marketing also isn’t anything new — it’s been done for years, albeit under the ethically challenged “advertorial” rubric among other flavors. Now it’s new, improved, and hitched to en vogue terms like “native.” It’s also gained new steam and identity in the age of mobile and social. Facebook, in particular, can be credited with minting native and content marketing into prominence with the recently affirmed Sponsored Stories.

But what about local? Perhaps there’s no better fodder for “stories” than the character, experiences and milestones of a local business. That indeed seems less contrived than the Nikes and Pepsis of the world.

Capturing that content in monetizable ways is analogous to what players across the local space have been doing for years in various flavors. That includes MerchantCircle, Angie’s List, Closely, Patch, Yelp, PagePart, and many more. Foursquare has recently taken a different angle in local content marketing with its Promoted Updates and Promoted Specials. These are crafted in the mold of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories but with a local twist.

Then there are SMB opportunities to capture and distribute marketable “content” through Twitter, Facebook or even blog posts (i.e. “how to fix a sink”). The problem, as it often goes with SMBs, is that they don’t have the time.

That’s where companies like HubSpot and Signpost, as well as some of the above players come in. Here, an opportunity awaits if content marketing can be personalized, yet automated enough to preserve margin among low-spending SMBs. This can involve curating third party content and creating shorter-form content that can be shared easily. The need especially exists when the above “time starved” SMB challenge is joined by “content starved”.

“I don’t want to read an article from my dry cleaner about the science of cleaning cottons,” said Closely CEO Perry Evans at the recent SMB Digital Marketing Conference.

Read the rest.

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Last week we held a big 3 day conference in Austin on the changing world of SMB digital marketing. It was an awesome turnout, solid speaker lineup and lots of takeaways. Check out our session-by-session blog coverage.

To stay true to our new found love of analyst roundtables, we did one yesterday to unpack some of the takeaways across our analyst team. This one is an audio podcast and is embedded below.

Stay tuned for more audio and video coverage of all of the areas we’re covering.

The post BIA/Kelsey Podcast: Takeaways From SMB Digital Marketing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

To wrap up the content-packed SMB Digital Marketing conference, a panel of heavy hitters zeroed in on the show’s pervasive theme of content marketing.

Perry Evans, CEO, Closely
Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa (NCI)
Randy Parker, CEO, PagePart; Founder, Constant Contact
Dave Walker, CEO, BizHive

This ran the gamut of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest, Yelp et, al.. These each come with their own opportunities for content marketing, but also carry familiar SMB challenge such as time/resource constraints.

Blogs are a great platform but SMBs have no ability to update them asserted Adam Japko. Ways around that include curation of third party material, and shorter form content that is snackable or can be shared via Twitter or Facebook added Randy Parker.

In addition to being time starved, another challenge lies in being content starved says Parker. 90 % of blogs go dark for this reason. And certain businesses are decidedly unsexy considering the eligible “content” to be marketed.

“I don’t want to read an article from my dry cleaner about the science of cleaning cottons,” says Perry Evans.

Pay to Play

For lots of these reasons, it can’t be expected that this content will be consumed and distributed virally or organically. In lots of cases it will be a pay to play model for the distribution of content, sort of like Facebook Sponsored Stories.

“These things are more intuitive to the business than search marketing – putting out a promotion or piece of news or bragging about award they got,” argued Evans. “People underestimate social media as brand building only. It can outperform search marketing 5 to 1 from what we’ve seen and there’s a high level of precision targeting.”

Things get even more complicated when you consider the democratized and connected world we live in; content marketing isn’t always in the hands of the SMB. This phenomenon is embodied most with Yelp, which Evans sees as a lightning rod for maligned angst.

“The median behavior of small businesses are average, and it pisses off the owner that its exposed,” he said. “[Those] that have good service will like Yelp; those that beat up Yelp tend to be average. The opportunity sometimes missed is testimonial solicitation coupled with dialogue with the customer.”

Dave Walker adds that what’s missing is an industry meter stick that quantifies the cost of a bad Yelp review. For example, what is the average Yelp rating impact from a business that was overloaded from having run a Groupon?

“Having the data to quantify the impact of that negative review would be good for all of us,” he said, “and make it easier to sell social media and review products.”

Picture Worth 1000 Characters

The conversation wouldn’t be complete without the recently S-1 minted Twitter. Like many of the options on the table there’s considerable opportunity, but one that’s saddled by all of the same SMB resource constraints.

“There’s a huge opportunity to identify prospects on Twitter,” says Japko. “Bring them deeper into the funnel. It’s huge but daunting to the small business, so it has to be made awfully simple.”

Speaking of Twitter, improving camera functionality like the iPhone5s makes multimedia content via Vine an emerging SMB opportunity. I’ve been saying that for a while. Add to this discussion Instagram Video and Instagram proper.

Evans claims that the content flows on Closely organized by business venue view are showing that Instagram is the biggest source coming through the pipes. These are mostly selfie pics, but even that carries an opportunity.

“What does an SMB do with that?,” he asks. “Use this content to start a conversation: ‘we want to start a gallery, if you wouldn’t mind me using your pic,we’ll give you a return visit.’ SMB won’t do it themselves, so that’s an opportunity.”

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This morning at SMB Digital Marketing moderator Jed Williams interviewed four companies in the middle of understanding how to deliver content market solutions to small businesses. One of the biggest challenges was balancing the scale of marketing automation with the authenticity of custom content.

Williams noted that BIA/Kelsey’s LCM data shows that SMBs understand that content can drive leads, and that they are increasingly willing to pay an outside source to help with content. In the latest wave of LCM data, 41% of SMB indicated a willingness to pay for help managing content.

“The play is you can plug in and assist them, they are warm and ready,” Williams said. The flip side of this is that social content not getting great ROI ratings. The bottom line is there is a gap between energy around content and the ROI it is delivering. How to bridge that gap is one of the challenges the session

Here are a few highlights from each of the speakers.

Daphne Earp, Director of Business Development, Yext

“We don’t aggregate any data. We build tools that help businesses collect info and get into digital form plus distribute that content. There is no data we don’t get directly from the business owner. We are helping local businesses get found, so that is who we charge,” Earp said.

Earp described a model that combines basic content created and managed by a service provider with the critical “authentic” content coming directly from the SMB. “At some level if you want good content, it has to come from the business.”

Stuart Wall, CEO, SignPost

Signpost is all about marketing automation, with a heavy focus on driving “conversion events,” which it defines as capturing customer information, with the ability to tell merchant of that consumer’s intent to visit. “Every business cares about conversion. We use content to facilitate conversion that begins with the profiles. We create conversion events on business pages, e.g., offer for consumer to put in email address. We generally capture emails.”

“Do It for Me” at scale is essential for SMBs. “It all has to be integrated to be as effective as possible,” Wall said. He advocates “solving the problem with software vs. being a big micro agency.”

John Denny, VP marketing, Advance Digital

Content marketing is about being found when people are searching for what you are selling. Denny offered a reality check on content marketing. He noted one estimate that 90% of world’s information was created in the last two years. “Much of that is really useful cat videos. The world is not starving for content. There is not a content drought, but a content deluge,” Denny said.

So how much content is getting seen? How do you break through? When you search for a local business and there is no content, no pulse, that is a problem. Need a base level of content. The next level is proactive and it costs more money.

Mike Orren, President, Speakeasy (digital agency, part of the Dallas Morning News).

Orren’s agency offers a high-touch and customized content marketing service. “Commodity content is not only not helpful, it is dangerous for a business. We focus on high end and useful content. Things we think people will engage with.”

Orren’s account teams are led by journalists and marketers who understand how to create great content, paired with more junior fulfillment teams who handle most of the fulfillment and technical work.

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