Is Content Marketing Lost in Translation?

Is Content Marketing Lost in Translation?

One theme that cropped up again and again at this year’s Sydney Content Marketing World was how marketers need to understand their audience – even before they become customers. So far, so much common sense. Yet we can all name thousands of examples where what should be common sense is overlooked in favour of disconnected and cliched marketing-think.

It’s not surprising this happens when marketers persist in overcomplicating everything while speaking a different language to everyone else. Why is so much marketing discussion carried out in code?

“Sorry, I don’t speak Marketing”

The always plain-spoken journalist Stilgherrian wasn’t at Content Marketing World (I think he would find burning hot coals preferable) but he vented his frustration at the #CMWorld hashtag on Twitter.

Why are we? It’s a fair question. Our industry is now so full of weasel words, buzzwords, cliches and empty rhetoric that sometimes even we struggle to understand what we really mean. However, although it might not always have been obvious from viewing the hashtag, Content Marketing World did try to hold certain overused terminology to account.

Joe Pulizzi even opened the event by apologising to the audience for popularising the phrase “content marketing” back in 2007. At least content marketing is a pretty innocent term that attempts to simplify rather than overcomplicate things. That certainly can’t be said for many other overused marketing terms …

Don’t look now, but your buzzwords are showing

Put enough marketers in a room and before long someone will start talking about “analysing the social graph” to “foster creative ideation” so they can “launch innovative tactics” designed to “activate community engagement” for “maximum reach and cut-through”, all while “maintaining alignment with the core brand message”.

By which I think they mean, “thinking up new ways to use social media so that interested people can learn more about what we do.”

People who make things more complex than they are either know less than they think, or are trying to sell you something

Jay Baer, Convince & Convert

Despite working in the persuasion industry, we have a terrifying knack of believing our own bullshit as it bounces around the echo chamber. In the constant search for a silver bullet, we sell each other new fads and develop new theories, dressed up in impressive sounding but ultimately empty terminology.

Marketers marketing marketing to other marketers is never going to end well. (Tweet this)

We’re only deluding ourselves by thinking such fluffy concepts and unaccountable ‘goals’ actually have substance. It’s the “Emperor’s New Clothes” syndrome. Our clients and CEOs can usually see through our vague nonsense just as much as the general public can. And the scary thing is there are plenty of marketers willing to go out in public wearing virtually non-existent strategies woven out of this stuff.

Is it any wonder marketers get heckled on our hashtags? Is it really surprising that 90% of CEOs trust information from their CFOs but 80% distrust information from their CMOs? (Here’s the original 2012 research, released by the Fournaise Group. Hat tip to Ray Kloss who quoted the stat at Content Marketing World.)

I don’t think that means what you think it means

Yes, I sometimes catch myself talking about ‘engagement’ or resorting to the phrase “thought leadership” to make a quick point. But this is usually followed by an overwhelming desire to turn around three times and spit to ward off the evil marketing voodoo.

Whenever we describe real world goals and activities by resorting to abstract concepts, we risk losing touch with the real world. If you can’t explain a concept using every day language, can you be sure it will work in an every day world?

Here are some examples that should be struck from the marketing lexicon.

Thought Leadership: Only the audience gets to choose whose ideas are worth following. If you have to tell people you’re a thought leader, you ain’t one. I could call myself a ballerina, but it doesn’t mean anyone’s going to come and watch me dance. Plus how is thought leadership ever a business goal? (Apparently 54% of Australian marketers think it is.)

Brand awareness: Shorthand for “Please God let all these Facebook likes somehow turn into more sales next month because I’ve no idea how to sell to these people”.

Ideation: Refers to a specific and documented process of generating ideas. It is NOT synonymous with “thinking while holding a white board marker”.

Influence/Influencer: Influence is important, but no one in the real world defines their online activity as “influencing others”. When a marketer approaches someone and calls them an influencer, she reveals an agenda based on self-interest. We might as well tell them, “You could be a nice person and everything, but we’re really only interested ’cause everyone trusts you more than us.” Since when has that ever worked as a strategy to make friends?

Engagement: Marketing is a long-term process, so this term was originally coined to describe everything that happens between a person and a brand before eventually becoming a customer. Today, engagement is discussed more in terms of cherry-picked metrics that are easy to fudge. “We’ve had huge engagement numbers on our Facebook page!” Wonderful. But if that doesn’t ultimately lead to a tangible business benefit you can prove, I think you missed the point of the exercise.

Activate/Activation: You mean “promote”, right? Or “distribute”? Or maybe you simply mean “start”? Sometimes it appears to stand in for “improve”. Whatever the context, I assume you’re trying to trigger some kind of response. Actually, I’ve no idea what you mean. And how can you “activate” an inanimate object? (City of Perth Council thinks you can)

Can we get back to simply saying what we mean? Can we start challenging the jargon and questioning the fluffy terminology? Can we stop trying to overcomplicate everything we do?

This is especially important when we’re talking to customers, clients and CEOs. It’s also important when having conversations in a public forum like a Twitter hashtag. Because the more people see us talking a different language, the more they’ll believe we don’t really understand them.

And they would be right.

Go on. Do you have an example of marketing gobbledygook that really melts your brain?