We are at a strange crossroads in the world of content marketing and SEO. Google is changing in ways that will certainly have repercussions for anyone in content (and really anyone who does business online). At the same time, AI is making it easier to create content, which, good or lazy, is flooding the internet. Things are changing fast, and no one is really sure what the future will hold. So, I sat down with Content experts Jonathan Gandolf and David Ebner. Jonathan Gandolf is the co-founder and CEO of The Juice, and David is the President of Content Workshop.
This is part 2 of a 2-part conversation. View Part 1 here.
Is the Future of SEO in Conflict with Content Marketing?
With the increase in user data privacy standards and the drastic changes in search and AI, our already-limited ability to track leads across the internet and through the sales funnel is diminishing.
Because the nature of our audience engagement is changing, the way we measure engagement will change, too.
“This has been rattling around in my brain lately because I come from demand gen marketing, and it seems counterintuitive to my background,” shared Jonathan.
“I’m more on the data side than the storytelling side. One of my superpowers is that I can figure out how to model attribution.
But I’m moving in the opposite direction lately. I’m a fan of self-reported attribution these days. Just ask. Ask your prospects on the first sales call. Follow up with your customers after sales. Let them tell you, and don’t over-engineer it.”
With the move to more opt-in data collection policies and the elimination of cookies, we’ll be forced to ask these questions soon enough. Jonathan sees this two-way conversation around attribution as an anecdote to the overwhelm of messaging streams.
“So much of the buyer’s journey happens in a funnel they have no idea exists. These B2B sales conversations may fit into a CRM, but there is so much happening outside the brand walls that even with a great attribution system, we’re missing things.”
Inbound Search Engine Pipelines Are Changing
As content creators, we’ve been relying on search engines to distribute our content for free, and in exchange, we’ve paid by reducing our storytelling to SERP features and key phrases. But now that we’ve provided all the answers, the search engines don’t need to share their traffic.
“Something like 68%, more than two-thirds, of searches end without a click,” Jonathan said. “But even with these changes, there will always be a ‘search engine’ in another format that will need to answer queries.”
David said he’s talked to plenty of peers and clients who are freaking out about Google’s most recent SGE implementation against the backdrop of an already murky content-to-pipeline reporting environment.
“We just keep telling them, ‘Nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen.’ We can assume there will be a drop in impressions and traffic if you're near the top of the rankings unless you get pulled into the AI bubble or snippet. Even then, we don’t know if you’ll see valuable impressions.”
Something similar happened when search engines moved from finite pages to infinite scroll. Everyone’s impressions went through the roof, but click-through rates tanked.
Here’s David’s take: “You always have to stand out, and we’ve relied too heavily on the algorithm to stand out. Doubling down on quality, doubling down on distribution, that’s going to pay off. If you’re using the same tools to write the same things as your competitors and then relying on the same search engines to distribute it, there is less of a chance of your audience seeing it. You need to differentiate.”
Shoe-Leather Distribution: Your Audiences Don’t Hang Out on Google
Your target audiences are self-identifying in real life. They subscribe to industry newsletters and visit annual conferences. They join trade organizations and travel to trade shows. Some have to enroll in continuing education opportunities to maintain their industry credentials.
“You have to take your stories to places where people self-identify as your target audience,” Jonathan said. “Newsletters are great, but you have more luck going before a group of people who are likely in your organization. You just have to talk to people.”
Set Goals and Build Infrastructure
Even before the landscape changed so rapidly, managers and creators were chasing vanity metrics to try to justify their work without one goal in place. As inbound and distribution models change, Jonathan said a unified target is more important than ever.
“I think obvious advice is to make sure internally you are aligned on what the goal of content is. I’ve seen too many creators struggle because one week it’s impressions, the next week it’s leads, and the next week it’s sourced revenue or views.
“Make sure everyone involved in content creation and reporting is aligned on measuring success. And while you’re inviting collaborators in, raise awareness about how much the landscape is shifting. You’ll help rally the team and gain some trust and respect as a thought leader along the way.”
Establish Goals
You can create content targeted toward specific outcomes and still tell great stories. But you can’t measure the greatness of a story based on arbitrary data.
To conduct content-to-pipeline monitoring, you need to establish metrics in advance. Good goals help craft better stories, better attribution systems, and clearer pathways for leads to follow.
Content directed at converting traffic or sales can be funneled through landing pages and entry forms. Content intended to increase incremental exposure and build trust can be measured with consumer feedback surveys.
But you can’t tell the right story or influence the right action without clear goals.
Audiences are Attribution Tools
A lot of the anxiety around attribution in marketing is caused by the sheer number of decisions involved in creating the logic that good attribution requires.
A well-defined audience makes some of those decisions for you. When you know who your audience is, you automatically narrow the number of stories you should tell and the channels through which to distribute them.
If your audience is mostly farmers, you probably don’t need to do any ad placement in the Barbie Movie. It’s not a good story fit, seeing as how the movie never mentions agriculture. Not to say that farmers didn’t watch the movie, they just don’t make up enough of the audience to justify the cost of the distribution channel.
But if you talk to enough farmers, you’ll probably find out where they hang out and what they like to read about.
“When we were starting, I talked to 100 marketers in 100 days,” Jonathan said. “Six of them mentioned the same community, so I joined it and listened to what they had to say. It was incredibly valuable.”
Create Distribution Plans
Until now, Google has been the primary distribution model for content creators. However, Google's rate of change has proven unreliable for publishers and content marketers.
“Owned is where you’re seeing brands going,” Jonathan said. “And we’re seeing brands turn to their employees and partners as influencers who have ‘rentable audiences.’”
Distribution can happen on your website if you already have reliable traffic or through newsletters, drip campaigns, and social media feeds (though driving traffic away from social platforms can hurt your engagement). Inbound is no longer the only or even the best way for content marketing to drive success in the sales funnel.
Quality meets Quantitative
You can measure the impact of content on your pipeline, even if content’s biggest impacts come from building brand trust and incremental reach. But you have to build that infrastructure up front instead of relying on vanity metrics after publishing.
The good news is that you don’t have to distribute your stories all alone.
In the first installment of this series, Jonathan and David discussed the opportunity brands have to find creative partners. As competitors leave the marketing space, agencies are more eager to prove their worth in an effort to retain business. Paid isn’t the only route. There are other, non-competing brands in your space who are also looking for distribution and referral partners.
But it starts with a goal, an audience, and a story.
Want to start distributing your story to a high-quality audience of sales and marketing leaders? Talk to The Juice team today.
