The Top 5 Predictions For Content-Based Water Marketing In 2016

Last month the Content Marketing Institute’s founder Joe Pulizzi released his top 40 predictions on content marketing for 2016. Joe makes several suggestions and predictions that directly relate to the application of brand publishing in the water and wastewater market.  Below are five of Joe’s predictions with my take on how they relate to brand publishing.

1. “Show me a 30-minute conversation between B2B marketing leaders, and I’ll show you a dozen mentions of Account Based Marketing (ABM)”. –Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing, InisghtSquared

My Thought:  This is exactly what I’m hearing in the water market as well.  One of the many benefits of brand publishing and digital marketing is being able to identify “hot spots” of customer interaction.  Not only does brand publishing allow manufacturers to see the who, what and when for every interaction but it also gives you a road map for how to communicate with each prospect and customer on an individual level.

2. The beginning of seeing “content marketing skills as a requirement for frontline sales roles and large enterprises”- Alana Fisher-Chejoski, Editor, Commonwealth Bank

My Thought:  Content marketing and brand publishing work best when Sales and Marketing are working in lock step.  Having sales people, sales managers, product managers, etc. with the initiative and ability to communicate with prospects or customers is vitally important.  Let’s make rock stars out of your sales professionals and give them an outlet to share information.  Your customers will thank you for it.

3. “Marketers will create content that is more informed by their customer’s needs.” Carlos Hildago, CEO, Annuitus

My Thought: This is not a new concept but somehow it’s widely ignored in the water and wastewater industry.  The types of content that work best and create the most widespread engagement are those that are customer facing and not company facing.  Stop being awesome and start being helpful.  Make your audience stop what they are doing to pay attention to you by creating content that helps them. 

4. “The Marriage between content and digital marketing will start to make more sense to marketers.” Cas McCullough, Founder, Brilliant Content

My Thought:  In order for either to be most effective they must be unified.  Content feeds digital marketing and digital marketing revs the content engine.

5. “2016 will be the year marketers start to use data and a connection with leads and revenue to develop their strategy to create better content, and to more smartly distribute it.” Pawan Deshpande, CEO, Curata

My Thought: What are your potential customers and prospects reading about and why?  Investing in answering this question will lead you directly to what you should be writing about too. Follow your lead flow and that will give you the answers you need in terms of content creation topics and distribution.