SAP’s Brenner on Content Strategy and Challenges (and Pay-for-Performance Advertising)

SAP’s Brenner on Content Strategy and Challenges (and Pay-for-Performance Advertising):from Marketing Profs Daily Fix by Matthew Grant
“Brands needs to start delivering effective content to their marketplace,” Michael Brenner, senior director of global marketing and content strategy at SAP, told me during this week’s episode of Marketing Smarts. “Otherwise, they’re going to fail…because promotional marketing isn’t working like it used to.”
(Note: Michael will be talking about the “how” of content marketing at our B2B Forum, October 3-5. Use the code “SMARTB2B” when you register and save $200 off!)
We covered a lot of other ground in the podcast. Here are some highlights.

Pay-for-Performance Advertising Models

Many publishers resist pay-per-performance models because, frankly, if the ads don’t perform the publishers don’t get paid. This resistance is also fairly understandable, because the publisher doesn’t have any control over the ad content or offer. Who wants to be held accountable for the performance of a process over which they have no control?
To address that issue, Michael did something novel. “We took our entire bag of content,” he explains, “and handed it over the wall to the publishers and said, ‘Hey, you know what works for your audience, so you determine what whitepapers and what content you want to deliver to your audience, and then we’ll optimize on the back-end the leads that you’re sending us.’”
Not all the publishers he approached agreed to that model; those that did shared the risk with SAP but also had more direct influence over the actual rewards.

Content Strategy

The “S” word can be intimidating, but failure to articulate a clear strategy (and goals!) for your content marketing efforts will affect their effectiveness. Since Michael has “content strategy” built right into his title, I asked him how he defined the term.
“A content strategy,” he said, “will look to define the content needs of all the people involved in a buying process or buying cycle and how it can be delivered to all of them at all those stages in all the places where they’re looking.”
Having mapped that out, he added, “you have to turn around and look inside your company and say, ‘OK. What do we have? What resources can I deploy against these needs that we’ve just talked about? And what gaps do I need to fill?’ That’s where it gets really challenging and really difficult.”

Content Marketing Challenges

I asked Michael about the main challenges he’s faced at SAP. He explained: “The main challenge we have is making sure we have enough content in the early stages where, by the way, there are more people.”
“In the early stage content,” he went on to say, “you need to be truly helpful and almost completely unselfish. You have to be almost altruistic…in order to gain trust and gain awareness and earn the right to then, ultimately later down the funnel, say, ‘Hey. We’ve got something to sell you and it might help you.’”
As challenging as it may be to create the early-stage content, it is absolutely critical, because, as Michael also said, “Content marketing is allowing marketing organizations…to engage with buyers sooner. That’s the whole point!”
If you’d like to hear my entire conversation with Michael, you may do so here or download the mp3 and listen at your leisure. You can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode!