Content matters – How to make good content marketing : practitioners’ views on creating winning content

Abstract

Content marketing has developed into a relevant tool in companies’ marketing communications mix of today. As the discipline is fairly new, the theoretical framework for content marketing is still under development and looking for its domain, similarly as the practices for implementing content marketing within companies. In its essence, engaging content is seen as a way to increase a company’s success which makes it a relevant field of research in media management.

This thesis aims to define the field of today’s content marketing and find an answer to the question ‘How to make good content marketing’ through looking for prerequisites for planning and producing effective content marketing.

Based on earlier research, the thesis first presents an illustration of the field depicting it as e.g. storytelling aimed at a profitable customer action, as means of creating engagement for enhanced brand benefits, and as a tool for generating sales as part of a sales funnel. Interconnectivity of different elements is visible in a framework presented by Charmaine du Plessis (2015) who states that marketers are increasingly turning towards content marketing to replace interruptive advertising and to attract more attention to their brand.

As content marketing professionals were considered as a good source for analysing the prerequisites for good content marketing, they were chosen as informants of the study. The data for the research was collected in 15 thematic interviews. Of the interviews, seven were conducted among companies using content marketing. Eight interviews were done among professionals of A-lehdet Oy, the Finnish media company, who provide content marketing strategies, solutions and production for their customer companies. The interview data was analysed in a qualitative content analysis by applying the framework of du Plessis as the working theory.

The research provided support for du Plessis’s framework, finding all its elements relevant but emphasizing the importance of the strategic element as the most important basis for content marketing decisions. Moreover, the research found essential additional factors that should be considered when implementing content marketing. As a result, the thesis presents a modified framework that consists of the following elements; 1) why, 2) to whom, 3) where and what, 4) setting the objectives and following the results, 5) inclusion of novel contents – the ‘wows’, 6) notion on human behaviour, and 7) decisions on work division of different content marketing actions.

In addition to providing a useful framework for content marketing planning and implementation, the results indicate that content marketing is very likely to keep increasing as means of marketing communications among Finnish companies also. The widening of the scope of functions included in content marketing processes will contribute to the further professionalisation of the field and help to make corporate content shine as – sometimes – more appealing content than that of the traditional media’s. The interviewees agreed that the power of content marketing will still accrue from the content itself, and therefore, companies should aim at producing high-quality, targeted content for their audiences with ambition for creativity and novel trials also.