Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA): A guide to content marketing

“Content that targets everyone, reaches no one” were the words of Andrew Canter, Global CEO at The Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA). And it’s a sentiment most of us in the marketing industry are familiar with. But has digital content, and more specifically the rise of digital content marketing, impacted our approach to audience targeting?

Andrew would argue yes: “When we ask our members ‘who are you targeting?’ they sometimes say ‘everybody’ because the content is going digital, and going global. But that’s not right.  With marketing, you always need to think about the consumer. Who is my audience? Who am I trying to reach? It’s about taking it back to basics and looking at the strategic reason you are doing things.”

Traditionally marketing teams were linear; a content strategist would report into the marketing manager, who would then report into the board or business lead. Now, you have content creators, designers, social media experts, SEO experts, and marketing leads – sometimes internal, sometimes external agencies, sometimes both, all working across different departments – all trying to work together to create marketing assets. And, sometimes, in this complex process, the most important question isn’t asked; who are we targeting with this content?

According to Andrew it’s not change itself that’s caused the problem, but rather the rate of change that has led to fragmented communication in marketing departments. “We are now seeing things change in four years, that would have taken 40 years before, so this has become very significant in the world of content marketing,” he says.

At this year’s Digital Content Summit we caught up with Andrew to find out how marketers can overcome some of these challenges in what Andrew describes as a “wonderful world of collaboration, that creates a wonderful way of working together”.

You can watch the full video with him above, and find out more about the BCMA here.