What Marketers Want

Before he was the Pariah of Hollywood, Mel Gipson starred as a chauvinistic ad executive who, after a lightening strike, could suddenly "hear"the secret thoughts of women. Of course he used this for his own personal gain.

Advertisers too have been trying to tap into the secret thoughts of users, either by watching behaviors online or by analyzing user comments. In turn they are taking this intelligence to create content that engages their audiences. This evolution of marketing messages from paid advertising to information development has been a bane for some media companies - and a boon for those who have created Custom Content departments.

At its annual conference in Charleston, SC, today, the Custom Content Council (CCC), revealed an updated benchmarket survey it had first conducted in 2006. CCC, whose mission is to match the needs of marketers with the information needs of audiences, commissioned Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communication to survey 100 CMOs and find out their inner most thoughts on Custom Content -- also called Content Marketing.

These CMOs across a spectrum of industries continued to see the upside of using content to build good relationships, and in fact, saw the cost of producing it as "not too expensive." These marketers are using 15 different content channels to reach their audiences -- notably, websites and newsletters -- both e- and print, and now, video, mobile and webinars.

Roper flipped the questions around and asked audiences their perceptions of content -- and while they admitted that they knew this content was meant to be persuasive -- encouraging people to buy, they didn't care as long as it was informative.

The research, said Andy Seibert, President & Publisher of SmartMoney (a Dow Jones Company) and CCC board member, "showed we don't have to convince marketers of the benefits of custom content."

Turns out that what readers want, is what marketers want -- which is good news for customer content creators.