Hasta La Creative!

Content marketing is in serious danger of becoming ineffective. On TV, in print, via mobile device and across social networks, brands are creating more content than ever before. Consumers don’t mind dipping their toes into the relevant and valuable stuff, but they’re beginning to drown in a world of repetitive, generic and boring content. Every additional drop of irrelevant content risks turning off consumers on the whole, essentially stopping up the whole faucet.

Effective content marketing drives profitable customer behavior by creating and distributing relevant, valuable content to attract and engage. The proliferation of social-media channels, the ubiquity of mobile devices and a shift from push to pull messaging has all sent the demand for effective content skyrocketing. Despite the recession, marketers increased spending on content development by 45% from 2005 to 2012, according to the 2012 Content Wise survey. During this time, the percentage of marketing budgets with some allocation for content rose to 39% from 31%.

But as more players — traditional publishers, digital agencies and even public relations firms — enter the content-marketing space and struggle to do it well, we will continue to see more dramatic missteps such as last year’s Scientology native advertising debacle at The Atlantic. But more frequently, and perhaps as damaging, marketers push out content that is so broad or irrelevant that consumers will start to look past it the same way they ignore banner ads.

Continue reading at AdAge.com