FINAL UPDATE:

Thursday 13:31 BST

Now that the dust has settled I can report back on the whole experiment... The final count, including pdf and video views, was 570 downloads - and while I'm a little disappointed we didn't make 1,000, I'm still delighted that the experiment worked by proving clearly how content can spread if it is interesting.

570 people voluntarily accessed a piece of information - a fact that one member of my audience put into context by saying that it would cost thousands of media dollars to achieve the same effect by interruptive advertising.

The presentations at the conference yesterday were fascinating - made all the more lively by the fact that we were trying to demonstrate the power of content marketing live while the session was going on.

I will publish a document soon that recounts how the whole thing worked, and maybe create a graph of traffic over time, showing the effects of key retweets, blogs etc as far as it is possible with the analytics data to hand.

In short though, we also had 443 visits to the live blog [here], as well as 3 retweets

So we didn't get the 1,000 clicks but - if an experiment is judged by whether it demonstrates a point, I think it was a resounding success and I thank you all for helping make it work!

So what should we do as a follow-up? If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears!

Thanks again

John

15:34 BST

391 downloads.

Another video has been added to the IDM YouTube channel, an interview with Joel Harrison of B2B Marketing Magazine talking about his views on the opportunities and threats of Social Media.

Larry Kuntz, re your question: I will check with John who produced the document and let you know as soon as he's finished presenting!

15:00 BST

Session 2 starts, and we are now at 364 downloads. The highlight of session one was a question from the floor: wouldn't we get more downloads if John Bottom dressed up in a pink rabbit suit and was videod pleading for them? Frivolous maybe, but a little bit of drama is never a bad thing with this kind of campaign...

We have been asked how this can be an experiment when we have spent some of our time asking people to tweet about it. Well that's the real challenge with any Social Media campaign: you have to start by seeding them. We have generated going on 200 tweets so far. We have probably contacted 20 people.

If you haven't yet downloaded the white paper: Opportunities & Threats - the future of Social Media as viewed by senior marketers, then click here.

14:15 BST

Session one of two starts, and we are at 334 downloads. John Bottom shows us how research shows that Social Media is more influential for the under 30's than the over 30's.

We've also just uploaded our first video interview to YouTube - Opportunities & Threats, video stylee!

If you haven't done so yet, please click here to download the paper.


12:30 BST

Very interesting presentation from David Chalmers of Cisco, especially highlighting the power of Twitter, which they use extremely well as a messaging and recruitment tool for events, and also the importance of influencers. Here he gave an interesting example which I find runs very true: you may find your influencers on-line, but the best way to engage them is still off-line, in the pub, with beer!

One point I wasn't 100% on was regarding Facebook. David said he still regarded Facebook as a 'personal' network and not relevant, but that recent conversations with them suggested that they are going to change this. It's true that Facebook doesn't work for all businesses, but this is changing of its own accord.

Anyway, back to the experiment. We're now up to 245 downloads, so a big increase over the last hour and a quarter. The US is waking up (thank you friends from across the pond), and some selective messaging of influencers is proving fruitful. Still, we're hoping for a bigger boos during the experiment itself. One more update before it, though.

If you haven't done so yet, please download the Opportunities and Threats paper here.


11:15 BST

It's coffee time at the IDM B2B Conference, followed by a much anticipated session on 'Riding the hype of Social Media for B2B marketing' presented by David Chalmers of Cisco. We're hoping to ride some of that hype ourselves as we build momentum:

- 60 tweets to date using hashtag #GCME
- Document being posted to slideshare
- Discussions on various LinkedIn groups
- Video interviews with some of those quoted in the Opportunities & Threats paper will shortly be posted to YouTube

153 downloads in total, so 34 in the last hour. A good build-up till the actual sessions, running from 2.00 - 2.30 pm and 2.45 - 3.15pm.

 
10:15 BST

The conference is under way and the word is already getting out on today's experiment. We're up to 119 downloads of the Opportunities & Threats paper. Thanks for all those already helping with the push. More to follow....


Wednesday 19th May, 06:43 BST

It's a beautiful early morning in London, and the experiment starts here. On way to venue. Notice that the current download count of the Opportunities & Threats paper is already at 82, which is encouraging since we only really started at midnight. Lots more work today to get to 1,000 hits. If you haven't read it yourself, take a look.

Monday 17th May, 17:10 BST

There are just 2 days to go. Wednesday 19th May is the date of the Great Content Marketing Experiment. I will be blogging live from the annual IDM B2B Marketing Conference on the 28th floor of the Millbank Tower in Central London.

Just to recap, the aim is to prove the viability of content marketing in a live experiment. We therefore not only have my colleague John Bottom talking about the theory of content marketing in his presentation, but a larger team will be busy putting it all into practice by doing all we can to achieve 1,000 downloads of this document. Find out more about it and how it was created for the event here.

Look out for live updates on the day, and if you're on Twitter, follow the hash tag #GCME.

Technology has brought about many changes to the way we market and sell products: profiling and targeting techniques, personalisation, tracking and analytics are just a few. It's the last of these, however, that in my mind has brought about the real revolution. Today, we can track almost all marketing activities from start to finish, from search to lead, from click to phone call, and this gives us a new level of control over the decisions we make and the results we generate.

Surely, therefore, marketing agencies should be willing to be more accountable for the results they deliver? Apparently not. Most agencies, even in the totally measurable on-line marketing world, still persist in working on a time and money or mark-up basis, taking minimal responsibility for delivering results and hitting targets and being paid regardless of success or failure. It's not totally agencies' fault, though. Many clients are happy to work in this way, even those who themselves have defined targets, and who's to argue with someone willing to work in the same old way if everyone's comfortable with it?

Well, me for one. I'm glad to say that more and more clients are now asking about accountability, but where they don't, I will always ask the question: "What is the ultimate goal of this campaign, and how can it be quantified?" In the world of B2B almost everyone is looking to generate leads, and I believe that there is therefore every argument for setting goals in terms of lead generation or another performance metric, and defining at least a part of potential earnings around an agreed target such as cost per lead. Why? Well here are 10 reasons for a start:

1. It's an excellent sales message. Rather than 'Pay us because we're worth it', you are saying 'Pay us when we show you we're worth it. If we don't succeed, you don't pay.'
2. Because accountability encourages excellence. By taking responsibility not just for the campaign but for the results, you ensure 100% commitment from start to finish. It's not just about what it looks like - it has to deliver too!
3. Because you have more overall control over your campaigns. If you are taking responsibility for the outcome, then you should have an influence over all elements leading to that outcome. Imagine running a campaign where you build the email, but the client builds the landing page. You can only control whether people reach the page and not whether they fill in the form, and so can't be held responsible for the results. When working on a performance basis, you have every justification in being involved in the whole process and can therefore feel comfortable about the outcome.
4. Because you can run all the tests you want, if you can justify the investment. If you're being paid on results, it's up to you what you do to deliver, but this does mean that you can do things your way. Clearly you still need to follow guidelines etc, but you don't have to worry about the client's budgets.
5. Because you can decide which channels to use rather than being limited to what the client thinks is relevant. There's nothing more frustrating than pitching for an email campaign when you know that PPC will also deliver. When working on a performance basis, all that matters to the client is the leads you deliver, so if you're willing to pay for the clicks, they will be happy to receive the leads.
6. Although you are sharing the risk, you should be able to be confident about delivering. Why? Because, in order to reach the point of agreeing a cost per lead or other performance metric, you will have already calculated that you can make money and a difference to your client's business at the agreed levels. Either that, or you're so desperate for business that you're willing to take an unreasonable risk!
7. Potentially there's no top end to what you can earn. Of course it depends on what you agree with the client, but if for instance you're delivering leads and the quality remains the same, there's no reason you can't beat targets and earn more than originally budgeted.
8. Client relationships become more like partnerships and exchanges move upwards from the practical to the strategic. It's no longer about 'where are we with that piece of creative?', but rather 'so what can we do to find more leads?'
9. This approach gives the client the tools they need to look good with the board - as long as you get it right, of course.
   
10. When it works, the performance approach is great for PR. You have all the access you need to the figures to produce the perfect case study!

Of course there are some cases where performance just won't work, or where a 'hybrid' approach is the best solution. However, if goals can be set, results can be measured and a cost per conversion agreed on, I would like to believe that a pay for performance approach will become the option of choice for both agencies and clients.

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobydooby/ / CC BY 2.0

I was at a conference recently on Social Media Monitoring. During a panel session, someone asked a question about measuring the ROI for Social Media activities. The panel did their best to respond, but admitted that it was still difficult to establish a direct link between Social Media marketing and revenue generated. One by one (and there were five of them), they came out with different versions of the same story: 'we know that our activities generated revenue, but it wasn't really possible to track it. It was hugely successful, though.'

By the fifth response, I was getting really frustrated. Not because of this failure to measure revenue, but because they were immediately associating the ROI for Social Media marketing WITH Revenue.
 
Different marketing activities generate different types of result. Some results are easier to equate to revenue than others. Can we measure the exact revenue generated by an above the line, branding campaign for instance? Social Media Marketing is all about generating conversations. These conversations can be about different subjects, and can take place on different platforms, even cross between platforms. They can also influence people to find out more by using other tools such as search, or plant a brand name in their mind meaning that at some future point they click on a banner. There's no way therefore that we can (or should try to) measure the revenue generated by a Social Media campaign.
 
Instead of thinking of 'R' for Revenue (yes, I know it's 'R' for Return, but I want to make the point), we should be thinking of 'R' for Results, and with Social Media these come in many forms:

-    The number of conversations started
-    The number of people involved in those conversations
-    The mood of the conversations and reactions to them
-    The number of Retweets
-    The number of new followers recruited
-    The number of new links generated

and..... the number of clicks generated, where and if we can measure them.

All of the above represent Results, and all of the above are a measure of success - just a different measure from those that we have become used to with 'traditional' on-line marketing. With Social Media, we are very much concerned with influencing potential buyers higher up the funnel, a no less important activity, but one step removed from revenue generation. Let's therefore judge performance in a realistic way, so that success can be clearly proved and celebrated, rather than attempting to present it using irrelevant and inconsistent metrics.

It's a classic conversation we've all witnessed at some point:

SEO Expert: Here's the list of keywords you need to focus on when writing the copy for the web site.

Copywriter: What do you mean? These don't fit at all with the way the brand communicates.

SEO Expert: Well in that case, people searching for the brand and its products just won't find them!

SO THERE! That told them...

Well, maybe, but there's a reason for the way a brand communicates, and its the result of weeks, months, even years of research and acquired knowledge. An 'upstart' like search can't just come and shoot all of this down with one pesky list of keywords...

Maybe not, but surely the way people search for your products is relevant to the way you should present and sell them? What it you're selling courgettes, but your customers are searching for zucchini? Or maybe they ARE searching for courgettes, but those with the largest potential orders are specifically searching for 'soft-skinned courgettes', when you're busy selling them as 'green and white courgettes' because this was the key message you decided on when you last looked at the way you communicate. In this case, they are less likely to find you, and you are potentially missing an important sales opportunity.

Search may be a relative newcomer in the marketing timeline, but it can provide you with vital information on the way customers perceive brands, as can the shiny new arrival, Social Media.  From a B2B perspective especially, they both represent the voice of the Buyersphere - what people are actually saying and thinking rather than what you believe they are saying and thinking. Whilst they are not the 'be all and end all' as some fans will have you believe, any wise marketer should add them to their toolbox and use them whenever possible.

And as for the branding question? If you have an established brand and a well-tried approach to your communication, of course you shouldn't rip up the rule book to accommodate keywords. To quote a favourite search mantra: build for the users and not for the search engines - in other words, take the keywords into account, but make sure that they fit the copy and not vice versa. If, however, you are at the start of a branding or a re-branding process, Search and Social media are invaluable, powerful and free research tools that can provide you with crucial feedback on how the Buyersphere searches for and talks about your brand, and I would recommend combining them in every case with the more established tools - surveys, round-tables, focus groups, etc.

So, in a way, the keywords do come first, but not in importance, just in order.