Roadmap for Brand Success: 6 Content Marketing Strategy Essentials

This month, Google released a broad core algorithm update, which they routinely do several times per year. They communicated that a key objective was to improve how Google matches relevant results to search queries. In a follow-up statement to Search Engine Journal, Google’s Danny Sullivan elaborated, “Want to do better with a broad change? Have great content. Yeah, the same boring answer.”

For years, the world’s biggest B2C brands (e.g. Starbucks, Target, Coca-Cola) have been riding the user-generated content (UGC) wave, while B2B brands have only recently begun to gain traction in creating and distributing UGC. Between 70 and 90 percent of the buyer’s journey is complete before engaging with a vendor, and according to Forrester, a customer engages with 11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase.

In essence, a brand is a promise delivered and based on a brand’s promise consumers develop expectations for that brand. Customer experience is how well you deliver on those expectations. Designing and delivering experiences that deliver the promise are fundamental to creating customer value, and for today’s brand leaders, the result is engaged customers that speak positively about the brand.