Why Chaos Marketing is NOT a Sign of Agility

“We’re a start-up. We should be agile.”?

“Marketing needs to be flexible. We need to respond to changes in the market.”?

While these statements may sound like reasonable expectations of marketing, they can create confusion and a flurry of activity that derails the targeted, well–planned, and strategic work of content marketing. They generate a phenomenon that could be described as, ‘Chaos Marketing.’

Let’s start with a definition:

Chaos Marketing is the sudden shift to marketing efforts initiated as a knee-jerk reaction to something a competitor has said or done, a sudden shift in thinking by the executive team based on a new trend or popular topic, or other internally constructed emergencies. These efforts supersede and interfere with the strategic, planned marketing efforts based on brand, position, audience interest, and agreed-upon goals.

Surprisingly, the chaotic approach to content marketing is more common than you might think.?I’ve recently spoken with several marketers who have experienced Chaos Marketing. They identified the root of the problem as something slightly broken within the organization.?

According to these marketers, Chaos Marketing is the manifestation of internal structures and management styles often meant to promote flexibility but often result in false starts and ineffective one-off campaigns.

Together, we have identified three common scenarios that result in Chaos Marketing:

1. Lack of executive buy-in to marketing goals
2. Organizational silos that prevent the flow of information
3. Executive team micromanagement

Perhaps all marketers experience Chaos Marketing at some point in their careers. If that’s true, it might be time to change how content marketing is viewed in the company and place it where it belongs: as a strategic driver of business and audience growth. In the meantime, let’s look at what’s causing the chaos.

1. Lack of buy-in creates confusion

Adopting the view that well-planned content is a product of the company—and not just something that happens—changes how we approach content marketing. Accepting the concept of content as a product is vital to understanding why Chaos Marketing can have devastating effects on strategic content production and dissemination.

Effective marketing programs need—first and foremost—buy-in from all the stakeholders who will weigh in on the content product. Most content marketers understand the importance of stakeholder buy-in and continuously seek to get the approval they need before launching new content initiatives. The challenge arises when those stakeholders either don’t understand what they are agreeing to or just assume they can weigh in later—when the product is in front of them.

This approach to content products is problematic for a variety of reasons. Interestingly, the very people who stay in the background and delay providing input and changes until the content is already in production are the same folks who balk at that approach to any other kind of product development and production.

Here’s a secret that’s not so secret: changing content product focus midstream is expensive. Wasted time, resources, and perhaps outside vendor time are just a few of the expenses that occur when content is pulled back mid-stream—or later.

The other great challenge of stopping content production late in the creation stage is the same as making product changes on the assembly line. Retrofitting the new approach or point of view (POV) requires either scrapping the original work or engaging in time-consuming rewrites and iterations. The shifting focus has the effect of creating content that resembles Frankenstein's monster, with pieces stitched together to form a whole.

Avoid the Frankensteining of your content by creating a clear vision for the strategy plan and getting the buy-in required to execute it. Most importantly, reviewers and approvers need to treat content products as they would any product.?

Setting boundaries—such as limiting the number of people who have carte blanche to provide extensive re-writes—can help streamline the process and ensure a cohesive end product. While subject matter experts may be critical to ensuring the accuracy of any piece of content, providing an accuracy or legal review shouldn’t invite every person in the organization to act as an editor-in-chief.

2. The silos that fuel content chaos?

Content creation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Or at least, it shouldn’t. When it does, content marketers often resort to foraging around the internet for the statistics and expert knowledge they need to continue to pump content into the content publishing machine.

There are so many things wrong with the scenario I just described. Let’s unpack it by looking at the effect of organizational silos on the content creation process. To begin, we need to debunk the beliefs that quality content just happens because someone decides to write a blog or whitepaper and that the goal of content marketing is to pump out a specific quantity of content to meet publication goals.?

With these agreements in place, we can now look at the organizational structures interfering with strategic content marketing efforts.

First, content marketing is the act of marketing your brand, product, and unique POV. To tell your story well, content marketing needs to be based on something real—real challenges, questions, or problems your audience is looking to solve. Content strategy must also be based on a real audience—everyone who can benefit from your content.

Secondly, content marketers are not generally the subject matter experts in the company. They do, however, rely on subject matter experts and product marketing to provide the insights, statistics, audience data, and competitive knowledge they need to do their job well.

The following are three realities of content marketing:

1. Content marketing is the expression of your brand voice?
2. Content marketers need to have their fingers on the pulse of the company to express that voice effectively
3. Content marketers rely on experts to provide the context of their stories,?

Given these realities, it doesn’t make sense to keep content marketing in a silo away from the strategic discussions and subject matter insights that fuel the content engine.

When content is treated as something that happens outside of the rest of the organization, the content itself becomes chaotic. It also opens up the content marketing team to simply execute the content needs of every department—sales, HR, and events, to name a few—without a charter of their own.?

Disjointed content—created and produced for the sake of having content—will fill the content funnel but may leave your audiences to make up their minds about your brand—and their perception may not be the one you seek.

Empower your marketing team to collect and understand your target audience data. Based on that data, they can plan and execute a content product that reflects your brand’s voice and solves real challenges based on an insider’s view of the company roadmap.?

3. The micromanaging of content marketing

When the executive team doesn’t buy into the stated content marketing strategy and goals—and when content marketers haven’t been given the authority to drive their programs—a strange phenomenon happens. People at all levels of the organization begin interjecting their own needs, wants, and desires into the content marketing team.?

This is particularly challenging when upper-level management bursts in and demands a campaign, white paper, or other content effort that isn’t in the current scope—throwing all work and teams into crisis mode.

While it’s important for marketing to respond to changes in the market and even be responsive to the competition, it’s ineffective to perform a series of random acts of content without understanding your purpose and audience needs.

If your content marketing is centered on your audience, their challenges, their needs, and their questions, it’s hard to justify abandoning those efforts to respond to a market trend or competitive messaging.

While CEOs and other members of the executive team will fiercely defend their product or service creation and production, the content product is often treated as something that can be retooled and altered at any stage of development. A mindset shift is needed if companies are to draw in audiences and build the kind of trust that leads to product adoption and even evangelism.?

Often, it’s been left to the marketing team to justify their strategy, tactics, and very existence. Engagement metrics, time on page, clicks, sign-ups, and a variety of measurements are often offered up as proof that marketing works and that strategies are sound. Often, these efforts do little to change the behaviors of others in the organization. Perhaps the time has come for members of the executive staff to understand the role of content marketing and the benefits of brand storytelling.

If content is perceived as a product the company creates in service to its audience, it’s hard to justify a sudden shift or abandonment of content product production in favor of a one-off campaign.

In an environment where our influence on search results and social media channels are shifting quickly, we must rethink our approach to content and avoid the pitfalls of Chaos Marketing.?

It’s time for content marketing teams to take their place in the strategic conversations about company and product strategy, audience identification, and market conditions. Access to subject matter experts and the authority to create a strategy and stand by it will give content teams the fuel they need to accelerate your brand’s voice, create a content center that will stand on its own, and attract and retain a loyal audience.