Many companies are quickly learning that announcing a sale or having a celebrity spokesperson doesn’t usually cut it anymore for earning customer interest and loyalty. Engagement now is more than posting about a sale at a store, or sharing a great review about a product; it’s about personal, relatable stories that hit touchpoints that make lasting impressions on the consumer, delivered at the right moment. The combination of advertising technology and content marketing is what can deliver these well-timed, thoughtful impressions.
 
Content Marketing
“Content marketing” and “native advertising” are buzz words that are proving to be more than fads, but rather key tactics used to achieve marketing goals such as consumer acquisition, customer engagement, and customer retention. But what does content marketing actually entail? It includes videos, blogs, social media profiles filled with DIY, how-to’s, interviews, featuring other brands, and other content that relates to a brand. These marketing tools allow brands to engage with consumers without making consumers feel like bait for a sale.
 
If you’re new to content marketing, check out some examples that the Content Marketing Institute shared of how companies successfully integrate their values and brand into dialogue: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/07/examples-brands-content/ and http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/07/content-marketing-best-brands/
 
Because of millennials’ inherent skepticism of brands, protection of their money, and demand for value, no longer do companies expect a consumer to buy a product or service upon the first point of contact. Millennials are looking for relationships with brands, so that means that content has to be delivered when consumers might not necessarily have been looking for it, but at a point where they were open to reading it.
 
Millennials spend almost 70 hours per week consuming media (https://www.experian.com/assets/marketing-services/reports/ems-ci-millennials-come-of-age-wp.pdf ). With that much time watching videos, reading captions and articles, scrolling through statuses of friends and brands alike, millennials have learned to differentiate between authentic and disingenuous messaging. It’s not that millennials don’t want to read anything that a company has to say about a topic in its industry or about one of its products or services—it’s that millennials want to understand what the brand believes in and stands for.  Content marketing welcomes consumers to do just that.