Event Marketing has changed forever. Learn how to adapt to a new normal and how events, both physical and virtual, now intersects with content marketing. Hybrid events are here to stay.
Without a clear understanding of what you are setting out to achieve, measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing is near impossible. You can fix this problem by following these simple steps.
Following our simple guide will help you to better understand the differences between terms like voice and tone, and why it’s important to define your right to voice and the content pillars for your program.
Why Consumers Want Brands to Speak to Purpose—Not Just Product
A content strategist shares his tips for creating the foundation of an effective content program. In Part 1 below we share a behind the scenes look at creating a successful content strategy. Part 2 describes the inputs and outputs.
We outline the five inputs needed to create an effective content strategy and show you how to organize your strategy into six clear sections.
Yes, it can give your company the upper hand in a content-driven world. But making it fit requires putting your audience first.
Siri and Alexa usher in a new digital frontier—and a new way for brands to reach their audiences.
Foundry 360 has deep content expertise & multi-year relationships servicing food and agriculturally focused companies. Born out of Dotdash Meredith’s longest published magazine, Successful Farming, Foundry 360 is rooted firmly in the farming sector, thus creating: Foundry 360 Food & Agriculture. With 40+ brands in our wheelhouse, we’re well-equipped to deliver award-winning content to suit your food and ag content marketing needs.
Finding compelling content shouldn’t be hard. Our licensed solutions make it easy. Power your digital, print, social, and point-of-care channels with premium content from America’s most influential brands. Driven by Meredith proprietary insights and audience data, our team of content strategists create customized licensed solutions that will resonate with your audience and motivate them to take action.
Financial services clients have been a bedrock to Foundry 360’s success for over a decade. Whether your content strategy needs a complete overhaul, an upgrade or a simple deliverable, our expert team is prepared to deliver groundbreaking solutions for both B2B and B2C initiatives.
Kudos to brands who, at the very start of the pandemic, executed a pivot away from the promotional and toward the practical.
What do artificial intelligence, content to commerce and voice search have in common? They’re just some of the ways brands will click with consumers in the years ahead.
Foundry 360 applies its editorial and journalistic pedigree to create expressive, immersive brand storytelling to elevate awareness and achieve business goals. Our process is anchored in audience insights that uncover the intersections between interests and passions to create content that engages, entertains, and educates to drive behavior action. Importantly, our content works equally for audiences and businesses alike. We drive the business outcomes our clients require and their consumers expect from leading brands.
With access to With access to Dotdash Meredith’s robust proprietary insights into the minds of consumers, Foundry 360 can assist you in developing full marketing and content strategy for your company or brand. From complete overhauls of existing content strategies to imaginative and transformative content consulting services, we drive strategic thinking that puts organizations on a path toward success.
Our award-winning team creates custom videos tapping into the breadth of Dotdash Meredith’s capabilities, including industry-leading research and insights, rich content resources, and access to top creative and production talent. Our video capabilities drive to clients’ core brand objectives and KPIs for distribution across any platform.
An effective message takes the right, creative approach. Foundry 360 houses a state-of-the-art animation studio that brings a fresh approach to your video-based content strategies and solutions, delivering inspiring and creative solutions to all mediums.
Deploy a content-specific strategy to power your CRM and email campaigns that drives real results from either your audience or the Dotdash Meredith consumer database. Foundry 360 has decades of experience in developing award-winning CRM and email programs.
Voice and audio are among the fastest growing marketing mediums with ever increasing adoption by users. A voice strategy and a robust test-and-learn plan is essential to reaching and engaging consumers. From podcasts to search, the future of content strategies involve voice, and we craft voice-skill strategies tied to content-led campaigns. Don’t leave Alexa, Google Home or Siri out of your plans—it’s how your customers find information.
Social is a mirror into the pulse of culture. Our passion, curiosity and expertise can help drive your presence in this ever-evolving channel, as we specialize in building social-first content strategies for our partners.
Meredith surveys moms about what they love—and do not love—about branded messaging during the pandemic.
Content is the currency of marketing.
Make sure you think how your customer’s life intersects with your product and not how your product intersects with them.
If your brand is lucky enough to engage with consumers, don’t show up and talk about yourself. Listen, offer value, be human.
It all starts with the story. If the story isn’t great or if it’s not human, then it’s just not going to get attention.
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Rapid response content becomes critical at a time of changing consumer needs.
How COVID-19 is forcing marketers to adapt their content and campaigns.
Although the coronavirus is immensely challenging, seasoned marketers can call upon the lessons learned from similar situations. Simply put, brands who continue with (potentially tone-deaf) pre-crisis messaging do so at their peril, cautions E.J. Schultz, assistant managing editor, on the Ad Age Marketer’s Brief podcast, from the episode “How Marketers are Handling COVID-19.”
There is no playbook for a disruption the size and (as yet unknown) duration of COVID-19. That said, here are four commonsense steps to help guide brands away from embarrassing gaffes and toward truly supporting their customers and communities.
1. Review Outbound Messaging
Before taking precious time to dream up new COVID-related activations, your team should vet all content that’s in flight or queued up to deploy. Schultz cites Guinness as a brand that planned to celebrate its Irish heritage on St. Patrick’s Day—which fell on one of the first days of mass shutdowns and calls for containment. He commends Guinness for its eleventh-hour “Don’t Worry, We’ll March Again” messaging—a reference to both cancelled parades and the heritage brand’s 260 years of having “seen it all.” Across the Emerald Isle, Jameson Irish Whiskey is marketing not its spirits but a program that pledges $500,000 to the Bartender Emergency Assistance Program and an additional match of every dollar donated by others, up to $100,000.
2. Put Health & Safety First
Brands can win by modeling—and rewarding—safe and healthy behaviors. Starting March 20 and through April 6, Burger King is promoting its takeout and drive-through services by giving away two free kids meals with any purchase made on the BK app. Chipotle is making its takeout meals fun, even while we’re all social distancing. “Chipotle Together” is a program that lets diners mingle with celebrities via virtual lunch parties on Zoom (a video-conferencing app). Sports and outdoor gear retailers who have closed shop doors are serving their quarantined customers with online workouts (Equinox) and advice about how to keep kids fit and active (REI). Nike is putting its money where its mouth is: On March 18, co-founder Phil Knight announced that his company is donating more than $15 million to COVID-19 response efforts.
3. Support Your Community…
You say your name’s not Nike and you don’t have $15 million to pledge? Smaller and non-profit companies are devising meaningful ways to do good while they (secondarily) market themselves. Adobe Creative Cloud is giving away two free months of its apps and service. The Body Shop is donating 30,000 cleansing products to local shelters and senior communities throughout the U.S. and Canada. And, Travel & Leisure has aggregated a list of 12 museums that are offering free virtual tours that are both entertaining and educational.
4. … But Stay in Your Lane
Unless you work for the CDC, no one is looking to your organization to solve this crisis. Brands are well advised to avoid vague platitudes (“we’re here for you”) and, worse, initiatives that appear to capitalize on the crisis. Instead, marketers should rise to the challenge by adhering to the fundamentals that make content successful in the first place: Be customer-first and authentic, and give back to your community in whatever ways you can.
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