Content marketing is over. It’s been pummelled into unrecognisability and it’s no longer anywhere near the frontiers of marketing. It was misunderstood most of the time anyway.
What comes next is called revenue positive marketing. Revenue marketing is when marketing activities of an organisation produce a profitable product. They contribute to the company’s bottom line. It’s one step further than content marketing; instead of making content people want to consume, make content people want to buy. It doesn’t mean that people should give up on traditional advertising entirely – Traditional marketing can still be in the mix, but they should be geared at selling a marketing-focused product.
Let’s look at some examples.
Example I: R. M. Williams OutBack magazine
R. M. Williams sells premium clothing to rural demographics. They also have a sub-branch of the company called R. M. Publishing, which writes, prints and distributes a magazine called OutBack. It’s branded, but it also costs to purchase ($11 per issue) and you can purchase ad space.
It generates a load of revenue.
On direct purchases alone (62,000 sales per issue, bi-monthly), the magazine makes a total of $4.1 million a year. That’s a legitimate product, even though everything about it is geared towards selling their primary product: clothing. And in advertising sales, a conservative estimate adds another $1 million in advertising revenue.
Example II: The National Museum of African-American History and Culture
A museum on African-American culture was commissioned in Washington a couple of years ago. They didn’t have a single artefact to begin with. How do you build a museum from nothing?
They established a touring event called Saving African American Treasures, in which people around America could bring in objects that had historical significance. It was hugely successful and they ended up with 35,000 artefacts in a couple of year, most as donations.
If they had filmed the events, they could have sold the series to a broadcaster. Series like Antiques Roadshow are hugely successful, and series sold to even the lesser television channels find prices around $125,000 per hour of television. A six part series would bring in $750,000, on-the-ground awareness would still be raised, and the museum artefacts would still have been obtained.
Instead of the marketing department sending you backwards, it adds revenue to the company.
One more example. Potentially distasteful content warning:
Example III: The Trump Campaign
Trump had a lack of desire to spend enormous amounts of cash and an inability to raise funds. Revenue marketing was twice as useful for him. And he did it well.
The hats.
These were iconic and played a large part in proliferating his support. His campaign spent $3.2 million on these hats. Many sold out.
If he was producing them for, say, less than $4 each, that’s at least 800,000 hats. If all of them sold, that would be a profit upward of $15 million. While his competitors were using money to pay for commercials, his commercials were making him money.
Revenue marketing is here to stay
Revenue marketing justifies the marketing department in a squeeze. It fits with the trend of lean start-ups, boot-strapping their way to success and it will be the next big focus of the industry. Most organisations will fail, just as they do with content marketing, but it will be the next frontier for marketers worldwide.
Cameron is a regular contributor and cartoonist for Centrethought. Find out more about him here.