January 31, 2017

Interviewing Guy Kawasaki – Choices of content marketing

Guy Kawasaki

Author, speaker, evangelist and marketer. Guy’s been there and done much more. Being a contemporary marketing specialist, we thought we’d ask Guy a rapid fire set of questions around social media marketing and content marketing. His answers are crisp, clear and at the same time carry much weight! And he calls crap just that – crap!

Read on as he talks about the choices of Content marketing, content led design or design led content, content first or community first, create content or outsource content and more.

Scatter: In the case of a client wanting content from a content marketing agency and design from a creative agency, what works better: content led design or design led content?

Guy: I would use as few agencies as possible, and those agencies that I do use, I would retain on a project basis such as “design our website.” Content should lead design, but customer needs should lead content. The functions of content marketing and social media are so important that I would resort to using an agency for either function as a last resort.

Scatter: How relevant are the 4 P’s of marketing in today’s world?

Guy: Price, product, promotion, and place? The first three still matter as much as ever. Place is largely irrelevant for many businesses. Price is often $0 if you can make people pay for another P: premium service.The four Ps, however, contain little about content marketing and social media. That’s what needs to be added to the marketing mix though they don’t start with a P.

Scatter: When it comes to content marketing, is less really more?

Guy: This depends on “less what?” If it’s less crap, then yes. If it’s less content, then no. I don’t know of any company that puts out too much great content.

Scatter: What is the role of technology in marketing and content marketing specifically?

Guy: The role of technology is to enable companies to do traditional functions better such as research and analysis and to do new functions that were not possible before. In this category is reaching people all over the world in fast, free, and fantastic ways.

Scatter: Do you believe brands should outsource their content needs? If yes, up to what extent?

Guy: The answer to this question is “it depends.” If your company knows exactly what it wants and has the courage and taste to reject crap, then you can outsource. But if you mean total abdication of content to agencies with experts, I don’t recommend this at all. The more you know, the more you can outsource. Unfortunately, the people who know the least outsource the most because they think they are buying expertise.

Scatter: Digital marketing is largely ROI driven. Can content marketing deliver on this parameter? If yes, how?

Guy: Digital marketing is not largely ROI. It’s largely guesswork and luck. Content marketing is the same way. In fact, all marketing is guesswork and luck. If marketing were a science, we would consistently see better marketing.

Scatter: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy? What are the similarities and differences?

Guy: Social media is the mechanism by which to spread content marketing.

Scatter: Lastly, what comes first? Content or Community?

Guy: The answer to this question is also, “It depends.” Some communities, for example the community of iOS developers, don’t produce content. They produce apps. On the other hand, the amazing group of people who produce Wikipedia content has also evolved into a community.

We hope you enjoyed reading the interview. At Scatter, we plan to put out information, views, research and loads of other content around #ContentMarketing. Please subscribe to our newsletter. We don’t spam and won’t appear in your mailbox unless we believe we have valuable content to share. Our website is also going through an overhaul and you should see us in our new avatar shortly. #EngageUnfoolishly