Xero’s Director of Global Media Pat MacFie is the king when it comes to producing quality content that converts into customers. But to first understand how to create quality content, we first need to understand the definition of ‘quality’.
“There’s a big misconception about quality,” says Pat. “ Some people say, ‘I shot this on my cellphone. It’s not good quality, but it still got all this engagement’.
When I talk about quality I’m not talking about production value. Production value is how to flash the end result looks, or what type of camera you used.
Quality for me equals the quality of your idea, your creativity, and your storytelling ability.”
Therefore, growing your creative muscle is, an essential part of the creative process, but it needs to be regular and purposeful, not squeezed into calendars when it suits some people and not others.
Take Pat’s international creative teams as an example. They’ve recently implemented some changes around prioritizing their core competencies: their creative and their creativity.
Now they dedicate the first two hours of every day to creative development, the first 30 minutes ‘ideating’ or brainstorming about any topic (whether it’s relevant to their work or not), and the following 90 minutes throwing ideas around for new briefs or reviewing projects they’re already working on.
What content you create and how you serve it up ultimately comes down to what part of the customer journey your audience is on.
Pat encourages marketers to create content that’s specific to their customers at every stage of their journey, and measure performance in a way that’s appropriate to that part of the journey.
“When Xero is working on campaign activity, sure, we want customers to sign up, but when we’re in the brand phase we want them to go to our website. We’re not measuring conversion or click-throughs, we’re measuring walkability, net promoter score, and aided and unaided awareness. We don’t try to transpose our desire to have more sales into the metric of the brand.”
Calculating return on investment (ROI) changes from business to business, particularly when it comes to video. A lot of businesses try to measure ROI on video in a non-integrated way, which isn’t effective.
“Video is part of an overall campaign and can be a pricey asset to produce,” Pat says. “But looking at it out in the wild and expecting it to deliver is a way to set yourself up for failure. Don’t pull it out and go ‘This is a video component of cost of acquisition’; no, all marketing spend contributes to the cost of acquisition.”
To accurately determine ROI, then, always look at the whole marketing campaign. If it’s not working, a rethink of your idea – not the use of video – might be the solution.
In April, 90 Seconds hosted Pat MacFie to speak at our Auckland offices to a group of marketing and video professionals.
Get in touch with us today to chat about your next project.
Get in touch with us today to chat about your next project.
