Opinion: ‘Why measurable content-led comms is gaining our agency recognition’

Remarkable Content was one of three PR-focused agencies to be nominated for this year’s International Content Marketing Awards and the only one – with a sliver in the Best Internal category – to win an award. Marketing Manager Catherine Reid tells us why Remarkable’s efforts to integrate comms and content are proving attractive to clients – and judges.

Remarkable Content won Silver at the International Content Marketing Awards at the end of last month for our work with Associated British Ports and its #BeyondZero campaign.

Hosted by the UK’s Content Marketing Association (CMA) the awards are the most competitive content marketing awards in the world, with some 450 entries, from 104 different agencies, across 21 countries this year.

For Remarkable, its win is the latest step in a journey that we began in 2014 when the decision was taken to truly integrate our PR, creative and digital teams and create a division focused on delivering powerful, effective content marketing and PR in response to the market’s demand for a smarter and more measurable type of content-led communications.

So, in July of that year, Remarkable Group brought together our range of different communications specialists to launch a content marketing and PR agency Remarkable Content.

Public relations, our storytelling core, remains a core skill set in the team but we all focus on the creative solutions that drive media coverage, prompt direct public engagement and protect reputation.

We have to as, simply put, the number of clients that will accept the vanity metric of media coverage as proof of value is shrinking rapidly – in fact, they have all but disappeared. Smart and progressive clients want integrated, cross channel campaigns built around long-lived creative ideas that can tell a story over time.

They also require a clear and measurable link from this activity back to improved business results.

So it was timely, that in November, the CMA also launched the fourth in its series of industry reports – Measuring Effectiveness – which is collection of articles from leaders in the field of content marketing – which makes a similar point. It contains some truly valuable insights for all those focused on ensuring their content is working effectively; the report also contains a survey of senior level marketers.

Half of these marketers currently spend 6-15% of their content marketing budget on measurement, and almost the same again (45%) are planning to increase this in the next year demonstrating measurements importance in the industry.

Flexibility, daring and focus are the vital facets for creating content that people want even to click, let alone share. Today, people know when they’re being sold to. That’s why the ability of a PR to spot a story’s authentic value for a customer – something to entertain, motivate, or inform – is more important than ever.

However, by creating this joined up customer experience we are achieving clearly improved and measurable engagement rates and we have metrics in place that enable us to prove to clients that taking a progressive approach to communications creates business value, and ultimately drives their commercial results.