You know that warm feeling of validation when the experts agree with a position you’ve been advocating? Well, I have it right now, after reading “Four Ways to Get More Value from Digital Marketing,” published by McKinsey’s & Company’s Marketing and Sales Practice, March 2010, by David C. Edelman.

According to this article, as companies realize the seismic shift that social media has made in buying patterns, they are moving spending to efforts toward influencing consumers as they actually evaluate products. Whereas traditional marketing spends about 60 percent of their budgets on paid placement, 20 percent on creating content, and the balance on employees and agencies, those firms recognizing the power of digital channels devote 30 percent of their marketing budgets to paid media and 50 percent to content creation. This is because “customers do more of the heavy lifting as they decide what to look at, play with content and forward it to their online communities.”

Furthermore, companies are advised to adopt a publisher’s mindset, creating and syndicating content to flow across sites and platforms of other organizations and people. In fact, “many companies now operate essentially as publishers and can benefit from a disciplined content supply chain.”

If this sounds familiar to you, it may be because you read SPR’s recent white paper on the importance of content creation as the “new” way to move minds and get the maximum value for your marketing dollars. We have seen this trend developing over the last three years. As a result, we have changed our practice to incorporate a strong emphasis on creating this content and merchandising and syndicating it across multiple channels. Today, prospective buyers and influencers consult the Internet as their first line of information research. Based on what they find, they choose to develop deeper relationships with the sources that have the more relevant information for their quest. Like bread crumbs dropped by the ingenious Hansel and Gretel, creative and valuable information will lead customers home to your door.

What are the other four ways to get more value from digital marketing? They are:

-Orchestrate an integrated consumer experience,
-Inspire customers to help you stretch your marketing budget,
-Adopt a publisher’s discipline to curb costs, and
-Use intelligence wisely to drive performance.

Words of wisdom, if I do say so myself. For more public relations insights….