Content Marketing Will Become Defunct. Here’s Why One Content Marketer Is Happy About That

Content Marketing Will Become Defunct. Here’s Why One Content Marketer Is Happy About That
B&T Magazine
By B&T Magazine



In this guest post, B&T regular, Storyation’s head of content, Lauren Quaintance (pictured below), predicts the demise of the very industry in which she works – content marketing! However, as you’ll discover here, it ain’t all bad news…

A few months ago IT consulting firm Gartner published a seminal report on content marketing platforms which made this startling statement: by 2021, the term “content marketing” will be defunct. 

Now as a founder of a specialist content marketing agency I could have been forgiven for feeling a bit faint when I read that. Except that the report articulated something I’ve been thinking for a while. 

Lauren Quaintance (Storynation)

At Storyation we’ve always talked about how, right now in Australia, content is a broad church. 

So much of what marketers describe as content – whether it’s product descriptions, a press release or a retail ad – is really “marketing content”.

Content marketing on the other hand is producing something useful or entertaining that engages or nurtures your prospects and customers. 

When Gartner predicts that content marketing will become defunct what they mean is that in a few years all marketing content will in effect be elevated to become content marketing that has utility at its heart.

That will mean that content marketing is no longer siloed in marketing team structures and we’ll all be thinking holistically about how customers engage with a brand across their purchase journey.

When I spoke at a marketing conference last month, my co-presenter Bupa’s global head of content strategy Matt Allison talked about how the future of content marketing is integration.

“We need to stop looking at content as a vertical and start looking at it as the lynchpin of a broader customer engagement strategy.”

Gartner analyst Kirsten Newbold Knipp had this advice for marketers keen to prepare themselves for what’s next: “Take a cue from the best content marketers to understand how their persona and customer journey orientation coupled with a journalistic approach helps them deliver value.”

Only three years until Nirvana. I, for one, can’t wait.




Please login with linkedin to comment

lauren quaintance storyation

Latest News

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm
  • Media

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm

Sydney Comedy Festival 2024 is live and ready to rumble, showing the best of international and homegrown talent at a host of venues around town. As usual, it’s hot on the heels of its big sister, the giant that is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, picking up some acts as they continue on their own […]

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth
  • Advertising

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) has announced the final epic lineup of local and global marketing powerhouses for RESET for Growth 2024. Lead image: Josh Faulks, chief executive officer, AANA  Back in 2000, a woman with no business experience opened her first juice bar in Adelaide. The idea was brilliantly simple: make healthy […]