Q&A: iPullRank’s Mike King Discusses ‘The Content Marketing Overhaul’ PMI Keynote

‘The Content Marketing Overhaul’ is the confident banner of Mike King’s Keynote at PMI: Europe this year- headlining Day Two of the agenda with a session set to make marketers reimagine their standing with the channel.

Mike King’s talents manifest themselves in his agency, iPullRank, where he’s earned part of his reputation as a ‘marketing technologist’, and recognised authority in SEO, content strategy, social media and measurement.

Before he takes to the stage in the German capital, we snapped up the opportunity to get a sneak peek at Mike’s session, and what aspects of Performance Marketing Insights: Europe he’s most excited about. 

Mike, without giving too much away, what sort of epiphanies can PMI ticket-holders expect to have during your session?

Mike King: There’s a key distinction between content strategy and content marketing. Most people are doing content marketing and leaving the strategy end of it at home. I’m going to go into the strategic thinking, workflows and tools that make content stronger. Also there’s this idea that content marketing efforts can’t effectively be measured. That’s complete BS, so I’ll explain how to do that more effectively as well. The talk is overloaded with actionable insights that everyone in attendance can take home and start raising the bar on their content efforts.

Not a week goes by where we don’t receive a fresh batch of research suggesting troubles with tracking and simply gaining ROI from content. Do you think marketers are still guilty of avoiding the elephant in the room?

MK: Absolutely! I actually wrote a post on this for Copyblogger. I don’t really understand when people say they can’t measure the ROI of content. Google Analytics itself has a number of ways you can effectively do this. There’s a metric in GA called “Page Value.” GA applies a value of based on the dollar value of a conversion goal to content based on the conversions that it ultimately yields. So if someone enters from a piece of content, you can see how much money it made you. There’s also the assisted conversions report and any other number of ways you can look at this data. I really just don’t get it when people say it’s hard to measure ROI. Perhaps the problem is more that people don’t know how analytics platforms work? Either way, we love helping people solve these issues at iPullRank.

Considering the rising investment from large outfits, can you point to any particular examples of smaller brands who consistently cut through the ‘noise’ with their content?

MK: It depends on your definition of smaller brand. I think Buffer, Moz, Contently and Wistia all do a great job, but they all create software related to content marketing, so I guess that’s cheating. GoPro and AirBNB are doing great work as well. If instead, you’re asking about local businesses, I come across far less examples of those committing to content marketing. Often I’ll see an indication that they tried it for a few months and then quit.

Education is a big talking point in our industry given the ‘talent gap’ that a lot of digital marketing firms seem to have. Given that coding skills helped you forge a career in SEO following your time as a rapper, do you feel America is well-equipped to help students learn about and obtain digital roles?

MK: Education is being disrupted right now. There’s so many outlets to learn for free online these days. I don’t think it’s limited to the US at all, it’s a global shift in how people are learning. Colleges and universities are no longer a requirement to get into digital and a lot of people are taking it upon themselves to learn to code and build their own company. There’s also an overwhelming amount of educated people who don’t have real world skills. I think employers, myself included, prefer to meet someone who has had hands on experience rather than an MBA. We can all expect this shift to have a ripple effect for years to come.

How is life in the start-up world at iPullRank? What made you ‘go it alone’, and would you encourage other digital leaders to do the same?

MK: It was mostly the realisation that I couldn’t change the world on someone else’s dime. I’m not knocking the idea of working for someone else, but it doesn’t really work for me. There’s a lot of things I want to bring into the world and the only way I can effectively do it is if I’m the captain of the ship.

We can’t wait to see you on the stage in Berlin, and we hear you have some fans in Germany! Have you got your eye on any particular sessions?

MK: I love Germany and I’m excited to be a part of the show! I even thought about moving to Berlin a few years back. As far as sessions, I always looking forward to seeing Marcus Tandler, Andre Alpar and Jan-Willem Bobbink. I’m always interested in case studies as well. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what others have learned from their real world work and day two looks like it’s heavily skewed towards that.

Read up on the full details of Mike King’s unmissable keynote and the full Performance Marketing Insights: Europe 2015 agenda here.