1. BY NATASHA D. SMITH
I
ntel is a brand that’s synonymous with modern electronics. In
fact, the Silicon Valley giant is reportedly the world’s largest
maker of semiconductor chips, which techies consider to be the
foundation of modern gadgets. The company’s leading position is
due in large part to its carefully crafted “Intel Inside” ad campaign,
which in the 1990s branded its semiconductor chip as the must-have
technology and helped catapult the sales of Intel’s consumer-target-
ed Pentium processors.
Producing ever-faster processors for gadgets, widgets, and tech
tools continues to be the life blood of the company, which in 2014
reportedly raked in nearly $56 billion in revenue. In fact, Intel’s
rich 47-year history is centered on innovation. And marketers for
the technology company are looking to fuel their latest efforts with
innovative marketing strategies—charged, of course, with the same
fervency and pioneering spirit that’s sustained Intel for decades. At
the center of Intel’s retooled marketing strategy today is a robust
and agile approach to content marketing.
“Historically, it’s been all about trying to get new readers in the door.
In other words, trying to go out and find new audiences. But now, it’s
not just about getting new audiences for our brand and our content;
it’s about keeping existing audiences,” says Luke Kintigh, Intel’s global
content and media strategist. “It’s takes a lot—a lot of money, a lot of
time, a lot of energy—just to get someone to even come to your site and
read a piece of content. So that’s a pretty amazing feat in itself.”
It’s an amazing feat, but not an impossible one. In May 2012
the company launched Intel iQ, a content hub featuring technol-
ogy-centered stories that highlight news, trends, and celebrities
making waves in tech innovation. Stories range in topic—every-
thing from why video gaming makes players smarter to mobile tech
for the deaf, to, of course, the booming wearable tech movement.
Kintigh says the aim of Intel’s content marketing strategy is to target
tech enthusiasts, create brand loyalty, and reassert the brand as a
leader in innovation.
Intelligent content, clever marketing
Content alone—even inspiring, problem-solving content—simply
isn’t enough. After the marketing team created iQ, it still needed an
audience and steady site traffic. Intel’s marketing team realized that
there has to be a content strategy, not just a freefall of stories that
flood the hub. The answer, they say, is content sequencing.
“Content sequencing is telling a story one part at a time,” says
Adam Weinroth, CMO of content marketing software company
OneSpot, which Intel enlisted to create a unique approach to its
content distribution. “If you’re a brand and you’re trying to com-
municate that story to [a potential buyer], then you can’t tell that
[narrative] all in one sitting. So, the challenge—and the opportuni-
ty—is figuring out how to deliver the different parts of that story
over time and in the right order. That’s what Intel is seeking to do
with content sequencing.”
Weinroth says the idea is that rather than retarget people with
the same content—or even the same style of content—over and over,
choose the next piece of content based on the person’s response to
the preceding story and format.
Through machine learning OneSpot analyzes, at each stage, how
a person interacts with content that’s served to him and determines
what Intel should serve next. Rather than preset content for each
consumer, Intel will take a piece of content from, say, iQ, present
it on a social platform such as Facebook or in a mobile or display
ad, see how the reader responds, and then eventually present an
entire series of Intel content based on a series of interactions. A se-
quence of 10 pieces of content, for example, is unique, and in effect
personalized, for every person throughout her entire journey with
the brand.
“We’re not paying just to reach them again and again, but in-
stead we’re trying to build more loyalty. We’re trying to think
about content that’s more long term,” Kintigh says. “A piece of
content—at least in the beginning—is a hook. But, ultimately, we
30/November 2015 /dmnews.com
A new, more agile approach to content marketing is powering
the computing company’s marketing plans.

2. dmnews.com /November 2015 /31

3. 32/November 2015 /dmnews.com
want a reader to convert to a dedicated subscriber,
not just a visitor.”
Makenewfriends,butkeeptheold
With a staunch focus on dedicated subscribers, the
goals at Intel have evolved into acquisition and re-
tention. “Retention is of the utmost importance,”
Kintigh says. “We want to leverage
our existing audience, especially
those who’ve engaged with posts.”
Leveraging an audience, he says,
opens up the doors for marketers
at Intel to produce and distribute
content in an entirely different way
than in years past.
“We’re actually moving toward a
serialized approach to production,”
Kintigh continues. “We’re doing a
10- to 12-part series on everything
from women in gaming to technology in the NFL,
so when someone interacts with a piece of content
they have a reason to keep coming back.” Kintigh
says he and his team are seeing much-desired suc-
cess in acquisition and certainly in retention—suc-
cess that’s corroborated by the numbers: “At this
point, we see about two [million] to three million
unique visitors a month. We’re continuing to grow
our repeat readers. Some 65 percent of our readers
are new, so that means 35 percent of our readers
are repeat [visitors]. About six months ago that was
about 20 to 25 percent.”
Kintigh says that time on iQ continues to grow
too—among all visitors. OneSpot’s Weinroth notes
that, just like treasured friendships, Intel’s growth
is built on strong relationships. “[Intel] is deliver-
ing more content-driven relationships, as opposed
to just distributing content.” he
says. “Because if you just wanted
to distribute content, there are a
lot of ways to just rack up those
clicks and make performance met-
rics—those vanity metrics—go up
and to the right. But if you want to
do a really good job that’s in line
with the brand goals that Intel has
then you have to build relation-
ships.” Weinroth says that type of
relationship isn’t possible with a
one-time engagement. “It’s only available through
repeat engagement,” he says.
Act like a publisher
Modern marketers realize that effective marketing
isn’t about just campaigns—whether direct mail,
email, mobile, or social; it’s about the knowledge
and information that businesses can provide to pros-
pects and customers. Providing that information
then establishes a company as an industry authority.
AC T I O N I T E M S
1) Create content that is
helpful and inspiring
to consumers.
2) Present content based
on each reader’s previ-
ous interactions.
3) Focus on the value
proposition of content
rather than on volume.
4) Include personal
narratives of consumers
in every content
marketing strategy.
35%Intel iQ visitors that are
monthly repeat visitors
2M - 3MIQ’s unique visitors
per month

4. The team at Intel says much like jour-
nalists and publishers, marketers need
to think of audiences first. “We have to
start to embrace being a publisher and
acting like a publisher,” Kintigh says.
“When you do that…you really under-
stand the importance of the audience
element of it. It’s not about producing 20
posts a month; it’s not about how much
content you create or even how great it
is. It’s really all about [the way] you pull
the audience into the content, that audi-
ence-first mind-set, and acting like a true
journalist or good writer.”
He adds that his team at Intel under-
stands that as publishers of content,
the push for its products takes a back
seat. “It’s more about how do you fill
in the whitespace,” he continues. “The
challenge for everyone, especially for
brands, is that with all of this content
out there, how you find that little un-
covered whitespace within a really
complicated topic, especially technol-
ogy. It’s [seemingly] being covered by
everybody out there.”
Kintigh insists that solid content al-
lows Intel to draw on its resources of
top employees who can give an inside
look into the tech world, provide new
insight, and introduce new thoughts.
“It competes well because it’s just as
good as any material on an editorial
calendar,” he says.
Thefutureofagilecontent
Intel’s plan is to continue to grow its
content hub, iQ, to optimize the skills
and knowledge of its employees for
audience benefit, and to continually
evolve the image of the company. Intel
is a relatively older tech corporation,
but content is proving to be the impe-
tus that continually updates custom-
ers’ perception of the brand. “We’re
trying to communicate to a wider au-
dience—and a younger audience—that
Intel is powering all of these innovative
things,” Kintigh says. “It takes a long
time to build an interactive content
strategy and build an audience. But we
recognize this isn’t a short race; it’s a
marathon. IQ is always on, and it’s go-
ing to go on forever.” n
dmnews.com /November 2015 /33
CONTENT
MARKETING
CHANGES THE
GAME
Gartner Research Director Kirsten New-
bold-Knipp explains what content marketing
looks like in 2015 and in the future. Plus, she
shares what content marketers are getting
right—and what they’re getting wrong.
How would you define content
marketing in 2015?
I would define content marketing today as
really an amalgam of a variety of different
tactics that people are using to generate
helpful, useful, and informative content—of
any sort—to try and attract, retain, and sup-
port their clients. That means everything
ranging from blog posts, which is kind of
where content marketing began
in earnest, to all the way through
interactive infographics, quizzes,
and tools, in some cases videos
or how-to articles.
In most cases, what makes
content marketing different from
earned media coverage is the
intent to draw someone across
a buyer’s journey and down the
sales funnel. That could mean
that [the goal may be] to get them to sign up
and surrender an email address or like your
content on social media networks. In some
way [content marketers] are getting you to
take action and pulling you further into their
sphere of influence. Content helps with either
becoming a customer or staying a customer.
What problems does content
marketing solve—or even create?
Content marketing solves one of the critical
problems that we have today, which is that
buyers are changing the game. The old way
of doing marketing does not work anymore.
That means interrupting people in unhelpful
ways through one-way advertising. People
don’t want to consume things that way. In
fact, today, consumers are defining their own
buyer’s journey. They’re saying when they
want to search for a product; they’re choos-
ing which devices they’re going to search
on; they’re asking the questions, rather than
waiting for a salesperson to feed answers.
They’re looking for specific information.
Content marketing does a good job of not
only providing answers to specific questions
but providing specific insights before some-
one is even looking for a solution. Content
marketing allows a brand to get some visibil-
ity and get some mindshare for brands trying
to build a case for a product, a new tool, a new
solution, or even a new trend.
The problem that it creates is the need
for a high volume of content. There’s this
incessant need to feed the beast. Content
marketing as a program requires even more
content [than usual]. You still need content
for your advertising campaign; you still need
content for your email campaign; you still
need content for all of those other activities.
Now, you may need to double—
or even triple—total volume of
content that a business needs to
actually be successful.
What are content marketers
getting right, and, just as im-
portant, wrong?
There are still a lot of people
making a few classic mistakes.
In the last 10 years we’ve seen
content marketing explode. And that means
it’s become noisy, and it’s very hard to rise
above the entire din of all of the content
that’s out there. Those who are not rising
above the noise usually make the same
classic mistakes: talking about themselves
and not having an original opinion. Product
marketing is not content marketing.
Some of the things I see content marketers
getting right is the use of interactive con-
tent, and using this type of content as part
of a broader storyline. Content that is part
of a bigger narrative and is part of a broader
perspective is really valuable, and more so-
phisticated content marketers are infusing
campaigns with helpful content—and they’re
pulling consumers’ stories into the brand sto-
ries with user-generated content. Curation
and narration are important.