There are three words that sum up successful digital age marketing: Strategic, authentic and digestible.

We all remember the days when banging your drum loudly was enough to attract customer attention, but today everyone is shouting at once, and doing nothing but enthusiastically evangelizing your brand will only trigger a smart consumer’s BS warning.

“It’s not just about hammering away at the customer: ‘Hey! Look at me! Look at me! Look how great I am!’ said Peter Smails (pictured), former chief marketing officer at Datos IO Inc. “The challenge becomes how do you stand above the noise, and that comes down to influence, and that comes down to credibility … are you telling a credible narrative? Are you talking to credible people? Are you in the appropriate forums?”

Smails spoke with Donald Klein (@don_c_klein), vice president of business development and customer success at SiliconANGLE Media, Inc. and guest host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. Smails drew on his extensive experience as a CMO to recommend strategies for marketing success in the digital age in a discussion as part of a special CUBEConversation series focusing on the challenges of digital marketing.

Put it in context

Leverage the social, focus on authentic content, and get it out there in forms that that people are willing to digest, is Smails’ advice for successful marketing in the digital age.

“A lot of people think of social as the new demand-gen vehicle,” he said. “[But] I don’t necessarily see it that way. I think social has actually become an ideal complement to all the other traditional levers that you still want to use.”

Leveraging social and digital marketing channels in appropriate high-credibility, high-integrity ways to drive influence and relevance within the industry and as a vehicle for demand generation is the ideal method to rise above the noise, according to Smails.

With the average consumer looking for short bursts of relevant information provided in an engaging manner, “highly granular video content has huge value,” Smails stated. He uses an appearance on theCUBE as an example of an opportunity to effectively leverage a physical event, describing how he would use short sound bites from the interview to maximize presence and lengthen the productive tail.

“Simply put, you go to a show these days, and if you’re not on theCUBE then you’re missing the boat. I mean … it’s just sort of like a regular pillar of all the core industry shows,” Smails concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations

Photo: SiliconANGLE