By Karen Thomas-Smith, Vice President, Provider Marketing, Optum

For most brands, the days are long gone when a beautiful, on-message ad accompanied by an aggressive ad buy equaled maximum revenue. For business-to-business companies like the one I work for, the expansion of online media combined with the diminishing returns from traditional marketing and advertising has equaled the rise of content marketing.

My company, Optum, is straddling the line between traditional “push” direct marketing—direct mail, email, web—and the “pull” of content. I’m fortunate to lead a team that innovates around content marketing.

In this organization, results trump tradition. A corollary to that statement is that results trump innovation. My team and I can “innovate” 24/7, but if those innovations don’t result in increased revenue, we’d better change our tactics, and fast. There’s not any patience for innovation for its own sake.

Over nearly two years, we have demonstrated results—strong results. Millions in revenue is directly attributable to my team’s efforts, and brand awareness for key audiences is higher. And it has been quite an effort.

At the beginning of this journey, we had lots of ideas but not a clear vision to execute them. After attending the first annual Content2Conversion conference and collecting input from other marketing thought leaders, we developed a vision. The next step was to develop a team.

I did some internal recruiting and gathered a group of creative, hard-working professionals who were energized by the concepts of content marketing. They wanted to work near the cutting edge. So, we flipped Optum’s traditional job descriptions and marketing processes and organized around developing thought leadership content.

I see myself as a coach to these professionals. It’s my job to let them use their incredible creativity and talents and facilitate their success. Because when they succeed, the whole team succeeds.

Even with a disbursed team of people who are based in Minnesota, Connecticut, Virginia and North Carolina, we have achieved a level of synergy, collaboration, teamwork and innovation. We take calculated risks, and we’re not afraid to fail. But for the most part, failure hasn’t been in the cards.

In my next post, I’ll share a few keys to our success.