Content Marketing Sydney was the mecca for Australian content marketers last week as the Content Marketing Institute's founder Joe Pulizzi brought together a raft of international and local speakers for Content Marketing World Sydney.

With the number of delegates almost double that of last year it was clear the message was getting out to marketers that this was no quick fad. In fact, many of the central thoughts have been around for quite a while. 

Bringing those all together, making them the focus of a marketing strategy and giving them business structure, however, is something new.

Content marketing really starts with emotions and several of the Day 1 speakers identified this as being the key difference.

Robert Rose, Chief Strategist at the Content Marketing Institute lead with the thought that we are, as marketers, in the business of persuasion, not truth.

"Facts don't win over beliefs." 

A great quote Rose used to frame his discussion was one from Tennessee William's character Blanche Dubois:

"I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth."

While it's never been easier for consumers to find gaps in marketers' stories (we're not advocating telling untruths), embracing a content-led strategy involves looking differently at how the messaging is received and processed.

Bernadette Jiwa (author, "The Fortune Cookie Principle) continued this change in perspective. "Marketing is giving people something to talk about," not giving marketers something to talk about.

As marketers we have continually tried to appeal to the rational side of the customer whereas "95% of people buy with the heart."

"People buy how the products make them feel," Jiwa maintains. While we all regard ourselves as objective thinkers who feel, the reality is very different.

And it's not just about a "feel-good" effect. "Value is the story a customer tells themselves not the story we tell them."

For Todd Wheatland, Chief Strategist at King Content, the reason why good content marketing works is simple. "We are hard-wired to remember detail wrapped in a story," Wheatland said.

Finally, on a similar note, Jesse Desjardins from Tourism Australia put it really succinctly. "If we make the audience the hero they will take us further than we can take ourselves."

As an agency that's been involved with creating content for over 30 years it's exciting to see how this latest evolution is giving that content even more, purpose, effect and value.

In this past week we've been able to completely rethink a strategy in the not-for-profit sector that we look forward to sharing the details and results about with you towards the end of next month.

In the meantime, we'll continue to extract gems from our Content Marketing World Sydney presentation notes to help you with your marketing strategies and problems. Watch this space!

Content Marketing World Annual Conference is 8-11 September 2014 in Cleveland Ohio. For full details on the conference, including the really helpful page on "Justify Your Trip" click here.

(Joe Pulizzi assures me that only people who have never been to Cleveland ask "Why Cleveland?"...)