It’s not just the planning, or even the content that determines the success of your content campaign. Measuring and optimising as you go offers the key to success when it comes to running an effective content marketing campaign. In this presentation, we’ll demonstrate how measurement, improvement, and iteration make the difference between an average-performing campaign and a successful one. We’ll take you through our journey in managing an 11-month long content marketing campaign involving a talking vegetable (yes it’s for real – his name is Ricky Leeks): The marketing problem we were trying to solve How we went about solving it Where it all started to go wrong, and how an analytical approach helped turn it around The results and how what we learnt has informed our latest content marketing campaign

1. From good to great
With a little help from a talking vegetable
Laila Lotfi
Head of Product Marketing
Laila.Lotfi@red-gate.com

2. Product and market
ANTS Memory Profiler
(memory optimisation software)
.NET Software Developers
(B2B. Highly technical.)

3. Marketing problem
misconceptions
Developers don’t understand .NET memory management
Developers think they don’t need tooling

4. Marketing problem
Unaware of the
problem/opportunity
Aware of the
problem/opportunity
Discovery of product
Validation
Retention

5. Solution
Educate the market
Content marketing
But…
.NET memory
management is
boring…
Hi, I’m Ricky Leeks!

6. Marketing objectives: how will success be measured?
5,000 unique visitors per month
2,000 trials of product per month
(baseline = 1350)
$15,000/month budget constraint
(prepared to pay $3 per visit)

7. Campaign preparation
• Create GENUINELY valuable content:
wall-charts, video guide, webinar, eBook, articles
•
•
•
•
Online ads
Twitter account
Landing pages
Schedule

8. Campaign launch
phase 2
phase 1

9. How is the campaign performing so far?
• Number of unique visitors
• Trials of product
• Absolute number of clicks on hyperlinks and
calls-to-actions
• Click-through rate (CTR) on the landing pages
• Visitors flow

10. Oops! Instrumentation fail
Something was wrong
• We had forgotten to instrument some of the calls
to action and hyperlinks on the landing pages to
see how visitors were behaving on the site
• We didn’t have all the data we needed to
see how the landing page were performing

11. 2 months & 3 weeks in: Performance Check 2
• Results showed that visitors were not going
down the path we expected them to take
• Only 1.5% CTR on calls to action related to the
product
Lesson:
It’s never too early to measure
campaign performance.

12. Now what?
We’re almost 3 months in and the results are not good
There are 3 choices
• Kill the campaign
• Carry on and hope for the best
• Optimise

13. Optimisation
• Remove unused content
• Remove distracting links
• Rebalance content/product focus
Optimize
using data
Then measure again
3 weeks later – 2.5% CTR
Then optimise and measure again
5% CTR
http://goo.gl/u004QW
http://goo.gl/t3Z26M

15. Lesson:
After you measure, OPTIMISE because you
won’t get it right first time round

16. Oops #2! Head in the sand syndrome
We were so engrossed in
optimising the content on the
landing pages that we didn’t
properly measure and optimise
the rest of the campaign!

17. End of the campaign…or not
Results by Nov 11:
• 4,000 unique visitors per month
• 1,600 trials of AMP per month
Based on our experience from the
past few months, I knew that we
still had room for improvement to
turn a reasonably OK campaign
into an exceptional one

18. Pivot
Decided to extend the campaign
Launched phase 5 & 6
Re-set objectives:
• 10,000 unique visitors per month
• 1,800 trials of AMP per month

19. The new strategy
1. Monthly media performance check
+ optimise (cut down on media that is
not delivering, geo-targeting, etc)
2. Better use of social
media and partner channels
3. Exploit the Ricky Leeks
character to the full
(podcast interview)

20. Oops #3! Lead nurturing fail
We got thousands of developers to download
the eBooks, and sign up to receive more
information on .NET memory management…
…but we didn’t think the lead nurturing through
properly.

21. Results in May 12
Reached close to
90,000 developers
in 11 months

22. Results in May 12
Trial of the software
went up by 25%
AMP downloads
2000
(from 1,350 to 1,800/month)
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
May-12
Apr-12
Mar-12
Feb-12
Jan-12
Dec-11
Nov-11
Oct-11
Sep-11
Aug-11
Jul-11
Jun-11
May-11
Apr-11
Mar-11
Feb-11
Jan-11
0

23. My 3 TOP TIPS for your next campaign
1. Data-driven marketing
(creativity alone is not enough)
•
•
•
No campaign performs optimally at the first round
Design campaigns with regular (and early!) checkpoints
Think about what metrics & behaviours you can influence to drive KPIs
2. Try agile marketing
•
•
•
Learn from incoming data: measure…then optimise
Use feedback to trigger rapid iterations to improve on what you’ve got
Design campaigns that last – it gives you a chance to optimise
3. Set up a proper lead nurturing program
•
•
Move your leads progressively down the funnel
You will NOT get it right first time

24. Any questions?
Laila.Lotfi@red-gate.com
Recommended reading: Lean Startup (Eric Ries)