Content's Role in Retail

CONTENT’S ROLE IN RETAIL

PRESENTED BY:
CLAY CAZIER
JULY 25, 2013

Copyright © 2013 PM Digital.
All rights reserved. This information is deemed PROPRIETARY
and CONFIDENTIAL by PM Digital. Unauthorized use or disclosure is prohibited.

1

AGENDA
 Intro
 What is Content Marketing?

 Content Marketing Best Practices
 Content Marketing in Action
 Outro


2

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?


3

DEFINITIONS
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content
to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience
– with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
- Content Marketing Institute

 Keywords should no longer be the primary focus of eCommerce sites – audiences
are the focus, with content and keywords naturally following

 “Content” includes:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–

Copy on retail landing pages (like categories & sub-categories)
Unique product copy, rating & review information
Targeted blog posts & articles (living both on & off retailers’ sites)
Media (photos & videos living both on & off retailers’ sites)
Infographics & whitepapers
Social media posts
Mobile apps
Email newsletters
Hosted events
Local profiles

Eighty-six percent of B2C marketers are using content marketing…
on average, B2C marketers use 12 tactics to achieve their content goals.

4

SURVEY INFORMATION


5

BEST PRACTICES


6

CONTENT STRATEGY, DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING

 The goal: understand and engage
target audiences to produce a desired
outcome.

Audience
Analysis
Report &
Analyze

Linguistic
Analysis
Typical Goals:
• awareness
• leads
• sales
• retention

 Engaging target audiences is achieved
through content – text articles, images,
video and other forms of media.
 With goals in hand, a Content Strategy
is typically composed of three parts:

Content
Development

Audience (Persona) Analysis
Linguistic (Keyword) Analysis

3.

Content Plan

1.
2.

Content
Marketing

Content Calendar / Plan

Followed by:
1.
2.

Content Marketing / Distribution

3.


Content Development
Reporting

7

CONTENT STRATEGY – AUDIENCE (PERSONA) ANALYSIS
 The goal: identify themes important to a retailer’s most valuable consumers and use
that information to direct the focus & language within a content calendar.

 Answer questions like:
• Who is my most valuable customer?
• What are their interests and preferences?
• What are their common needs, problems
and questions?
• What channels convert them?

• Where do they go while on my site?
• What are their triggers to buy?

 Best ways to start defining audiences:
• Existing housefile, sales & analytics data
–

Data enhancement services may be necessary

• Customer (and missed-customer) interviews
• Census.gov, BLS.gov & PewSocialTrends.org


8

CONTENT STRATEGY – LINGUISTIC (KEYWORD) ANALYSIS
Linguistic Analysis is a research study of
the language used by target audiences.

 The goal: with audience information in
hand, keyword research can direct the
language to use in communications.
 Google Adwords is a good start but try:
• www.google.com/trends/
• www.facebook.com/advertising/
• www.twitter.com/search/
 Don’t stop with research – map top
phrases to their place in the buying
cycle, your site’s current content,
organic rankings (or lack thereof).
• Example: you may have educational,
“how do I” content, traffic and rankings
but may find your content focused on
differentiation (deep-funnel) falls short.

 This will help create buy-in by mapping
spend to potential impact.

9

CONTENT STRATEGY – CONTENT CALENDAR & PLAN
 The goal: with audience analysis and linguistic data in hand, retailer’s marketing, PR
and/or creative teams can produce content that fills targeting gaps.
 A content calendar is
crucial in achieving your
goals. It will help ensure:
• your team is on track &
accountable
• your messaging is
consistent
• your messaging is
relevant

Holiday/Event
Week of May 21
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Week of May 28
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Friday, May 31, 2013
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Week of June 4
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Monday, June 03, 2013
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Friday, June 07, 2013

Target Audience

Channel

Content Type

Discount Shipping Starts Edward & Ingrid

Adam Affluent

Website

Edward Empty Nester

Twitter

Contest

Most kids out of school

Ingrid the Influencer

Offline

Event

Product X Launching

All

Website + Social Article

D Day, WWII

Edward Empty Nester

Blog

Metric

Whitepaper

Memorial Day

Desired Action

Website + Social Promo

Victoria Day (Canada)

Content Idea

Photo Essay

 Place dates vertically - on the Y axis. Highlight holidays or event dates relevant to
your audiences as “must market”.
 Label the X axis so you can record the target audience, channel, content type,
content idea, desired action and measurement for your content.
 Use sub-sheets to document specifics behind each piece of content, like the author,
target keywords and call to action.

10

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT – BEST PRACTICES
1. Less is more - aka quality over quantity
2. Listen to consumer conversations before and after your content is developed and
distributed
3. Be personable and authentic, not a corporate talking head
4. Content conveying exclusivity or behind-the-scenes information is quite engaging:
• Interviewing internal specialists is a good place to start – those in R&D, product
development/selection, sales & analytics. If you go to marketing or PR teams, ask for case
studies or testimonials.

• Internal specialists can:
– identify common questions/problems your consumers are trying to solve
– call your attention to photo or video documentation opportunities
– be the subject of an interview
– lead an online Q&A effort
– point you to a friendly third party for their take on your products/services
– add commentary to content already distributed
– add a local perspective
• Create this “special” content while the primary content is being produced

11

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT – BEST PRACTICES
5. Use your content calendar but be ready to capitalize on trends (aka borrow
relevance)
6. Play to your strengths – this must be considered in addition to what your audience
likes (eg it’s hard to just be a dynamic video blogger)
7. Creating new content internally isn’t always necessary:
• Consider re-purposing content of one media type/channel into another
– Slideshare is great for sharing many otherwise “internal” documents or converting text
content into presentations.
– Email newsletters are a great place to re-purpose text or image content
• Crowdsource content

8. Know what “success” is – establish goals to be tracked and measured before you
publish.


12

MEASURING SUCCESS – AWARENESS & CONSUMPTION METRICS
 How have your audiences found & consumed your content?
– Organic (SEO) rankings

– SEM impressions, click through rate & quality score
– Unique visits (aka traffic)
– Page views per visitor
– Bounce rate / average time on page

– Inbound link quantity & quality
– Video views / duration
– Social shares (LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)
– Social fans & followers

– Social mentions & comments
– Unlikes & unfollows


13

MEASURING SUCCESS – CONVERSION & ROI METRICS
 Is the investment in content marketing justified?
– Revenue generated

– Increased leads (from online forms & trackable phone numbers)
– Increased form submissions (subscriptions, registrations & requests = database growth)
– Improved conversion rate
– Increased average order value

– Increased download count
– Growth of RSS (blog) subscribers
– Increased email open & click-through rates
 The best way to measure success will be to use site analytics
(e.g. Omniture, GA, Coremetrics)
 Social and awareness data can be manually tracked or
measured through tools like SimplyMeasured.com,
Spredfast.com or MOZ.com

14

CONTENT MARKETING IN ACTION


15

IMPROVING NON-BRAND ORGANIC – CASE STUDY
CHALLENGE:
•
•

•
•

Gain SEO visibility and introduce the xxx “USA” brand
to the US market
Establish US relevancy for the US site
(www.xxxusa.com) rather than the UK site
(www.xxx.com). Previously, the UK site owned all
SEO visibility for the brand in the US
Capture non-brand visibility and gain competitive
share of voice (rankings and traffic) in the US market
Increase SEO traffic and sales in the US market

RESULTS:
Technical optimization performed during the initial
strategy shifted the brand relevancy from the UK site to
the US site within the first 6 months of execution.
•
82% YOY growth in organic non brand search
traffic
•
99% YOY growth in organic non brand search
revenue

SOLUTION:
•

•

•
•

Resolved SEO challenges with extensive technical
solutions (ex. removing duplicate content and
implementing technical tagging to establish the US
site as authoritative for the brand in the US).
Conducted research study of the US women’s shoe
market resulting in a change to the nomenclature of
the site taxonomy and site content (changed from
British English to American English).
Authored and integrated content targeting the USbased consumers.
Researched and secured links from high quality,
relevant sites to create new connections to the US site
(off-site authority building).


16

IMPROVING NON-BRAND ORGANIC – CASE STUDY
CHALLENGE:
•
•

•
•

Gain SEO visibility and introduce the xxx “USA” brand
to the US
Establish relevancy of the US site (www.xxx.com) vs.
the UK site (www.xxx.co.uk) in the United States.
Previously, the UK site owned all SEO visibility for the
brand in the US
Capture non-brand visibility and gain competitive
share of voice (rankings and traffic) in the US market
Increase SEO traffic and sales in the US market

RESULTS:
Technical optimization performed during the initial
strategy shifted the brand relevancy from the UK site to
the US site within the first 90 days of execution.
•
335% YOY growth in organic search traffic
•
128% YOY growth in organic search revenue
•
Grown from zero page-one rankings to the 6th
largest share of voice of page-one rankings in 12
months.

SOLUTION:
•

•

•

Resolved SEO challenges with extensive technical
solutions (ex. removing duplicate content and
implementing technical tagging to establish the US
site as the authoritative site for the brand in the US).
Conducted research study of US plus size consumer
behavior resulting in a change to the nomenclature of
the site taxonomy and site content (changed from
British English to American English).
Researched and secured links from high quality,
relevant sites to create new connections to the US site
(off-site authority building).


17

GUEST BLOGGING – CASE STUDY

The PM Digital team’s guest
blogging activity for this leading
retailer greatly improved
keyword rankings in Google.

Results
Keyword
Keyword #1
Keyword #2
Keyword #3
Keyword #4
Keyword #5


Google Rank
Position Change
From 10/1 /12 – 4/1/13
+68
+3
+9
+2
+6

18

CONNECTING TO AUDIENCES WITH ON-PAGE VIDEO CONTENT


19

USING CONTENT TO CONNECT WITH A “DEEP” B2B AUDIENCE


20

CONNNECTING WITH TWO AUDIENCES USING TWO APPROACHES


21

CONNECTING AUDIENCES TO TRADITIONALLY DRY SUBJECT MATTER


22

CONTENT MARKETING VIA SOCIAL MEDIA – CASE STUDY
Webpage To Drive Facebook Traffic

Content Rich, Engaging
Facebook Page

Scholastic engaged the team
to create an integrated
initiative to connect and build a
community of teens:
 Developed “This Is Teen”
Facebook page, and web
page to drive traffic
 Conceptualized Facebookonly contests, polls, author
chats, and other fan
engagement methods
 Developed Facebook tie-ins
with author and book events
 Implemented a geo-location
game
 Developed Book
Recommendation Engine
Results
 Lifetime Likes: 1591%
increase in 4 months
 Post Views: 674% increase
in 4 months
 Post Views: 427% increase
in 4 months

Book Recommendation Engine

23

CONTENT MARKETING VIA SOCIAL APP – CASE STUDY
Macmillan was planning a book launch and
interested in big ideas to create an engaging
social experience that would generate
demand
The team developed an interactive teaser
game / app to hype the upcoming launch of
the book:
 Design of The “GLOW App” Landing Page
 Development of content to highlight key
plot points and generate viral buzz around
the impending book launch (September
2011)
 Conceptualization, creation and
implementation of the interactive quiz, poll,
discussion board and game
RESULTS
 Close to 11,000 likes in 6 weeks
 Over 2,000 Active Weekly Users and Over
6,000 Active Monthly Users
 20-30 comments per day
 Over 200,000 points earned in the Glow:
The Mission Game


24

IMAGE CONTENT MARKETING
 A self-contained
game/challenge to drive
site traffic by promoting
NEJM’s multimedia assets
and content
 The Image Challenge
presents a medical image
and asks visitors to make
a diagnosis.
• Supported with an
email campaign with
the theme “Watch.
Listen. Learn.” which
highlighted all of
multimedia assets


25

TAKE AWAYS


26

TAKE AWAYS
 Overwhelmed? Here’s where to start, strategically:
1.

ID your goal(s)

2.

ID problems & questions your audience would like solved

3.

ID what human & content resources are already in place

4.

Develop an editorial calendar telling “stories” conveyed through various content types

 Here’s where to start, tactically:
1.

List consumers’ problems in real language (do interviews, if possible)

2.

Align with keyword research

3.

Assign topics to internal specialists (use a “carrot”)

4.

Use your blog (e.g. solve consumer problems with “How To” or “Behind the Scenes” posts)

 All of this pre-supposes a website that has already been cleared of technical issues
like accidental generation of duplicate content. Ideally, indexation issues have been
solved and you’re even thinking about content’s authorship.


27

THANK YOU

Clay Cazier is Vice President, Natural Search Strategy for
PM Digital. His resume includes more than 14 years of
web development and search engine optimization
experience, including successful ventures in travel, legal
and many retail markets.

5 Hanover Square
New York, NY 10004
www.pmdigital.com

Clay’s role at PMD is to provide the strategic foundation,
best practices and business support needed to craft ROIpositive campaigns for PMD’s clients. Fueling his passion
for helping clients are skills that range from HTML/PHP
coding and affiliate site development to social media
outreach and blog marketing.
ccazier@pmdigital.com
http://blog.pmdigital.com/author/claycazier
@jclayc

(212) 405-1923


28

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