http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/content-marketing/plan-build-successful-content-marketing-strategy -- Did you know that every day on the internet:
There are 4.75 Billion pieces of content shared
There are 1.8 Billion photos uploaded
There are 700 Million Snapchats
There are 500 Million tweets
Marketing, as we know it, is being transformed right in front of our eyes. More and more messages are being promoted every day, on more channels, and as a result, consumers are learning to simply tune out the noise.
Because of this, brands must leverage content marketing to deliver the useful information necessary to educate and build trust with their audiences. But they often fail to document what they are trying to achieve, how they will get it done, and what measures will prove success.
Yesterday I presented to more than 600 attendees of the NewsCred #ThinkContent Webinar: "How To Plan And Build A Successful Content Marketing Strategy." I presented:
The key factors for content marketing success
The core components of a content marketing strategy
I answered the main questions of how to build a solid content marketing strategy
I shared my secret that effective content marketing was relatively simple:
"The buyer journey is nothing more than a series of questions that must be answered." ~ IDC
I shared the Content Marketing Institute's more formal definition of content marketing:
“Content marketing is the marketing and business process for 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
And I shared the rallying cry for why we need to change:
"We have to stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in." ~ Craig Davis (former Chief Creative Office - J. Walter Thompson)
Backed by research and our own customer engagements, I covered
The 6 factors to content marketing success:
Document content strategy
Have someone in charge of content
Consistently publish quality content
Map content to buyer journey
Balance Paid, Owned, Earned Media
Track Content Marketing ROI
I provided an example and a template for anyone to develop:
Your Content Marketing Mission Statement
Become a destination for [target audience] interested in [topics]. To help them [customer value].
This will help us [your content marketing goals]
Earn your audience’s attention vs. just buying it
Reach, engage and convert NEW buyers
AmEx Open Forum Example: Help Small Businesses Do More Business. To become the largest source of inbound leads.
I provided spreadsheets to help anyone conduct a content audit and measure their content marketing results:
How To Plan And Build A Successful Content Marketing Strategy
1. How to Plan and Build a
Successful Content Marketing
Strategy
Michael Brenner
NewsCred – Head of Strategy
@BrennerMichael
2. Agenda
• The key factors for content marketing success
• The core components of a content marketing strategy
• How to utilize content across the buyer journey
• How to work with NewsCred to document your
strategy and achieve success
3. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey
4. There’s been a fundamental
shift in the way we create,
consume, and share content.
Every single day…
4.75 billion piece of content are shared
1.8 billion photos are uploaded and shared
500 million tweets are posted
700 million snapchats are sent
5. 5
“Marketing used to be about making a
myth and telling it. Now it’s about telling
a truth and sharing it.
- MARC MATHIEU -
Unilever
”
8. 8
“The buyer journey is nothing more than
a series of questions that must be
answered.
- IDC -
”
9. Awareness Consideration Preference
Online Communities
Search Engines
eBooks
Email Newsletters
Editorial Articles
White Papers
Podcasts
Case Studies
Online Videos
Webcasts
Virtual Trade Shows
Product Literature
Trial Software
Online Vendor Demos
Begin
decision
process
Make
decision
Identify
business
problem Establish
requirements/
build RFP
Align IT with
business
objectives
Explore
technology
options
Research
solutions
Determine
solution
strategy Assess ROI
Research
products/
vendors
Build
short
list
10. “Content marketing is the marketing and business process for 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
• Not Advertising or PR
• It is Customer, Not brand-focused
• Seeks to answer customer questions across the buyer journey
• Owned media
Content Marketing Defined
12. Put Your Customers’ Needs First.
Make them the hero.
Our Natural Instinct
Content
Marketing
Brand
Purpose
What
Customers
Want
Charity
13. “We need to stop interrupting what
people are interested in and be what
people are interested in.
- CRAIG DAVIS -
”
14. Unique Point of View Trap
Too easy to become consumed
with your story, not your
customers.
15. Six key factors to content marketing success:
1 Document content strategy
2 Have someone in charge of content
3 Consistently publish quality content
4 Map content to buyer journey
5 Balance Paid, Owned, Earned Media
6 Track Content Marketing ROI
16. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey
17. • Delivering content your audience wants
• Managing content as an asset (with an ROI)
• Thinking and acting like a publisher
What is a Content Strategy?
18. Why is it important to have a documented
content strategy?
19. 3 Steps to Building a Content Strategy
1 Why?
What’s the Business Case?
3
What?
Show results tied to your business
objectives.
2 How?
Team, actions, and budgets needed.
20. Content Marketing Roadmap
• Budget
• Destination
• Frequency
• Amplification / Optimization
• Collaboration (Who does what)
Discovery Destination Team Topic Models
Customer
Journey
KPIs /
Reporting
Optimization
• Business Case
• Current State
• Budget
• Branding/Design
• Platform
• Firm Integration
• Who does what?
• Agency
• NewsCred
• Distribution
• Structure
• Topics
• Types
• Content by Stage
• Conversions
• Subscriptions
• Define report
• Who / when?
• Content
• Platform
• Distribution
21. Content marketing mission statement
Become a destination for [target audience]
interested in [topics]. To help them
[customer value].
This will help us [content marketing goals]
• Earn your audience’s attention vs. just
buying it
• Reach, engage and convert NEW buyers
AmEx Open Forum Example: Help Small
Businesses Do More Business. To become
the largest source of inbound leads.
22. Commit To Measuring Your Results
Awareness / Reputation:
Classic Brand / PR objectives. SOV, SOC, and press mentions. With Whom? On What Topic?
Measured by?
Reach:
Who is the target Audience? What are their online interests? How can we measure?
Engagement:
Drive deeper relationship with the brand. Measured by time spent, bounce rate, social shares
Convert:
Subscribers, Leads, Sales
23. Define Content Marketing Roles and Functions
Content
Marketer /
Editor
Strategizes,
writes,
and oversees
content projects
to ensure brand
consistency and
alignment with
business
objectives.
Community
Manager
Distributes content
across social
channels, engages
online communities,
and contributes to
content projects.
Designer
Brings content to life
through the user
experience and rich
visuals.
Contributors
Any content creator-
blogger,
photographer,
designer — who
contributes to your
project.
SEO / Paid
Specialist
Manages the paid
distribution of
content online.
Analytics
Defines best/ worst
performers,
conversion
optimization and
measurement
communications.
Curation
Fines and re-
purposes the best
content from your
business and from
around the web.
25. Define The Business Case, Workflows,
Gain Organizational Buy-in
• Make sure all stakeholders understand your mission statement and business goals
• Determine who needs to sign off on content
• Set approval processes for publishing and sharing content in order to cut down on
back-and-forth
• Leverage technology to automate that entire process is a great way to get ahead
27. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey
28. Conduct A Content Audit
A Content Audit will help you:
• Give you a true sense of scale
• Identify gaps
• Seize opportunities for content repurposing
• Determine performance issues
• Evaluate content quality
• Improve your information architecture
Download this template now!
29. Look at Content by Buyer Stage
Early Stage
Middle Stage
Late Stage
66% 28%
Early-Stage Content
Late-Stage
Content
Middle-Stage
Content
6%
30. Where in the journey do we want to connect?
Online Influences Discover Consider Decide
• Reviews
• Comments
• Blogs
• Forums
Why buy?
• Educate
• Search
Why buy now?
• What
• When
• Who
Why buy from you?
• Trust
• Capability
• Capacity
31. Defining Topics
What are we going to talk about?
• [Sample at left – SAP “The Customer
Edge” blog keyword analysis]
32. Content across the buyer journey
Top of the Funnel
Quality, licensed content around broader, shareable topics that drives visibility
and engagement
Middle of the Funnel
A combination of licensed and custom content that’s not only useful and timely,
but also hits on niche topics specific to your offering and solutions. Potentially
gated.
Bottom of the Funnel
Custom content promoting your products and services: case studies, product
offers, customized demos, etc.
Customer Stage
Consistent cadence of TOFU/MOFU content as well as personalized
recommendations, service options, case studies, etc.
Awareness
Retain
Evaluation
Purchase
34. Utilize The Right Mix of Content
Custom Content
Share on-brand stories and recipes which are created
specifically for your brand.
Social Content
Leverage snackable content through UGC that
engages your target audience.
Licensed Content
Boost credibility, publishing cadence, and direct traffic
with a high-volume of fully-licensed, compliant
content.
35.
36. 3
Distributing your content
“Even great content needs a push!”
Average Hollywood movie splits 40-50%
production with 50-60% distribution
37. Maximizing the Reach of Your Content
We believe in a “converged media” approach utilizing paid, owned, and earned
media to deliver content the audience wants and maximizing the reach of that
content.
Paid Social Influencer/
movable media
Leverage your owned
content and channels
Maximize organic buzz,
social engagement,
and PR
Organic Traffic & SEO
Quickly grow your
audience & jumpstart
engagement
Converged
Native Ads (Nativo)
Paid Content Distribution
(Outbrain, Sharethrough)
Earned Paid
Owned
38. Distribution Recommendations
• Make sure your social accounts demonstrate interaction
• 4-1-1 Rule: 4 of your posts, 1 influencer post, 1 publisher post
• Follow and mention influencers, publishers in each topic
• Help your authors build social presence
• Test paid distribution with LinkedIn and Outbrain
• Measure engaged visitors from paid vs. organic visitors
• Based on time on site or pages per visit
Client Influencer Publisher
41. Organic and Social: Up and To The Right
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
UniqueVisitors
Traffic from Organic, Social & Referrals
42. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey
43. No matter where you are in your journey,
NewsCred can help.
Our team of strategists can help you:
• Document your content strategy
• Build Business case / Define ROI
• Content Audits
• Buyer journeys
• Content Mix
• Build / Source Content Team
• Distribution strategy
• Provide metrics and ROI guidance
47. Brand Map Framework
Audience
The content that you publish largely depends on your target audience – their interests, behaviors and motivations. This demographic plays a key role in your content creation and distribution process.
The publications you license content from, the topics you write about and the distribution channels that you use.
What is your target demographic? What kind of publications does your audience
read?
What social channels does your audience
frequently engage on?
What events does your audience care about?
Brand Strategy
Understanding your brand's identity is key to understanding the type of content that your brand should source and create. Content marketing should always convey your unique brand personality
consistently, from the photos that you publish to the blog posts that you create.
What is your brand’s ambition or purpose? What is your brand voice? What are the design principles of your brand’s
visual identity?
What owned assets (color, typeface, etc.)
signal your brand?
Content Strategy
Our mission is to help brands simplify and scale their entire content marketing process: content planning, discovery, creation, publishing, distribution and measurement. Understanding your current
process and challenges as well as your future goals will help us shape a content marketing strategy unique to your brand, resources, internal creative/compliance processes.
Who is the organization responsible
for your content strategy?
What does your current content
workflow look like?
Do you currently use a mix of
content types (original, licensed,
social, etc.)?
What do you like about your content
marketing strategy and what do you
want to change?
What are your content pillars?
What are your SEO keyword
priorities? What longtail keywords
are you interested in?
What type of content do you want to
feature?
What products or services (if any)
do you want us to keep in mind?
Are there specific geographic
regions or cities we should keep in
mind?
Which social channels would you
like to prioritize? What is your ideal
content cadence?
Distribution Strategy
Distribution is just as important as the content itself. It is important to understand which channels will reach your target audience and how you should share content across each channel.
What channels do you use for organic distribution? What channels do you use for paid distribution? What demand generation programs do you use?
48. Xyz Early Xyz
Late Xyz Xyz
Persona Questions/Concerns
Xyz
Middle Xyz Xyz
Keywords
Xyz Early Xyz
Late Xyz Xyz
Persona Questions/Concerns
Xyz
Middle Xyz Xyz
Keywords
Stage
Stage
49. SUCCESS METRICS
MEDIA METRICS
What do we measure?
KPIS: BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
Is our content producing the desired result?
ROI: MEDIA PERFORMANCE
How efficiently is our content and distribution working to
produce the desired result?
CONTENT PERFORMANCE
• Impressions
• Social shares
• Time spent
• Return visits
• Is our content being seen?
• Are people engaging with our brand & content?
• How much time are people spending with our brand and
are they returning?
• What is our cost/value per exposure, action or view?
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
• Subscriber / audience size
• Share of voice
• Audience penetration across org
• How large is our audience?
• What’s our share of voice in a market/ channel?
• Is engagement growing across the workflow chain of a
single organization?
• What is the cost/value per point of share?
• What is the cost/value per active audience member?
BRAND AWARENESS
• Brand lift
• Perception / attitudinal change
• Are we creating awareness? Is our message
memorable?
• Are we changing perceptions?
• What is the cost/ value per point of lift?
LEAD GENERATION AND SALES
• Behavioral conversions
• Lead generation
• Are people discovering and understanding our product &
service offering?
• What is the cost per qualified lead?
• What is the multi-touch attribution cost?
50. How To Implement A Successful
Content Marketing Strategy
Key Takeaways:
1 Commit to publishing content that your customers actually want
2 Figure out what questions your customers ask (Google) what
content they share (Social) and what channels they use.
3 Start publishing content
4 Distribute the winners
5 Measure what works
We’ve all asked the question, why content marketing?
To set the stage, there’s been a fundamental shift in the way we as consumers consume and share content. Momentous amount of content being created, consumed and shared. An amazing amount of content, the real question is how does a brand stand apart?
I think you can all see that there’s just an amazing about of fundamental change that’s happened in marketing in a short amount of time.
The secret to content marketing is that its not that hard. There are obstacles, but what we’re going to do is give you our secrets and let you know what’s worked for other brands to drive a content marketing strategy.
Not only are we going to give you tips and tricks but also make it very practical
The secret, content marketing is relatively simple. The buyer journey is just a series of question to be answered and we as brands have a role to play. Its simply to answer the customer questions.
A more complex view, content marketing explained on a page. What types of different content we consume at different parts of the buyer journey.
Awareness, we’re wanting to learn, get our questions answered and read thought leadership.
Consideration, we want more types of content.
By Preference, there’s less thought leadership and learning, and more about what makes your brand different.
The formal definition of content marketing.
NOT advertising or PR – important
About helping your customers answer those questions in the journey they’re taking
Owned media – its specifically content that lives on a brand owned media.
For you, it’s a customer behind every one of those content interactions. We need to keep in mind there’s a person, not an undefined entity of customers.
As a brand, our natural instinct is to talk about ourselves. Customers are asking questions, they want to be informed and entertained, but we can’t just do that because that’s just charity.
So the way we balance is make your customers the hero of the story.
Take your brand out. How do you do that? You solve their problems at every stage of the journey.
Core components the way we need to think. We need to think different.
How do I put forth my unique point of view? That’s a brand objective.
Customers don’t want to know how your help is different, they just want to be helped. Most of the problem we have is in the beginning stages.
The brands that win are the brands helping their customers the most.
The brands that are effective do these 6 things:
2. Doesn’t mean they have a chief content officer, just means someone has the responsibility and accountability of managing content as an asset.
3. Differentiator is that its content that’s helpful.
4. Important to understand the gaps you have in delivering helpful content to your customers
5. The traditional way the industry has looked at paid is advertising. Content marketing is the exact opposite. You're going to earn the attention of your customers.
6. What we see is the people whoa re effective at measuring content marketing ROI are those who commit to measuring it.
If you don’t’ have that new way of thinking, you’re going to have a problem being productive
Content is not a marketing problem. Everyone in an organization is affected by content, directly or indirectly.
It means you deliver content an audience wants and they monetize it. Demonstrate value for your own business.
Effective content marketers are 5 times more likely to have a DOCUMENTED content strategy.
Why you are in business and what value you’re providing? Establish your own why.
How are you going to achieve that goal?
Most brands make the mistake of jumping into the pool of what. What am I going to publish? But they haven't thought it through.
Discover – What is the business case and what is the need for change? We have to point to the things that aren’t working. We need to have the courage to stand up to our executives and show what’s working and what’s not. Current state. Where are you currently? Budget – there’s enough of ineffective spend you can repurpose.
Destination – where and how you’re going to publish. design, platform to support, where, activity on the destination you choose, and how the rest of your organization is going to integrate.
Topic Models – Topics you want to be known for when thinking of you target audience.
Customer Journey– We can’t show someone read a piece of content and bought something.
Help your customers with something. Do their jobs better, become heroes. You need to fill in the blanks.
Decide your goals: Drive deeper engagement with new people? Or with people already engaged with your brand.
These are not all necessarily people, but instead responsibilities. One of my first hires was a curator. Someone who finds and repurposes the best content from around the web. Look at what your audience is interested in.
SEO on the other hand, understand what kind of content you need to create.
How can you help the people around your organization and get them on board with the goals you're trying to achieve?
Who's’ going to sign off on content?
Approval processes for what get’s published when and where? Google docs and spreadsheets don’t cut it.
Is it an on brand or off-brand strategy? Depends on your brand and goals.
Timeline – totally unbranded. Off-branded domain. Branding that’s almost invisible.
Monster – you can see its completely in line with their corporate website. Logo, typography, similar structure.
Pepsi pulse – completely reinvented their website. Seeking to be a destination about anything about pop culture.
A content audit is important because it helps you understand the level of the content issues you have. Help you determine where you have performance issues.
No matter where you are in your content marketing strategy, NewsCred's Strategy Services team can help ensure you're successful.
Not only do we provide 24/7 global product support, but we also offer daily editorial curation and can help set your long-term strategy with customized consultations, workshops and brainstorms.
94% of all the content we were creating was for late and middle stages. Most of the content we made was promotional…why we were better.
However, more people are in the early stage, so we were completely upside down.
You want to be the source of truth for them
A lot of people jump to topics. Google trends, competitors, online properties serving needs. Thinking about topics and architecture is an important step.
Licensed content is a great way to achieve scale and help folks understand the topic you’re interested in.
As you get to the bottom, that’s where you’re looking at different types of content.
Finding the right combination of licensed content, original content and social content is key to executing a well-rounded content strategy.
Licensed content gives you an easy way to access a high-volume of content from credible sources, allowing you to boost publishing cadence.
Original content gives you the ability to share hyper-targeted stories which resonate with your audience and are optimized for SEO.
Social content allows you to always stay topical and publish content that is buzzworthy and trending. Co-created content.
We call this combination The Rule Of Thirds – a starting point. AS you’re publishgin you can optimize.. Diversifying your content strategy allows you to scale in a way
Distribution is the biggest mistake we see marketers make.
Make sure your social accounts demonstrate interaction. You want to interact with who you’re trying to reach. How many of your own posts you’re going to share? Or sharing other people’s content and influencers.
You’ll see your social channels will grow. You want to help your authors and contributors as much as you can.
You want to think of this as a mix of what you’re doing.
Corporate websites bounce rate are down at 40% because the only people going there are those who want to be there
Tracking over the course of a year.
Are we gaining traffic from organic and social. Up and to the right.
The most comprehensive. Now strategy services to help every step of the way. Team of strategists.
We work with amazing brands who are working with us.
21 questions helping you find out who’s your audience…
Key words appropriate
Not just about counting the volume.
Is the KEY differentiator for brands that are effective.
Figure our what kind of content they share.
Start publishing and then optimize off of that.
Distribute the winners.
Practical
Biggest mistake – point of view trap. If you’re taking your brand out of the story. Not important in the early stages. Commit to being differentiator by taking yourself out of the conversation at first. Too many focus on volume. Want to publish good stuff. Set a quality bar first and drive twoards wality goals next.
#2. Content marketing and SEO are connected. The amount of people doing initial searches. Engage them then. The kinds of questions our customers were asking, we were answering.
3 levers to pull when thinking of content marketing ROI. Just do an audit your organization creates and see how much of that is not used. All of the content you create has a cost and if its not used it’s a waste. Performance – a lot of ways to think about it. The cost of email subscribers, the value of a lead. Every brand we’ve seen that’s sought to measure it and been able to do so and has seen growth. 4x ROI
Advice for teams of one: I was a team of one at a startup and I had no budget. Our website wasn’t answering our customer’s questions. Made it my mission to answer their questions. I saw a complete hockey stick in lift. If you are the head of marketing, content marketing is your main job.
How to come up with ideas? Growth hacks – one trick – take content your company is already creating and repurpose it. Turn it into a slideshare, turn it into a blog post, interview the experts. Look at your email outbox. Every email you send is an answer to a question.
Advantages/disadvantages of branded/non-branded – if you currently make too much branded content and you have a trust issue. Going off-domain may help you. If you’re currently known for something negative, but you want to be known for something positive.