"More content is being created in 48 hours than what was produced from the beginning of time until 2003." -Eric Schmidt. It's no surprise that many companies struggle to engage in this saturated environment. In this slideshare we'll teach you why content marketing is still relevant and best practices to make sure you're getting a solid ROI on your efforts. http://www.vbout.com

1. /vboutcom vbout www.vbout.com

2. Table of Contents
Content
Marketing Defined
Strategy and
Planning
How to Address
Challenges
Success
Stories Conclusion

3. /vboutcom vbout www.vbout.com

4. The Importance of Content Marketing
• A recent study shows that 86
percent of all B2B
marketers use content
marketing strategies to gain
exposure and ultimately
generate revenue, but only 38
percent believe they are
effective at it.
(source: Gesenhues, Marketing Land)
4

5. What is Content Marketing?
• “Content marketing can be defined as
the creation and distribution of
meaningful insights, perspectives, and
best practices that are valuable to a
specific audience. The aim is to retain
existing clients including doing more
business with them and to attract new
high-quality clients.”
~ Bruce Rogers, Chief Insight Officer,
Forbes
5

6. What is Content Marketing?
• “Content marketing is
anything an individual or an
organization creates and/or
shares to tell their story.
What it isn’t: A warmed-over
press release served as a
blog post.”
~Ann Handley, Chief Content
Officer, MarketingProfs
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7. Definition of Content Marketing
• Simply put, Content Marketing is
information that your target market
will view as informative, valuable and
relevant.
• Key factors:
1) Tells a story
2) Current
3) Free
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8. Content Strategy Development
• Determine your objective.
– More sales? Educate about a new
trend or segment?
• Write a mission statement.
– Be clear and concise and make it
achievable.
• Develop the Persona.
– Extremely important for your action
plan from beginning to end.
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9. Content Strategy Development
• Determine your “Pillar of Content”
– Give your story and purpose a
framework.
• Select the channels.
– Where, frequency and post times.
– Pay attention and work on tweaking your
strategy as needed.
– The plan and strategy should never be
set in stone.
– Be ready to innovate and try different
things.
9

10. Benefits to Effective Planning
• Enables Marketers to:
1) Feel less challenged with every aspect of
content marketing.
2) More effective use of content marketing
tactics and social media channels.
3) Better tracking to determine what works,
what to improve.
4) Justify spending a higher percentage of
their marketing budget on content
marketing.
10
(source: CMI 2014)

11. Types of Content
How do you determine the type of
content to produce?
Three main considerations:
1) What makes sense for your
persona and niche market.
2) Your resources and budget.
3) The competitive environment.
Stats on right: 2015 Social Media
Marketing Industry Report
11

12. Types of Content
Deciding what to write about:
• What can you manage with your
resources?
• What will serve your purpose best?
• Test our your audience and see what
“sticks.” At Vbout, we tested a few
different types of content and
subject matter.
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13. Types of Content
Deciding what to write about:
• Our persona, levels of engagement and
response was highest with educational
content.
• If your team is small, you may want to be
hyper focused and one or two subject matter
to start.
• Keep testing, keep trying and tweak your
content and campaigns as you go along.
13

14. Types of Content
The next step is to determine the format. We
like to divide the types into 4 categories:
1) Short-form:
• Blog posts -- ~ 750 to 1500 words
• Infographics -- see right for example
• Slides – for Slideshare, webinars,
presentations. Slideshare (via Linkedin) is
very popular and not as competitive as
some other channels. Great to look into
especially for B2B.
14

15. Types of Content
2) Long-form:
• Case studies, white papers, e-Books –
great for collecting leads. Set up
landing page, produce great, in-depth
study. Can really help lead generation
and building relationships.
(Download this eBook here:
http://lp.vbout.com/increase-conversion-
rates-with-better-web-design/)
15

16. Types of Content
3) Video / Recordings / Multimedia:
• Podcast – becoming extremely
popular and not a very crowded
space. A lot of potential for the
right type of business. Whole
channels on YouTube or iTunes.
• Video tutorials – Great for
certain kinds of B2C products.
Check out some beauty bloggers
on YouTube, or channels about
electronics.
16

17. Types of Content
4) Visual:
• Photographs – great for well
designed campaigns on Pinterest,
Instagram, or if photo blogging
makes sense for your brand, this
is also very popular.
• Memes / short videos – the
popularity of Snapchat and viral
shareable memes is nothing to be
ignored and could be a great
addition to your content strategy.
17

18. Channel Selection
• Determine who you want to talk to and what you
want to say.
• Most marketers are using the “big 4”: LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
• Very crowded, noisy spaces.
• Look as well for niche, industry community sites.
• Examples: Inbound.org, G2Crowd, Product Hunt.
• Find relevant blogs, bloggers, engage with
influencers.
• Try guest blogging for them, or having them guest
blog on your sites for increased reach.
18

19. Social Media
Marketing
Industry
Report 2015
19

20. Distribution:
20
In addition so social media channels, there
are additional steps and places to increase
reach and distribution.
• Boosted ads / PPC campaigns.
• Link backs to topics on QA sites ex: Quora,
Reddit.
• Press Releases: harder to get but possible
if you get the right contact.
• Video / podcast channels.
• Email marketing to your subscriber lists.

21. The PESO Model
• Developed by PR / social media guru,
Gini Dietrich, PESO model stands for:
Paid Earned Shared Owned.
• Combines each of these to achieve
company goals and adapts how you
use different media based on your
goals.
• For ex, building credibility will be a
different approach to nurturing
prospects.

22. 22

23. The PESO Model
• The PESO model is a
framework to shape your
strategies and tactics.
• Different parts are more
effective for different parts of
a buyers’ journey.
• It helps navigate a complex
distribution environment
while keeping goals in mind.
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24. B2B vs B2C Goals
24

25. Success Metrics
• Metrics for B2B
Content Marketing
Success.
• As ranked by
marketing managers
in order of
importance.
(Source: Marketing Land)
25

26. Analytics:
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In a B2C context, the success metrics on
the previous page can be different.
Here are examples of additional items to
measure and track your goals:
• Engagement
• Referral sources
• Geography
• Social Shares
• Repeat customers
• Customer loyalty

27. Content Marketing Challenges
• Competition is very intense.
• 69% of marketers say they lack
the time to create content.
• Explains why 55% believe they
don’t have enough content.
• Inability to capture and
maintain interest.
• Lack of strategy.
(source: Drew Neisser)
27

28. Most common challenges
marketers face with content
marketing campaigns.
Source: Content Marketing
Institute / Marketing Profs, 2013
B2B Content Marketing
Challenges
28

29. Common Pitfalls
• Lack of strategic planning and focus.
• Setting unrealistic goals.
*Important note: Only 1/3 of your
content will be seen and engage
only 2/3 of your audience (Drew
Neisser).
• Having a one size fits all mentality.
• Constantly test to see what is
sticking and what is helping you
reach goals.
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30. Common Pitfalls
• Inconsistency with content delivery
and distribution.
• Some say you should spend as
much time distributing content as
developing it.
• This will of course depend on your
reach and current following.
• Thinking that great content will be
enough to get attention.
30

31. 5 Ways to Fix Your Content Marketing
• 1) Develop Content Campaigns
– Focus on one meaningful theme
at a time that is relevant to the
target.
• 2) Create memorable content.
– Mixture of entertainment,
inspiration, and selling (60%
entertaining, 30% inspirational
and 10% selling).
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(source: Drew Neisser)

32. 5 Ways to Fix Your Content Marketing
• 3) Focus on Quality
– Align outcomes and focus with business
objectives.
– Stay focused on the success metrics , the
exact items helping you reach goals.
• 4) Test and adjust content accordingly.
– Will see 35-70% of your content is
irrelevant to your target.
– Test to refine headlines, formats (text,
images, videos), and time of day.
32
(source: Drew Neisser)

33. 5 Ways to Fix Your Content Marketing
• 5) Just Add Media
– Bolster content creation with some
form of guaranteed exposure, either
paid and/or through PR, events, email
and/or website exposure.
– Review the list presented earlier for
distribution and try a variety.
– Test, try different channels and
formats for paid ads, and constantly
work to improve numbers and
success metrics.
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(source: Drew Neisser)

34. Successful Content Marketing
• TED is a non-profit organization devoted to
spreading ideas, typically through 18
minutes talks.
– Have been viewed over 1 billion times.
– Get an average 17 new page views per
second.
– Are translated into more than 100
languages.
34

35. TED IMAGE
You can get their image from their
site
https://www.ted.com/
35

36. Successful Content Marketing
• Audience Bloom is a small content
and social media marketing company
based in Seattle.
– Frequent mentions in
Entrepreneur, WSJ, Huff Post,
Yahoo!, Wired, and Mashable.
– Their blogs provide cutting edge
information in the digital marketing
sphere.
36
(source: CMI)

37. AUDIENCE BLOOM IMAGE
cebloom
37

38. Successful Content Marketing
• GoPro has spiced up the digital camera
world with their high octane, durable
camera.
– Their content is viral and mostly user
generated.
– Viewers live vicariously through their
content.
– They understand people are visual.
38

39. 39

40. Successful Content Marketing
• IBM is a blue chip company that offers a
plethora of business services from
Analytics, Cloud, IT Infrastructure and
Security.
– They know the topics that resonate
with their industries.
– They create content hybrids that are
games, but also educational.
40

41. 41

42. Some CM Productivity Tools:
42
FREE:
• Trello
• Evernote
• Dropbox
• Google Docs + Calendar
• Google Analytics
• Vbout.com (marketing)
PAID:
• Jira (PM)
• Teamwork (PM)
• Contently (CM and
Distribution)
• Powtoons (animtated
videos)
• Visua.ly (infographic)
• Graphicriver (paid
designs and infographics)
• Chartbeat (Analytics)

43. Summary
• Develop the content strategy and lay out your plan,
keeping in mind business goals and resources.
• Make sure the content is relevant, current,
interesting and informative.
• Know where your target market is, what they like,
then determine the right content, format and
channels.
• Always test and analyze against your success metrics
and goals.
• Look at what the other companies are doing well.
43

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www.vbout/p/request-a-demo
Hello@vbout.com
/vboutcom vbout www.vbout.com
44

45. Would you like more educational content from Vbout.com?
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