Content Marketing Programmes

Keith Feighery

Outline• Overview of Content Marketing Programmes• Class exercise• Managing Content Marketing Initiatives• Content Marketing for Business to Consumer• Relevant Case Studies • Content Marketing for Business to Business• Relevant Case Studies• Project Pitch

What is the purpose of your content?

Owned Vs Paid Vs Earned Media

What should Your Content do• Content = valuable and useful information NOT just canned

marketing messages• Focus on what a customer needs rather than what you sell

– Address user needs in all published content• Valuable communications is what differentiates you from

competition• Marketers are publishers today – i.e. think like media co’s• Customer relationships don’t end with a payment

– Use content to increase retention rates• Without good content, community is impossible• 90% of corporate websites talk about “How great they are”• Buyers are more in control today than ever – not sales organisations

Leveraging Owned Media Assets

• Recognise the value in your owned media assets – Websites, mobile applications, digital conversations/interactions

etc.• Brands/Businesses are becoming publishers and media outlets

– No limits to what an organisation can publish online for the consumption of their consituencies

• Become trusted knowledge experts in your business or sphere of operations

• Establish trust and develop relationships with customers and prospects– Be engaging, entertaining, educative, informative etc..– Allow user participation and transparent engagement

Advantages

• Creates demand generation and awareness through value add publishing

• Creates a less-frictional way of converting prospects into sales– When used in conjunction with lead management systems

• Helps build long-term relationships rather than one-off sales • Creates stickiness to your owned media assets (rather than to

paid ones)• Once started, provides an ongoing process and framework to

control and publish valuable information

Content Mktg: Success Vs Failure

• Characteristics of Success– Understanding the informational needs of your customers– Knowing how those informational needs mix with your marketing

goals and objectives – Mapping content schedule to user profiles and buyer cycles– Being consistent (content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint)– Listen and continually evolve the program

• Characteristics of Failure– Always selling, rather than informing and educating – Not listening, thus not evolving the content program– Waiting for perfection to come before you deliver the content.

Content Types

Content types

• The content and digital media on your Web site, blog other content managed systems, partner sites etc..

• Facebook/MySpace/Bebo fan pages and posts• Tweets, status updates• E-mail newsletters• Blog posts, reader comments and reactions• Whitepapers, case studies, webinars, podcasts• Videos, demos, presentations, and custom animations• Product/service reviews• Forums• Articles and other intellectual property or knowledge sharing –

professional contributions etc.

Who creates the content• Internally

– Find employees who are knowledgeable and want to write– Re-purpose content that has been created over time for different

media• Partners, customers and third party experts

– Publish whitepapers, webinars, eBooks, articles etc…with partners• Customers

– If you create a community you can allow them to create feedback, suggest ideas, generate comments, develop engaged community etc..

– You can allow customers to make product recommendations – crowdsourcing

Purposeful Content

• Attention - your content needs to get noticed - and not just by anyone - by the audience you've targeted. Awareness - once people have engaged with your content, they should have some thoughts about your company - preferably favorable ones worth remembering.

• Mindshare - we need people to spend enough time with our content to actually "get" the ideas it's sharing.

• Anchor - once people have ingested the ideas, your content needs to work to make sure that those ideas take precedence in forming how your audience thinks about the topic.

• Action - your content is sent out on a mission to get people to DO something.• Conversation - beyond the action your content requests, it needs to ensure that the audience has

a clear enough understanding that they can now talk with others and share your ideas with them in their own words.?

• Confidence - the learning your content provides needs to help people feel certain that they know what they need to take the next step...and just what that might be.

• Competence - your content must provide evidence that your company can actually do what it says it can.

• Invitation - content must entice people to spend more time with your company - whether through opting in for a newsletter, attending a webinar, subscribing to an RSS feedAuthority - content must inspire reliance on your company for consistently valuable insights

Sales Funnels

Traditional Funnel