Content's Role in Online Retail - Content Marketing Best Practices

Copyright © 2013 PM Digital.

All rights reserved. This information is deemed PROPRIETARY

and CONFIDENTIAL by PM Digital. Unauthorized use or disclosure is prohibited. 1

CONTENT’S ROLE IN RETAIL

PRESENTED BY:

CLAY CAZIER

HTTP://WWW.PMDIGITAL.COM

JULY 25, 2013

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and CONFIDENTIAL by PM Digital. Unauthorized use or disclosure is prohibited.

� Intro

� What is Content Marketing?

� Content Marketing Best Practices

� Content Marketing in Action

� Outro

AGENDA




WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?

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“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

DEFINITIONS

� 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.

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SURVEY INFORMATION




BEST PRACTICES

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� The goal: understand and engage

target audiences to produce a desired

outcome.

� 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:

1. Audience (Persona) Analysis

2. Linguistic (Keyword) Analysis

3. Content Calendar / Plan

Followed by:

1. Content Development

2. Content Marketing / Distribution

3. Reporting

CONTENT STRATEGY, DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING

Audience Analysis

Linguistic Analysis

Content Plan

Content Development

Content Marketing

Report & Analyze

Typical Goals:

• awareness

• leads

• sales

• retention

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� 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

CONTENT STRATEGY – AUDIENCE (PERSONA) ANALYSIS

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CONTENT STRATEGY – LINGUISTIC (KEYWORD) ANALYSIS

� 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.

Linguistic Analysis is a research study of

the language used by target audiences.

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� 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.

CONTENT STRATEGY – CONTENT CALENDAR & PLAN

� 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 Target Audience Channel Content Type Content Idea Desired Action Metric

Week of May 21

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Monday, May 20, 2013 Discount Shipping Starts Edward & Ingrid Website + Social Promo

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Friday, May 24, 2013 Victoria Day (Canada) Adam Affluent Website Whitepaper

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Week of May 28

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013 Memorial Day Edward Empty Nester Twitter Contest

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Friday, May 31, 2013 Most kids out of school Ingrid the Influencer Offline Event

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Week of June 4

Sunday, June 02, 2013

Monday, June 03, 2013 Product X Launching All Website + Social Article

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Thursday, June 06, 2013 D Day, WWII Edward Empty Nester Blog Photo Essay

Friday, June 07, 2013

� 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.

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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

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT – BEST PRACTICES

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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.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT – BEST PRACTICES

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� 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

MEASURING SUCCESS – AWARENESS & CONSUMPTION METRICS

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� 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

MEASURING SUCCESS – CONVERSION & ROI METRICS

� 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




CONTENT MARKETING IN ACTION

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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

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 US-

based consumers.

• Researched and secured links from high quality,

relevant sites to create new connections to the US site

(off-site authority building).

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

IMPROVING NON-BRAND ORGANIC – CASE STUDY

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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

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).

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.

IMPROVING NON-BRAND ORGANIC – CASE STUDY

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GUEST BLOGGING – CASE STUDY

Google Rank

Keyword Position Change From 10/1 /12 – 4/1/13

Keyword #1 +68

Keyword #2 +3

Keyword #3 +9

Keyword #4 +2

Keyword #5 +6

Results

The PM Digital team’s guest

blogging activity for this leading

retailer greatly improved

keyword rankings in Google.

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CONNECTING TO AUDIENCES WITH ON-PAGE VIDEO CONTENT

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USING CONTENT TO CONNECT WITH A “DEEP” B2B AUDIENCE

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CONNNECTING WITH TWO AUDIENCES USING TWO APPROACHES

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CONNECTING AUDIENCES TO TRADITIONALLY DRY SUBJECT MATTER

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CONTENT MARKETING VIA SOCIAL MEDIA – CASE STUDY

Webpage To Drive Facebook Traffic

Content Rich, Engaging

Facebook Page

Book Recommendation Engine

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 Facebook-

only 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

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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

CONTENT MARKETING VIA SOCIAL APP – CASE STUDY

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� 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

IMAGE CONTENT MARKETING




TAKE AWAYS

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� 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.

TAKE AWAYS

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THANK YOU

5 Hanover Square

New York, NY 10004

www.pmdigital.com

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.

Clay’s role at PMD is to provide the strategic foundation,

best practices and business support needed to craft ROI-

positive 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.

[email protected]

http://blog.pmdigital.com/author/claycazier

@jclayc

(212) 405-1923