Beyond Cats: The Basics of Digital Content Marketing

@DeirdreWalsh

Education – The University of TexasBachelor of Science in Public Relations

Minors in English and Business

Public RelationsAgency & Corporate PR

HP, Allstate, National Instruments

Looking Ahead: Joining Silicon Labs as Director of Corporate Marketing

in April 2015

Social MarketingBuilt 1st online community in 2006 with 150k members

Expanded to use all social technologiesMeasurable business impact

Content & Digital MarketingIntegration and experience across social, web, email

Strategic use of content

My Career Path

Goals of Today

• Purrrfect understanding of content marketing

• Actionable checklist for building a success program

Content Marketing Defined

“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” ~Content Marketing Institute

Website Conversion Rate is 6X Higher for Those Adopting

Content Marketing (2.9% vs. .5%) ~Aberdeen Group, 2014

78% of CMOs see Content as the Future of Marketing

~Demand Metric, 2014

48% of Marketers Support 3 to 5 Buying Stages with Dedicated Content ~LinkedIn Technology

Marketing Community

The Challenge

We know the best way to engage buyers and pull them through the funnel is with educational, valuable content that addresses their concerns and interests. However, understanding the importance of content and executing a streamlined strategy are two very different things.

Average b2b spends 28% of budget on content marketing. ~CMI

60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused. ~SiriusDecisions

The Solution

Build an approach and process that enables us to create and scale valuable content that aligns with the needs of the organization and appeals to our audiences.

Business: Understand your company’s key business and marketing goals (in terms of sales, brand awareness, lead generation, web traffic, engagement, or other metrics).

Audience: Document goals depending on stage of their journey, role, pain points, etc. • Prospects: information, find experts • New Customer: started, proficiency, help• Advanced Customer: heard, rewarded, famous

Then, document a strategic plan for using content to impact these goals.

1. Define Objectives.

2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

The board gathers to discuss the big themes and initiatives for upcoming month, and all representatives share the content needs, projects, and ideas from their departments. Getting these stakeholders together helps

• break down the silos• open up communication• create consistency throughout user

experience. • represents every team’s interests• speed up process• get key decisions made quickly• meet real business and user goals

Edito

rial)Board) Managing)Editor)

Marke0ng)Leadership)

Pillar)Representa0ves)

Channel)Representa0ves)

Experts,)Writers,)Editors)

Create cross-functional, editorial board.

2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

1.Ed-board ideas are organized into strategic campaigns based on themes, product updates, and events.

2.The Managing Editor and the content specialists plan major assets called “anchors” to support one or multiple campaigns across departments.

3.Each department maps how it will reuse content anchor by breaking them into multiple derivative assets.

4.Once published, each department pushes these content assets through distribution channels reaching buyers at all stages of funnel.

Identify content “anchors.”

2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

Top of Funnel: Web, PR and Social Teams• Drive traffic to website and community and convert visitors into leads• Provide channels with both large and derivative assets they can repurpose• Ex: blog posts, articles, infographics, presentations, videos, tweets, updates

Middle of Funnel: Marketing and Demand Generation Teams• Nurture contacts• Ex: Large assets, email campaigns, blog posts, videos, articles within emails

Bottom of Funnel: Sales Team• Drive new business• Content is educational and product-centric• Case studies, testimonials, product overviews, competitive reviews

Post-Sale: Customer Marketing• Have successful, happy customers• Instead of pushing information on an awesome new feature, provide customers with content

that will help them thrive and inspire them to do more.

Align functions to funnel.

2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

Create content workflow process.

2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

• Product managers and marketing do the majority of the digital writing today. They are already juggling so many balls, the time and effort they devote to crafting copy is decreasing.

• This fact is leading forward-thinking marketers to seek out either experienced content writers or outsource writing to agencies or marketplaces that specialize in writing or creating content.

Determine Resources.

58 percent of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets in the next year (Forbes)

2. Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

Create tools and templates, including calendars and project briefs.

3. Create. Create. Create.

Content can’t and shouldn’t ever be perfect. Instead, brands should view it as a work in

progress, ever-evolving, and iterative. It should evolve as the

audience interacts and comments. It should be human

and authentic.~ Christine Dobbin, digital

strategist

3. Create. Create. Create.

• Size of Content (snackable vs. long form) • At the opposite end of the spectrum from anchors you have tweets, 6-

second Vines, Snapchats, Whisper secrets, small infographics, etc. These continue to grow at breakneck speeds.

• Shareablity • A recent study by Buzzsumo

showed that people are far more likely to share lengthy, in-depth content. Part of this is for SEO purposes–Google favors posts over 2,000 word on its front page–and partly because consumers are sick of the same regurgitated 500-word pieces.

3. Create. Create. Create.

• Explore new methods of communication - visual, slideshare storytelling, even meerkat has a place in B2B.

4. Publish and Manage.

1. Know the role of each channel. 2. Have a strong editorial calendar. 3. Have a consistent brand voice as well as individual thought leaders.

The basics.

4. Publish and Manage.

1. Be like Buzzfeed - end clickbait! 2. Go mobile. 3. Make LinkedIn your BFF. It wants to be THE destination for online marketing

for professionals (ie. Bizo acquisition). 4. Engage with influencers. 5. Focus on context.

"Context’s untapped opportunity is to get an extremely granular understanding of customers, then to anticipate their needs, wants, affinities, and expectations and develop unique insights to power better marketing across all devices,

channels, localities, and brand experiences.

Context, in other words, takes not only the “who” into account, but also the when, where, why, and how.

Simply put — it’s deeper targeting and more on-point messaging." Rebecca Lieb

Advanced tactics.

5. Promote your content. ($$$)

• Use known channels - PR, advertising, social.

• Think holistically about the experience (ie. twitter and linkedin website cards). 

Social Media has THE HIGHEST win rate of any marketing channel.

Jive Community was third largest source of net new names in 2014.

Jive Case Study

6. Measure and Optimize.

• GOAL: measure content production vs. performance

“ONLY  27%  of  B2B  Marketers  say  they  are  effec8vely  tracking  content  u8liza8on  metrics.”  SiriusDecisions

Produc'on:  manufacturing  assets  from  raw  ideas    

Number  of  assets  producedTypes  of  content  producedContent  produced  by  author

Reputa'on:  sen1ment  across  key  channels

Score  of  community,  social  media  and  public  rela9ons

Reach:  extent  to  which  audience  views  the  content

Traffic  data  (visits,  views,  search,  referrals)  Number  of  subscribers/community  members/social  network  size

Rela'onships:  reading,  downloading,  sharing,  commen1ng,  sending,  etc.

Number  of  engagements    

Revenue:  impact  of  content  on  business  outcomes

Number  of  net  new  names

6. Measure and Optimize.

Facebook:)Marke&ng)Content)Exceeds)Expecta&ons)

Customers 11% Follower

Engagement 3%

Industry 37%

Jive Promo 48%

Office Hero 1%

BRAND ACTIVITY BY TOPIC

Customers 12%

Follower Engagement

0%

Industry 28% Jive Promo

60%

Office Hero 0%

ENGAGEMENT BY TOPIC

Twi$er:(Followers(Want(Industry(Exper4se(

Office hero 7%

Jive Promo 33%

Industry 25%

Follower Engagement

25%

Customer 10%

BRAND ACTIVITY BY TOPIC Office hero

0%

Jive Promo 38%

Industry 40%

Follower Engagement

10%

Customer 12%

ENGAGEMENT BY TOPIC

Checklist for Content Success

• Define Objectives.

• Get Your S*!t Together Internally.

• Create. Create. Create.

• Publish and Promote.

• Measure and Optimize.

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