Hooked on ContentDeveloping a successful content marketing strategy with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

03

1305

Introduction

Finding the Fish

Baiting the Hook

2918

Casting the Line

Weighing your Catch

04

1609

35

25

What is Content Marketing

Creating the Bait

Attaching the Sinker

Reeling it in

About ClickDimensions

and why should I do it?

Developing your content

Targeted messaging

Turn conversions into customers

Analytics and optimization

Content distribution

Call to action

Personas and segmentation

Cont

ents

34ConclusionGo fishing!

3

IntroductionThere are pages upon pages written by experts explaining the importance of using effective content as part of your marketing strategy. Most of these content marketing guides, while very educational and impactful, are solely focused on creating the content itself and not necessarily the entire process of turning the content into dollars and cents.

Having compelling and relevant content is indeed very important, and there are different ways to determine what content to create. But that’s only part of the picture. In this eBook, we are going to explore how to use your content to generate high quality leads. In the following pages, you’ll learn how to revolutionize the way you build, execute and measure your content marketing strategies

using Microsoft Dynamics CRM by creating a collaborative and complete content marketing campaign.

While the ideas and concepts are still helpful even if you are not working with these platforms, all of the examples in this eBook were created using Microsoft Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) and the ClickDimensions marketing automation solution. If after reading this eBook, you would like more information about marketing automation for CRM, please visit www.clickdimensions.com or contact us at marketing@clickdimensions.com.

We hope that you find this eBook helpful in casting your content line into the water and catching the big fish!

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What is content marketingand why should I do it?

As most salespeople will tell you, some of the easiest deals to close are with prospects that come to you to buy. These “inbound” prospects are already familiar with your brand, they trust your company, and they are knowledgeable about your products or services. As marketers, we understand the value of inbound marketing – enabling potential customers to become aware of a brand by educating, helping, or entertaining them in some way. That’s where content marketing comes in.

For illustration purposes, we will be relating the creation and execution of content marketing to fishing. So, in this example, content is the “bait” that will attract the “fish” – your potential customers.

The word “bait” sometimes gets a bad rap because it is often thought of as being deceptive or manipulative. However, good content is designed to provide value to your audience in exchange for the right to market to the content consumers. Types of content can include:

• eBooks• White papers• Articles• Webinars• Demos / Trials• Videos• Online training• Newsletters• Blog posts• Case studies• Infographics• Presentations• Reference guides• Podcasts

Content marketing costs

62%less than traditional marketing

Demand Metric

For your content marketing strategy to be successful, you must first and foremost provide content that a consumer would want. As mentioned earlier, this is usually in the form of educating (white papers, articles, case studies), helping (reference guides, online training) or entertaining (videos, infographics) the reader. Your content must be compelling enough to engage your audience and eventually convert them into prospects and leads. If your content is not relevant or informative, the fish will not take the bait.

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Before you go chumming the waters (i.e. spending time and money on writing, designing, and slinging your content to the masses), it’s important to take a step back and figure out what type of fish you’re pursuing. By properly identifying your audience first, you will be able to plan a successful fishing trip, including what type of bait to use.

In marketing terms, a persona is a fictional person that represents your ideal buyer. At what sized company does he work? Where does she live? What type of software does his company use? Where is she in the buying cycle? What are his purchasing motivations and/or pain points? These are examples of questions you should ask yourself when considering your target customer. Keep in mind that it’s possible that you may have several different ideal buyers, especially at different stages of the buying process. By defining these personas, you can consider them when creating your content – Will this piece of content be relevant to my buyer? Will it bring them value?

Finding the FishPersonas & segmentation

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While you may already have an idea of what your typical customer looks like, tools like Google Analytics can help you discover specific details about where your audience is coming from and what their interests are. What pages do your web visitors view when they get to your site? What are the demographics of your audience? Where are they located?

Dynamics CRM is also extremely helpful in completing this task. You have an extremely powerful slicing and dicing platform to divide your audience into manageable groups. You can use the power of advanced finds, views, and dynamic marketing lists to dive through the opportunities that you’ve closed to

determine what your best customers have in common. By doing this, you create segments and personas that will help you seek out more of these same buyers.

Google Analytics

7

Perhaps take a look at the industries of your opportunities and/or active customer accounts. In this example, sales are strong in the high-tech and professional services industries, as well as with non-profits and educational institutions. However, sales are not performing as well in the government sector. So when we develop our marketing pieces, we should focus on content that will appeal to “Jeff” who works for a software company or “Betty” who works for a leading university. Or, we could create a content piece directed at “Larry” who works for the Department of Labor hoping to stimulate that sluggish market segment.

What’s the difference between a segment and a persona?

Segments are customer groups tied together by common factors like geography, age, or purchase history. Often advertising is aimed at different market segments.

Personas are fictional “people” that embody a mix of commonly-known characteristics and other analytical inferences that are held by your ideal customer. Personas are helpful when making strategic decisions about how to market to your audience.

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The point is, in order to decide what bait to use, you have to understand the reason behind why that bait works or not. You need to know more about your audience than you think you know. Identifying your customer is not just setting a target, it is the first step in positioning your value and essential to creating successful content.

Social discovery tools allow you to gain even more insight into your buyers and their behaviors. ClickDimensions’ Social Discovery embeds data and direct links from social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, right into your lead or contact’s CRM record.

Use segmentation to compare leads to opportunities

For example, in CRM, perform an advanced find to chart the job titles of your leads, then compare those job titles to your closed opportunities. Are they the same type of person? Are most of your leads Marketing Managers, but the opportunities are being closed with Chief Marketing Officers?

Perhaps that is part of the sales cycle – the CMO has the final purchasing decision – or perhaps you are targeting the wrong persona.

Try adjusting your content marketing to appeal to the decision maker and see how that affects sales.

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Creating the BaitDeveloping your content

Now that you have identified to whom you are marketing, it’s time to decide what content to provide them. What bait will attract your fish?

Remember what we discussed earlier – effective content marketing does one (or more) things for your audience: educate, help or entertain. Content marketing is not a sales pitch. Of course you want your efforts to attract people to your company for the purpose of buying your products or services, but content marketing is about developing a relationship with your buyers. You want to attract them to your brand, but not scare them away with in-your-face sales tactics.

7 out of 10 consumers Like Custom Content because information is targeted to specific interests

Custom Content Council

10

Save the sales pitches for your brochures, pricing sheets, and sales presentations. Customers will want to hear that information when they are ready to buy. In the meantime, attract them to your organization by providing them with something they will find valuable, useful or entertaining. When done well, this approach will deliver incredible results. Prospects will come into the buying process with a knowledge of your company, trust in your expertise, and a preference for your brand over the competition.

ClickDimensions builds and sells marketing automation tools for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. So, our buyer personas are people that either already use Microsoft CRM, or are at some point in the process of evaluating or implementing the platform. Knowing this, nearly all of our content (like this eBook!) is focused to some degree on Microsoft CRM. It brings value to our audience, whether or not they end up buying ClickDimensions.

In addition to our regular blog, newsletter and webinars, we publish several eBooks per year. Previous books include our Marketing with Microsoft CRM Idea eBook, Microsoft CRM Implementation Blueprint, and Marketing ROI for Dynamics CRM Quick Guide. Each of these content pieces was aimed at helping or educating our readers on topics that are relevant to them – generating marketing ideas, effectively implementing CRM, and measuring ROI.

One of the primary ways that we select topics for our eBooks is in response to the needs or wants of our audience. For example, earlier this year as we were brainstorming ideas for our next eBook, we decided to look at our Google AdWords account to see what keywords people were searching that led them to ClickDimensions.

Naturally, the list included the expected “Microsoft CRM” and “marketing” related keywords. But one particular trend caught our eye. Keywords related to CRM “training,” “tutorials” and “certification” seemed to be ranking high on the list.

With all of that being said, don’t miss the opportunity to include information about your company as a part of your content! For example, include a link to your website from within a blog post, provide contact information in your white paper, or feature a relevant product in the sidebar of your eBook. Make it possible for the reader to get more information if and when they want it.

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That got us thinking... While we’re not in the business of writing CRM training manuals, we had a pretty good collection of places to go to find help – from websites to blogs to discussion forums and more. So that’s how the Training Resource Guide for Microsoft Dynamics CRM was born. We assembled the Training Resource Guide to assist CRM users in finding the help they need and also introduce them to new resources and products they may not have known were available.

The content would be valuable to anyone using Microsoft CRM – perfect “bait” for the fish that we were seeking to attract. While the guide was not a sales tool, it would help us identify prospects who are CRM users, some of which may be interested in a marketing automation solution as well. That’s the key to creating effective content – provide information that will educate, help or entertain, and thus begin the process of engaging and building relationships with your audience.

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Where does the content come from?As an expert in your field, most of your content should be generated from within your organization. If you need help turning your great idea into a professionally-written piece, there many resources to find freelance writers and designers, including:

• Elance• oDesk • Guru• Freelancer

Alternatively, there are organizations that will develop original content that is applicable to your industry, including:

• Brafton• Brandpoint• Imagination

If you are having a difficult time coming up with ideas, peruse one of these websites:

• Content Marketing Institute• Custom Content Council• Content Marketing Ideas (Forbes)• Content Marketing Articles (Mashable)

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Baiting the HookCall to actionBehind every successful sales and marketing communication there is a call to action. Without it, you might as well dump your bait in the water and hope that the fish jump into the boat.

Some content should be given away with no strings attached. While not as measurable, “free” content marketing is highly successful at raising brand awareness, developing

consumer trust and establishing thought leadership. However, your content marketing strategy should also include content pieces that can be used to identify potential customers and generate leads.

It seems pretty straightforward, but it’s really an art that you must refine. Too often, organizations create really good content, but don’t get great results.

The problem isn’t with the content or the audience, but rather the request/conversion process. Content marketing is an exchange of information. You give your audience something they value, and they give you information about themselves. Asking for too much information can deter potential readers from submitting a web form. However, not asking for any information in exchange for your content will leave

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you without valuable leads and unable to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

As the use of content marketing continues to grow, readers are becoming accustomed to providing information about themselves in exchange for the content they desire. However, make sure to use the right-sized hook for your bait. For example, you should only ask for an email address (and possibly a name) to subscribe to your e-newsletter, but you can require much more information – perhaps title, company name, phone number – when someone requests a trial of your product.

Keep simplicity in mind when converting visitors. If you are driving traffic from ads or posts, send the reader to a landing page with minimal navigation options and a single call to action. Landing pages can be a very effective funnel for your lead generation and qualification process, but if you give your prospects too many options, they might not commit to any. Below is an example of the landing page we use for the Training Resource Guide:

Our form is short – requesting only name, company and email – and there are minimal links from the page. Visitors could click the “ClickDimensions” button or logo at the top of the page to visit our website, or click a link to read our privacy policy, but otherwise the sole call to action is to “Get the Guide!”

of consumers understand that the company is

selling something, but that’s fine as long as the information is valuable

Custom Content Council

77%

73%Prefer to get information about A Company in a Collection of Articles Rather than as an ad

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Don’t confuse content marketing with sales. Scale your call to action to the content you are presenting. Calls to action such as “Buy Now” rarely work in content marketing; less aggressive calls such as “Download the Whitepaper” or “Watch the Video” are often the most effective. The content marketing proposition is not a one-and-done process to close business; it is a means of establishing mutual trust, trading information, and building a relationship with your prospects that hopefully will be nurtured into a sales opportunity.

With ClickDimensions, you can build landing pages and forms directly within Microsoft Dynamics CRM without knowing any HTML. Our drag-and-drop tools make it easy to build landing pages and embed forms. When a visitor completes a form, his or her email address is checked against all email addresses in CRM to avoid duplicate data. Lead or contact records can be created for visitors who are not already in your CRM, and all the data the visitor submits on the form is linked to their CRM record.

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Attaching the SinkerTargeted messaging

You’ve identified your fish, you’ve created your content bait, and you’re asking the right questions to hook them, but somehow that’s just not enough. Fishing line floats, and your baited hook doesn’t sink fast enough, which means you could be wasting precious time out on the water. Luckily for you, some brilliant caveman decided to tie a rock to a string, and targeted messaging was born.

From your personas, you learned more about your audience which enabled you to create relevant content, but now you need to use that content to appeal to your audience in a way that speaks to them.

HOW ORGANIZATIONS TAILOR CONTENT

CMI/MarketingProfs

17

At ClickDimensions, our target audience has two major criteria: use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and an interest in marketing. Our ideal buyer is a marketing person who is currently using CRM, but often we will also market to segments who have only one of the criteria. Generally, we target our content and messaging to these audiences: • Microsoft CRM user • Marketing professional • Marketing professional using MS CRM (ideal buyer)

For example, our Training Resource Guide for Microsoft Dynamics CRM was targeted specifically at Microsoft CRM users. There was very little content in the guide that directly related to marketing. Our pay-per-click advertising campaign for the Training Resource Guide focused on CRM-related keywords and contained messaging that would appeal to someone using Microsoft CRM. This content piece allowed us to attract and identify individuals in our first group – CRM users. Hopefully some marketing folks were captured in that campaign as well, but that was not the primary goal of the content.

In contrast, this Hooked on Content eBook is solely geared toward marketing professionals. And while there is a CRM component, this eBook was written to benefit all marketers, regardless of their software platform. Our online ads contained verbiage directed at marketers, and our campaign focused on marketing keywords.

Not surprisingly, our most successful content item to date has been our Marketing with Microsoft CRM Idea eBook. This eBook is targeted directly at our ideal buyer – a marketing professional who uses Microsoft CRM. People who show an interest in this eBook are the most likely to also subscribe to our newsletter, download other content, or request a demo of our solution.

When developing your content marketing strategy, consider either (a) developing different content items for each of your target audiences, or (b) create advertising campaigns for your content that appeal to your audiences in different ways. Consider each persona’s interests, motivations, and pain points.

As we discussed earlier, content marketing is not about closing the deal on the first eBook download or newsletter subscribe, but opening the door to developing a relationship with individuals that have an interest in what your company is offering.

Use CRM marketing lists to manage segmented audiences

As visitors download your content, add them to marketing lists in CRM that are relevant to their interests. For example, anyone who downloads the Training Resource Guide would be added to a “CRM User” marketing list and/or labeled as a “CRM User” on their lead or contact record. That way, when we get ready to distribute another relevant content item, we can easily send a targeted message to these people whom we know have an interest in CRM.

Using ClickDimensions with your CRM makes this process even easier, as contacts and leads can be added to a marketing list (or lists) automatically as they submit a form. ClickDimensions can also trigger other actions as a form is submitted, such as sending an auto-response email, notifying a salesperson of the new lead, or starting the lead on a nurture marketing campaign.

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Casting the LineContent distribution

If there is one absolute truth about fishing, it’s that you won’t catch anything if you don’t have your line in the water. After you’ve committed to a content marketing strategy and have content ready to go, cast it out! In our fishing metaphor, your “line” is how you distribute your content. In what way do you need to be communicating with your customer to be relevant? How much depth do you need in email, social, mobile, and web? With a braided fishing line, the strength is in the collaboration of the strands, as it is with your marketing channels.

Content marketing campaigns that generate and qualify leads don’t have to use all of the available options, but they should take advantage of the same channels that your target customers are using. You may already have an idea where most of your leads are coming from – perhaps through organic search or online ads. But try some different outlets and test to see how your audience responds. You may be surprised to find that your Twitter followers are also interested in your blog, or that your infographic is repinned all over Pinterest.

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SEO, SEM, PPC, blogs, shares, tweets, pins... it can get confusing. Your instinct may be to take a single piece of content, and blast the same message throughout every channel. However, different channels are used in different ways. Let’s review some of the most popular options and see how they can help with your content distribution:

EMAIL MARKETINGWhat it is: Directly sending a marketing message to an individual (or group of individuals) via email. Email marketing can be sent to either internal customer/prospect databases or purchased marketing lists.

Advantages: Widespread usage (nearly everyone has an email account). Relatively inexpensive. Immediate delivery directly to the recipient. Interaction and ROI can be measured easily.

Disadvantages: Messages are often ignored or deleted by the recipient. Marketing emails can be rejected or filtered if perceived as spam.

In this discussion, we are focusing on digital marketing rather than traditional marketing methods such as direct mail, telemarketing and tradeshows. However, there are still opportunities to integrate your content marketing into your traditional campaigns – maybe distribute a white paper at a tradeshow or include a URL for your latest eBook in your next print ad.

Investment: In its simplest form, marketing emails can be sent from any email program. However, many organizations utilize email marketing or marketing automation solutions (such as ClickDimensions) to manage and distribute their email campaigns. Costs vary depending upon the volume of emails sent and the features included in your email distribution program.

Best practices: Opt-in or permission-based email marketing has become the standard for communicating with consumers via email. If someone has “opted in” to receiving emails from your company, then the emails are expected and not considered spam.

For content marketing: Email marketing can be a great way to reach a targeted audience. Particularly by utilizing segmented marketing lists of CRM leads and contacts, you can directly reach individuals who are interested in your content. Newsletters delivered via email are also a very popular method of content marketing.

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION(SEO)What it is: The process of trying to increase the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic (unpaid) search results. Using tactics such as editing the content of the website, customizing the HTML code, and increasing the number of links to a site, the website owner tries to get the site to appear higher in the search results so more viewers will see the link.

Advantages: Search engine usage is very popular among web users, giving you access to a large audience. Essentially free advertising if your website can place highly in search results.

Disadvantages: Search engine algorithms frequently change, making it difficult to maintain your placement in organic search results. There are no guarantees of your placement in the results or the amount of traffic you will receive.

Investment: Very minimal if you follow the generally-accepted methods of improving your search engine placement (i.e. sitemaps, keywords, meta-tagging, crosslinking); your website administrator should perform those tasks when building your website. However, many companies also choose to invest heavily in professional SEO services to monitor and improve their ranking.

Best practices: Follow the “white hat” techniques to optimize your website (tactics recommended by the search engines). “Black hat” SEO strategies attempt to improve search rankings by using deceptive methods that are not approved by search engines. Black hat techniques sometimes work in the short-run, but may result in your website being blocked from the search engine entirely.

For content marketing: Whenever you create a landing page for a piece of content, follow the basic SEO best practices

to improve its exposure with search engines. Link your content to relevant websites, and encourage other reputable sites to link back to your content. Blogs are especially useful in improving SEO as they are typically rich in keywords and the content is updated frequently. While search engine results are not guaranteed, implementing standard SEO techniques will improve the chances that your content is ranked highly.

Content+

Blogs give websites

434% more indexed pages

and

97% more indexed links

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PAY-PER-CLICK (PPC) ADVERTISINGWhat it is: Online advertising where ads are placed on a website and the advertiser is charged a fee by the website owner (or ad network) when the ad is clicked. The most popular websites that offer PPC advertising are search engines such as Google and Bing. In this case, advertisers bid on keywords to decide the cost per click of the ad displayed when a user searches on that keyword.

Advantages: Immediate search engine visibility with guaranteed exposure if you pay the required amount (i.e. the highest bid). Control over budgets and audiences enables highly-targeted ads. Ability to view real-time results and statistics. Remarket ads to users who have previously visited your website.

Disadvantages: Many PPC programs are complicated and must be consistently monitored to have guaranteed success. Can be costly depending upon your PPC strategy and desired results. Many users ignore online ads.

Investment: PPC requires a small initial investment to get started – you only pay when your ad is clicked. However, costs can skyrocket if you are aggressive and wish to maintain the highest bid for popular keywords or if you do not actively monitor your budget and spend. Many companies also choose to invest in a PPC marketing firm to handle their online advertising.

Best practices: Before starting your PPC campaign, clearly define your goals, audience and budget. Create relevant ads that will increase your click-through rate. Make sure each ad has a clear call to action. Test and analyze your results often to ensure that you are reaching the right consumers with your keywords and ads.

For content marketing: PPC advertising can be a great way to quickly reach a target audience that would be interested in your content. Ads can link directly to a landing page for your content item, streamlining the process of converting visitors. Remarketing ads can be particularly helpful when content marketing; set up campaigns

that remarket only to visitors that have not yet seen your content, and stop showing those ads to them once they have visited your site and downloaded the content.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

What it is: The process of gaining exposure (i.e. website traffic or brand awareness) through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube. Social media marketing relies heavily on word-of-mouth communication between users to share information or content. Relationship building and positive interactions with users drive social media success.

87%

of marketers use social media

to distribute contentCMI/MarketingProfs

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Advantages: Cost effective. Ability to provide unlimited information to your audience. Gain insight about your customers with two-way communication. Ability to reach target markets, increase brand awareness, and generate brand loyalty.

Disadvantages: Time intensive as social sites must be highly active and continually monitored to bring value. No control over what users say or post about your company – negative feedback can be publicly available.

Investment: Very low cost as most social media sites are free to participate. Companies may need to invest in staff to manage an active social presence, however.

Best practices: Before you start, decide how you want to interact with your audience through social media. Invest time and resources in developing an active social presence. Listen to your followers and engage with them in a way that builds trust and brand loyalty.

For content marketing: Since anyone can share and distribute your content, social media offers unlimited organic reach. Widely distribute your content across your social networks and position it in a way that will resonate with your followers. The goal is to make your content compelling enough that they want to share it with their social network.

At ClickDimensions, we use a combination of all of the marketing channels described above to distribute a new piece of content. When we released the Training Resource Guide, we first shared the guide via email to our newsletter subscriber marketing list. Next, we wrote a blog post about the guide and then shared it across our social media networks. We also created a pay-per-click ad campaign that included search ads and remarketing display ads promoting the guide. The result was over 500 downloads of the Training Resource Guide in the first few days.

Regardless of which channels you choose to distribute your content, carefully construct your ads. You will want to track

Many social media sites also offer PPC advertising programs. For example, advertisers can purchase ads on Facebook that appear in users’ news feeds, or they can pay for promoted tweets on Twitter that are displayed when triggered by a keyword or hashtag.

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where your readers came from, which ad they viewed to get to your content, and what content item they accessed or downloaded. Analytics will be discussed in detail later, but first we want to be sure that we are capturing the data we need.

URL TAGGINGIf you use Google Analytics, then you are probably familiar with the concept of adding parameters to your URLs to capture more detailed, useful data about your visits. Basically, you are adding a special tag to your destination URL. Then, when a customer clicks your ad and visits that page, the parameters are passed to your website.

In the example URL below, we are passing the parameters “source” and “campaign” with this link from a Google AdWords ad for our Idea eBook. Tags follow a slash (/) and question mark symbol (?) at the end of your URL. The value of each parameter follows an equal sign (=). So, in this example, our “source” is tagged as “adwords” and our “campaign” is tagged as “RMK-ideaebook.” Multiple parameters are separated by an ampersand (&).

http://www.clickdimensions.com/ebook/?source=adwords&campaign=RMK-ideaebook

In ClickDimensions, information about every visit to your website is captured, including the parameters in your URLs. So when you review your site visits in ClickDimensions (or look at your traffic in Google Analytics), you can use the parameter information to help you analyze your campaign performance and improve your targeting and return on investment.

CONVERSION PAGESMost pay-per-click websites will offer a way to track conversions – actions completed by your visitors (i.e. filling out a form or downloading an eBook) after clicking on your ad. Typically, conversions are tracked by inserting a piece of HTML code provided by the PPC provider into your “thank you” page (the page the visitor will see after they have submitted

Using CRM and ClickDimensions, we have created dashboards to monitor downloads of our premium content items. Our marketing team can see at a glance how a content item is trending from week-to-week, and see how many leads have been generated from each content marketing campaign.

For more information about URL tagging, visit:

http://blog.clickdimensions.com/2012/09/gaining-more-intelligence-from-paid-search-clicks-through-url-tagging.html

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375447

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the form). When that page is loaded, the tracking code will notify the PPC provider that not only did a visitor click on your ad, but they also converted by completing your form.

Each PPC provider (i.e. Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook) has unique tracking code, so it is important to remember to include scripts for each site before running your ad.

You can also track conversions in CRM using ClickDimensions. In our Training Resource Guide example, we created a web form in ClickDimensions to capture name, company and email when a visitor downloads the guide. Not only can we see when a visitor views our Training Resource Guide landing page, but we can also view the posted form in CRM using ClickDimensions. And since any ClickDimensions form can be linked to a CRM campaign, we can easily perform an advanced find to see how many conversions (posted forms) occurred for our Training Guide campaign.

For more information about tracking conversions, visit:

http://blog.clickdimensions.com/2012/01/using-google-adwords-conversion-tracking-with-clickdimensions-web-forms.html

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722022

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Reeling It InTurn conversions into customersAs we discussed earlier, the purpose of some content marketing is to develop thought leadership and brand awareness. You offer the content to your audience for free with no strings attached (often blogs and infographics are distributed this way). However, some content – we call it our “premium content” – should be offered in exchange for information from the visitor. This content is your “bait” to identify potential customers.

But what happens when the fish takes the bait? Do they immediately pop out of the water and flop into the boat? Not on this planet. Fish must be reeled in – often slowly and more leads per month

67%

On average, companies with blogs produce

Demand Metric

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methodically – and so do your prospective customers. Jerking the line too early, or waiting too long to set the hook can cost you missed customers and missed opportunities.

That’s where using CRM and marketing automation becomes invaluable. Tools like lead scoring and nurture programs can help you target the right fish and reel them into becoming customers.

WEB TRACKING AND LEAD SCORINGWith marketing automation solutions like ClickDimensions, you can use web tracking to see and measure the interactions a person has had with your content, including all the pages they viewed leading up to the content download, and all the visits, emails, and other interactions they’ve had afterwards. This gives you incredible insight into whether a visitor is interested in becoming a buyer, or whether they are just “surfing around,” perhaps looking for a job with your company or perusing other non-sales topics.

Lead scoring refers to quantifying the interest level of the individual based on email clicks, web form submissions, visits, page views, link clicks and file downloads. This lets you prioritize your leads and make the best use of your selling time. The more someone clicks on your emails and visits your site, the more interested they are. Certain activities, page visits or clicks can have higher or lower scores based on your priorities.

Internally, we’ve tweaked our default scoring values to weights that are right for us. Email link clicks are of high value to us, so they get 10 points each by default. Likewise, form submissions are worth 25 points. Each visit is worth 5 points. Most page views are worth 3 points each, but each of our product tour pages is set to 5 points (except for the main tour page which is 10) and our overview video is worth 15. When someone passes 50 points, we assume that they are interested. When they hit 100, it is time to really give them attention.

Learn more about web tracking >>

Learn more about lead scoring >>

ClickDimensions lead score and web tracking data on a contact profile in CRM

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NURTURE PROGRAMSNurture programs are also highly recommended for use with your content marketing campaigns. For example, when a visitor downloads your content, they get added to a marketing list. That list can be tied to a nurture program so that everyone who has downloaded that content item receives an email a few days later asking for feedback or pointing them to other content items. If they open or click a link in the email, then that lead moves on to another follow up process in the nurture, while leads that take no action receive a different message.

Let’s look at a nurture program for the Training Resource Guide. After someone downloads the guide, we place them on a marketing list aptly called the “Training Resource Guide Nurture” list. This list contains anyone who has downloaded the guide and who is actively being nurtured as a result. After one week, the nurture program will send an email asking the lead, “What did you think of the Training Resource Guide?” This email opens the door for the lead to engage with us and begin a dialog about the content item.

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If the initial email does not get a response, we wait a little while and then send the lead other emails with invitations to download other eBooks, subscribe to our newsletter or attend a webinar. The entire nurture consists of about six different emails over the course of 6-8 weeks. This is not a high-pressure sales tactic, but a slow drip marketing campaign to entice the lead into engaging with ClickDimensions by downloading other content or watching a demo of our solution. If a lead begins to show interest through interaction with our emails, a salesperson will get involved and contact the lead directly.

Since they are fully automated, nurture programs can be reeling in your fish in the background, while your sales team spends time and energy only on the leads that are ready to buy.

Our Training Resource Guide nurture also contains steps to notify a salesperson when someone clicks a link in one of our emails. The salesperson can then decide – perhaps by looking at the lead score – if they want to follow-up with the lead immediately, or let the nurture program continue to run.

Learn more about nurture marketing >>

Learn how to align your customer life cycles with your automated nurture campaigns >>

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Weighing Your CatchAnalytics and optimization

A good fisherman knows how to count his keep. You should have a method of easily analyzing the results of your content strategy and be able to attribute success, as well as adapt for optimization. You need to measure all aspects of the campaign – from the different promotional tactics, to the traffic driven to your landing page, to the number of conversions and leads, and ultimately to the dollars and cents generated from opportunities related to the content campaign.

Marketers’ Criteria for Measuring Content Marketing Success:

Web traffic 60% Sales lead quality 51% Social media sharing 45% Sales lead quantity 43% Direct sales 41% Feedback from customers 41% SEO ranking 41% Time spent on website 39% Inbound links 35% Company awareness 26% Increased customer loyalty 24% Product/service awareness 22% Cross-selling 13% Cost savings 5%

CMI/MarketingProfs

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The more you analyze the results of your content marketing campaign, the easier it is to derive what is working and address what isn’t. In fishing terms, if you aren’t marking down your numbers (i.e. plotting your coordinates, water clarity and depth) when you catch one fish, how can you expect to know what to do or where to fish the next time?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ClickDimensions make this process easy. The classic sales and marketing funnel is strengthened because all historical data is in one place (CRM) and flows from initial impression to bottom line revenue. You don’t have to spend valuable time sorting through different datasets from separate tools trying to tie sales numbers to your marketing activities, because it happens automatically. And best of all, you can attribute revenue to your content strategy using CRM campaigns to prove real ROI.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of how we have analyzed our content marketing efforts and used the results to strengthen our campaigns at ClickDimensions:

EMAIL NEWSLETTEREach month, we distribute an email newsletter to our subscribers. The monthly newsletter contains articles about marketing automation, best practices for using our software, and occasionally some news about our company. Using ClickDimensions with CRM, we are able to view statistics for each email sent. By monitoring the results of our newsletter emails each month, not only can we can see how well each newsletter performs, but recently we were also able to see the value of our premium content revealed through email clicks.

In early 2014, we released two eBooks – the Connected Campaign Guide in February and the Training Resource Guide in April. While our newsletter email open rates for these months were consistent with our average (around 28% open rate each month), our click rates were significantly higher in both February and April with click rates around 7% -- an impressive increase above our normal newsletter click rate of 5%. So while the same number of people

One way we monitor the performance of our monthly newsletters is through a CRM dashboard. On one screen, we can easily see trends for newsletter opt-ins, unsubscribes, clicked links, and social sharing.

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opened the emails, many more readers interacted with the newsletters that featured premium content.

Looking at the ClickDimensions Click Heat Map report (a report that shows the distribution of clicks to links in your email) for these newsletters confirmed the interest in our premium content. In both the February and April newsletters, over a third of the clicks were to links for the eBooks.

Heat maps are also helpful in deciding what content to include in your newsletter. Each month, review to see which stories perform well and which do not. Adjust your editorial calendar to include more content that resonates with your readers.

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OPTIMIZING AD CAMPAIGNSAs we discussed earlier, by using URL tagging and conversion pages, you can evaluate the success of your PPC campaigns and make adjustments where needed. At ClickDimensions, when we post a series of Google AdWords ads, we include URL parameters that are unique to each ad. If we get a better response to one version over another, we refocus our resources and budget towards what is working.

For example, we have been running a series of ads on Google AdWords encouraging visitors to watch a 7-minute demo video of our solution. We ran two different display ads in the same campaign – one set of ads includes the Microsoft Dynamics logo and the other set has a computer screen illustrating a demo.

Looking at click-through rates in our Google AdWords account, it appears that the ads with the Dynamics logo are performing better than the computer screen ads. And our text ads for this campaign confirm these results – the text ads that include marketing with CRM in the headline are performing better than the ads with a generic demo headline.

Click-through rates for the display ads featuring Dynamics CRM are performing higher than the generic demo ads.

Text ads that feature CRM are also performing better than the demo ads.

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It would seem that consumers may be attracted to the Microsoft Dynamics brand. Or perhaps that particular ad resonates with CRM users more than the other one. Given these results, we could increase our budget for the successful CRM ad group, or refine our ads based on their performance and discontinue unsuccessful ads.

To take the analysis even further, because we have tagged each URL with the name of the ad, we can run a report in CRM to see the leads that were generated from each ad and compare the results. Are we getting better quality leads from one ad set over the other?

Using CRM and ClickDimensions, we would perform an advanced find for web visits where the entry URL contained “content=DemoVideo-336x280” (the first ad) and where the lead record contained data. We would then review the leads – perhaps comparing lead scores – to see if we are getting high-quality leads.

This type of comparison can be performed not only for different ad types, but also for content items, campaigns, or any other metric you wish to track. Because all of the data is captured in CRM, it can be queried in a variety of ways.

No matter what method you use to analyze performance, the key is to define the key indicators that matter to you, accurately measure those metrics, and respond to the results in a way that will continually improve the performance of your content marketing campaign.

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With so many options for creating and distributing your ideas, content marketing can be one of the most valuable and cost effective strategies in your marketing toolbox. An organization of any size, in any industry, can develop and market content to its audience to improve brand visibility, establish thought leadership, and identify prospects for future sales.

As you develop your content marketing strategy, remember to:

• Use personas and segmentation to find your fish• Develop content bait that will be valuable to your

audience• Bait the hook with an effective call to action• Attach the sinker to target your message• Cast your line into the water and distribute your content

to various channels• Reel in your fish and turn conversions into customers• Use analytics and optimization to weigh your catch

Tools like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the ClickDimensions marketing automation solution will help you execute your content marketing strategy and evaluate the results. Review your CRM accounts to identify buyer personas, build a ClickDimensions landing page to distribute your call to action, capture prospects with a ClickDimensions web form, and use CRM dashboards and advanced finds to analyze the data.

It’s a beautiful day and the boat is ready to go, so what are you waiting for? Cast your line into the water and catch some fish!

Happy marketing!

Go fishing!

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About ClickDimensions ClickDimensions is the top-rated, award-winning, Microsoft-certified email marketing and marketing automation solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. ClickDimensions can streamline your marketing program by gaining insights about your leads and contacts, resulting in reduced costs and increased revenue. Providing email marketing, web tracking, lead scoring, nurture marketing, social discovery, campaign tracking and web forms and surveys, ClickDimensions allows organizations to discover who is interested in their products, quantify their level of interest and take the appropriate actions.

For more information about ClickDimensions, visit www.clickdimensions.com, read our blog at blog.clickdimensions.com or follow us on Twitter at @ClickDimensions.