Case Study: Moving From The 'Why?' To The 'How?' A look Inside SAP’s Strategy...

Content Marketing: Why & How To Build Your Content Hub Michael Brenner Vice President Marketing & Content Strategy @SAP @BrennerMichael

My Story (Briefly)

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Me, 20 pounds years ago

@BrennerMichael

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Today we are all connected

@BrennerMichael

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What is Marketing?

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself…

~Milan Kundera

… The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

~ Peter F. Drucker

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”

~ David Packard

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Consumers  are  bombarded  with  5,000  marke5ng  messages  per  day  

 2/3  of  US  on  the  “Do  Not  Call”  list    

86%  of  people  skip  television  ads  

 44%  of  direct  mail  is  never  opened  

99.9%  of  banners  never  clicked  

 90%  of  emails  are  never  opened  and  99.5%  don’t  get  a  single  click  

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What’s Wrong With Our Content? It’s Too Much Like This…

@BrennerMichael

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And Not Enough Like This…

@BrennerMichael

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@BrennerMichael

Our Story

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What is a Content Strategy?

•  Delivering the content your audience needs, in all the places they go (by persona, buyer stage, channel, type)

•  Managing content as an asset with an ROI

•  Thinking and Acting like a publisher (like a business)

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Social Media (Get Shared)

Lead Generation (Get Leads)

Search Engine Optimization (Get Found)

STORYTELLING

Why Is Content Marketing Important? From: Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute

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The buyer journey starts with a search . . .

Customer Questions: •  What is real-time analytics? •  What is cloud computing? •  What is Big Data? •  What are mobile solutions? •  How are companies benefiting

from … ? •  Who are the top vendors in … ?

3000 X

-2 X

1000 X

17 X

28 X

40 X

-2 X

7 X

24 X 13 X

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How Much “Early Stage” Search Traffic Do We Get?

Later Stage Visitor:

Asks “SAP Software” •  100s of searches / mo

Early Stage Visitor:

Asks “What is Big Data?” 100,000’s of searches / month

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• 99.9% of our web traffic from visitors who already know us or bought from us.

• Less than 0.1% were net-new or early-stage prospects

• Less than 10 keywords generated all the early-stage search traffic

We Were Not Answering Our Customers Top Questions

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Business Innovation (launched March 27, 2012) A “Content Hub” to earn traffic instead of buying it

§ Design: “Subtly” Branded

§ Target: Business Execs+

§ Stage: Early- to Mid-stage

§ Editorial: Keyword-driven

§ Content:

§ No Budget

§ 100s of authors (“Author Curation”)

§ ~50% external

§ CTA: Subscribe, Offers, Explore

§ Market examples: AMEX Open Forum, CMO.com, BCGPerspectives, AT&T Networking Exchange

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Created a Business Innovation “Editorial Board”

• Marketing Program / Campaigns • Solution Marketing / Product Management • Customer References • Thought Leadership / “Corporate Story” (About Us) • Global Communications and Local PR • Value Engineering • Competitive Marketing Intelligence / Market Research • Partner / Channels • Regional Marketing •  Internal Bloggers • External Influencers

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Other People’s Content (OPC) - Content Curation

•  Google Alerts for topics •  Research Reports •  Studies •  Whitepapers

•  From any source: •  Analysts •  Competitors •  Consultants

•  Assign to “volunteers” •  ALWAYS attribute source!

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• Traffic, connections and leads we would’ve NEVER seen

• 2000+ articles published (1+ / topic, 12-15 / day)

• 100s inbound links, up to

• 50% traffic from Social, Search and Direct

• 83% search terms are Non-branded or product terms

• 100s of Registrations, Chats, Calls, visits to Store and solution pages on SAP.com

Created An Infographic to Report on Goals: Reach, Engagement AND Conversions

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Organic & Social Traffic “Up and To The Right”

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Most Popular Articles (10X average Pageviews)

• Top 50 Influencers for each topic

• Top 10 Blog Sites for each topic

• Terms You Need To Know

• Myths…Busted

• 10 Predictions for…

• What is…?

• The First Step to Success in…

• How To Get Ahead With…

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Business Innovation From SAP: What’s Next? Help Our Customers Tell Their Stories

•  Adding “Our Stories”

•  Dynamic Homepage experience!

•  More visual (more $$$)

•  Focus on Subscribers

•  Curated, native, FULL LENGTH content licensed from 3rd Parties

Our Content Ecosystem

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Activating SAP Employees: Where to blog? Business Innovation, Forbes, “SAP Community Network”

Where million of engaged professionals discuss the intersection of IT and business strategy.

http://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends

Connecting SAP thought leaders to the business leaders on Forbes..

http://blogs.forbes.com/sap/

Earning an engaged audience by answering customer questions to help them innovate and grow.

http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/

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Paid, Owned, and Earned + Converged Examples

Paid Owned Earned Converged Orchestrates POE to maximize pull activity

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A Content Hub Run Like a Business

PAID Converged EARNED

Awareness Ads

Demand Gen extensions: E-mail, digital assets, mailers

Paid social promotion: Via Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook, YouTube

Life

Business Innovation

SAP.com:

Sales Demo Tools Events

Social Communities: - Twitter, Linked, facebook, G+

PR: Content promoted and showcased via Press Releases and PR initiatives

Publish stories

OWNED

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Forbes “BrandVoice”: A Blogging Platform For Premium Advertisers

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Business Insider: Future of Business Site Sponsorship

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NYTimes “Ricochet”: Wraps Ads Around Curated Content

Thank you! Michael Brenner Vice President, SAP Marketing & Content Strategy Michael.Brenner@SAP.com Connect with Me:

Slides available on: Slideshare.net/MichaelBrenner

Marketing Blog: B2B Marketing Insider SAP Content Hub: Business Innovation

Twitter: @brennermichael