“Content is King.”(“Queen,” we say.)

But what does that really mean?

Done {right}, content helps you

1. Engage prospects

2. Generate leads

3. Convert customers$Here’s how to do it {right}…

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3

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What’s InsideTranslating Insights into Results .....................................................................

Content in Action: Thought Leadership .....................................................

7 Content Myths – Busted! ...........................................................................

Your Sales Machine .......................................................................................

The Process – Content Strategy ..................................................................

The Process – Content Development .........................................................

The Process – Content Marketing ...............................................................

Metrics to Measure Your Content’s Effectiveness .....................................

Content in Action: Lead Generation .........................................................

3 Content Challenges – Overcome! ..........................................................

Notes ..............................................................................................................

castelazocontent.com | 480.987.7958

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Castelazo Content is a global content strategy,

content development, and content marketing firm.

We are privileged to work with some

of the most successful organizations

in Arizona and beyond.

Among them:

®

IT SOLUTIONS a TDS® Company

WHY

WHAT

HOW

WHY:To help our clients sell more.

HOW:By establishing your company as a thought leader – one who leads prospects through the sales cycle by addressing their problems and needs, questions and concerns.

WHAT:White papers, blogs, bylined articles, videos, infographics, and other content that engages prospects, generates leads, and converts leads into clients.

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There is something about your product or service that enables you to solve your

customers’ needs better than your competitors do. By articulating what that “something”

is and demonstrating (showing, not telling) your authority to meet those needs, you

become a thought leader. Your prospects come to recognize you as a trusted source

of value-added information. And, at the end of the day, as the trusted source for what

you’re selling.

But articulating that “something” – developing your company’s thought leadership – can

be difficult. Especially in technology, subject matter experts (SMEs) are often so enmeshed

in what they do that it’s hard for them to explain its value in a way that prospects can

understand. That’s where we come in. With the ability to both understand the “language”

your SMEs speak and to speak the language of your prospects, we’re the bridge between

your SMEs and your target audience. We translate your insights into results.

Translating Insights into Results

“When it comes to content development in the tech space, Molly and the team at Castelazo Content are truly one of the best. I’ve worked with Molly on a variety of projects over the years, so I’ve seen how her dedication to whatever she takes on always pays dividends to everyone involved.”

Steve Zylstra, CEO, Arizona Technology Council

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“Content isanything that adds value to the reader's life.”Avinash Kaushik, Google

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FiREapps develops Software-as-a-Service solutions to help multinational

corporations manage their foreign currency exchange risk. The

company is an example of thought leadership at its finest.

Crafting value-added thought leadership content

In addition to a wide range of other content we develop for FiREapps,

every quarter Castelazo Content produces a research and analysis-

based report, the Currency Impact Report. FiREapps’ PR team delivers

the report’s standalone Executive Summary to both mainstream news

publications (the likes of Wall Street Journal and Forbes) and trade

publications (Treasury Management International, CFO Magazine).

And FiREapps’ CEO does a series of interviews with broadcast media

(Bloomberg, CNBC).

Because it is based on research and analysis and because it never

explicitly sells FiREapps, the Currency Impact Report is true value-added

thought leadership content. Journalists eagerly await the report, and

cover it in a range of different ways. Readers take away valuable,

actionable insight.

Leveraging thought leadership to close deals

For a business that has profit maximization as its bottom-line aim,

incredible media coverage like the kind FiREapps gets is only valuable if

it engages prospects, generates leads, and/or converts leads into clients.

That is exactly what we leverage it to do.

Content in Action:THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

FiREapps 2014 Q1 Corporate Earnings

Currency Impact Report – for North American and

European Corporates

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Generating significant ROI

• An email campaign highlighting a bylined article

taking off from the Currency Impact Report leads to

discovery calls, which lead to deals = ROI of 1300%

• The Currency Impact Report emailed to prospects in

the sales cycle leads to discovery calls, which lead to

deals = ROI of 506%

We work with FiREapps’ in-house marketing team

to leverage the Currency Impact Report for the

company’s sales and marketing efforts in a variety

of ways:

• An email campaign highlighting a bylined

article taking off from the Currency Impact

Report leads to discovery calls, which lead to

deals = ROI of 1300%

• The Currency Impact Report emailed to

prospects in the sales cycle leads to discovery

calls, which lead to deals = ROI of 506%

• The executive team uses the report findings in

webinars and presentations.

• The sales team uses the report as a conversation

starter when making sales calls.

In that variety of ways, FiREapps is able to

leverage its thought leadership content to engage

prospects, generate leads, and convert clients.

“Castelazo Content has been instrumental in helping us develop content that is targeted to our prospects and serves as a highly effective sales enablement tool. The content addresses problems our prospects face every day and provides them with insights into why those problems occur and what they can do to overcome them.”

Andy Gage, Vice President

of Strategic Market Development

FiREapps

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7Content Myths – BUSTED!

I don’t have time to do

content. That’s probably very

true; we’ve included it here as

a myth because not having

time to create your own

thought leadership content

does not give you an excuse

to not publish regularly. When

you hire a firm that produces

content for a living – one

whose business it is to make the

creation of thought leadership

content an efficient, effective

process for the thought leader

– then creating content can

be a painless and even, dare

we say it, enjoyable process.

1. I can’t afford content. Effective content is not cheap. But rather

than think about the money you’ll spend to develop the kind of

content that gets results, think about the money you’ll earn as

a result of it. It is not at all unusual for our clients to see returns of

800% on their investment in content

marketing. So then the question

becomes, can you not afford

content?

2.

“To be honest, I was worried that this process was going to take a lot of time. But Castelazo Content downloaded my insights and came back with an article that was right on target. Perfect, actually.”

Tony Portela, CEO,onTop Technology Corporation

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4. Content marketing is a fad. Content marketing is a buzzword, no

doubt. Most people who profess “content is king” have no idea

what that means in practical terms – as in, on the bottom line. But

that doesn’t change the fact that thought leadership content – call

it whatever you want – is now the single most important element in

the B2B sales toolbox. Your prospective clients make it 60% of the

way through the buying process before they ever engage with a

salesperson. For that 60%, your content is your salesperson. And

that’s no fad.

I’m the thought leader, so I have to create the content. For most

companies, the thought leader is actually not the best one to

create the content. We assume that you are not in the business of

writing/tweeting/drawing/speaking. If that assumption is true – if

it’s true that you do not produce content for a living – it will take

you much longer to produce high-quality content than people

who do produce content for a living. It’s the focus-on-your-core-

competency-hire-the-rest argument at its best.*

3.

*Not every writer can interview a thought leader and translate her insights into content that gets results. But that is our specialty. We’re like really smart journalists who also happen to know a lot about the industry they cover. We’re not the experts, which is actually the point. We can understand the language you speak, and then translate it in a way that both remains authentic to who you are and also resonates with the audience you’re trying to reach. We speak your language, and theirs. We’re translators. Translating your insights into results.

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7Content Myths – BUSTED!

I have a website. I advertise. I’m doing content. Yes, in the Merriam-Webster

sense of the word, you are. But the kind of content that we’re talking about

– thought leadership content that engages prospects, generates leads, and

converts clients – is very different than website copy or ad copy or any other

kind of sales or marketing copy. People don’t want to be sold anymore; they

want to be educated. People don’t want to be told; they want to be shown.

And that is what thought leadership content does that sales and marketing

copy does not – it educates, it shows. And it works.

6.

I don’t really need content. Oh yeah? So how are prospects engaging

with you in the 60% of the sales cycle before they ever talk to an actual

sales person? It’s a serious question; if you have figured out a way –

without content – to bring prospects into your sales pipeline and keep

them engaged until they’re ready to pick up the phone and call, then

we’ll eat our hats. (We’re not worried.)

5.

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My prospects are too busy to read content.

That may be true. See, the first rule of

effective content is that it’s all about your

audience. Knowing what your audience

wants to read/watch/hear/see is important,

but it’s also important to know how your

audience wants to consume content.

And it’s not always by reading an 8-page

whitepaper. Or a 500-word blog post.

Sometimes, it’s watching a 60-second video.

Or poring over an infographic. So while it’s

true that your prospects

might be “too busy” to read

content, that’s not an excuse

to forego content altogether.

Prospects who have a need

for what you’re selling still

want to be educated about

how you can help them.

Learn how they want to

be educated, then create

content that educates.

7.THE PANDA FACTOR: SEO Is All About Content

“Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find ‘high-quality’ sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content.”

Amit SinghalGoogle Fellow

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Your Sales MachineAn effective sales organization is a machine. But instead of turning raw materials

into widgets, it turns prospects into customers.

White papers, articles, blogs, case studies, use cases, social media, videos, infographics: All cogs in the machine

Within the sales machine,

many parts contribute

to turning prospects into

customers. Content is one

of them. A cog in the sales

machine. And because

the average B2B buyer

gets nearly 60% of the way

through the buying process

before ever engaging a

sales person, for the majority

of the sales cycle, your

content is your sales person.

Engage prospects

Turn prospects into leads

Nurture leads 60%

Close deals

Social media

White papers

White papers

ArticlesCase studies

VideosCase studies

Use cases

VideosArticles

BlogsVideos

$$$

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Engage prospects

Social media

ArticlesBlogs

Videos

The first step in the sales

process is to engage

prospects.

Find the people whose problems

your product or service resolves.

Educate them about what you

offer. Engage them.

Prospect: noun – a person regarded

as likely to succeed as a potential

customer or client

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Lead: noun – a person or entity with the

interest and authority to purchase a

product or service

The second step in the sales

process is to turn prospects

into leads.

Entice them with valuable,

actionable content that they

can use today to solve a

problem. In exchange, you

get their contact information,

and the anonymous prospect

becomes a qualified lead.

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Turn prospects into leads

Videos

White papers

Case studiesUse cases

Your Sales Machine

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Customer: noun – a person or

organization that buys goods or services

from a store or business; aka the

reason you exist

The third step in the sales process is to convert leads into customers. To do that, you have to nurture them through the buying process.

• Answer questions

• Overcome objections

• Build trust

• Establish yourself as the authority (implicitly – show, don’t tell)

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Nurture leads to close the deals

White papers

Articles

Case studies

Videos

To nurture leads, leverage a mix of automated marketing and human-to-human selling. Content is the backbone of an effective automated marketing strategy. Here, you are walking your leads through the sales pipeline. Giving them progressively more valuable content, targeted to their preferences. In human-to-human selling, content is an enablement tool. From sales presentations and one-sheets to leave-behind case studies and white papers, content is the extra “oomph” your sales people need to close the deal.

$$$

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The Process – CONTENT STRATEGY

The only content that’s effective is content that

resonates with your audience. Period.

1. Who is my target audience?

2. Where is my target audience?

3. What does my target audience care about?

What questions do they have?

4. How can I provide value to my target

audience?

Articulating the answers to those questions is a

critical first step in the content strategy process.

Developing content in alignment with your

answers to those questions is the only way to

resonate with your audience.

“The buying process map and buyer personas that Castelazo Content helped us develop are a critical foundation for the work we’ll be doing to target a new demographic.

Before, the content we developed for our new enterprise prospects just wasn’t resonating, and it wasn’t articulating the value we provide.

Now that we have articulated the buying process and ‘gotten to know’ our prospects through the personas, our content is really resonating – and that means it is helping us at that beginning stage of the sales cycle before the prospect engages with a sales person.”

Enterprise Partner Manager, Inc. 500/5000 SaaS Provider

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Your buyers are people. And people like stories.

What We DidThe client is a NASSCOM Top 20 global IT services company. They

came to us for a whitepaper that would articulate the value of their

oil and gas well integrity management services. When we sat down

with the SME, a PhD engineer in Houston, he talked about his vision

for the paper: a technical discussion of the firm’s solution. “What is

the risk of not having real-time access to well integrity information?”

we asked the SME. “A disaster like the Deepwater Horizon,” he

responded. And we had our story.

We crafted a narrative around the fact that relying on Excel

spreadsheets and a single engineer to monitor thousands of wells

makes it impossible to catch the kind of equipment fault that led

to the loss of 11 lives, the spillage of 4.9 million barrels of oil into

the Gulf of Mexico, and $42 billion (and counting) in losses for BP.

And then we highlighted the fact that technology exists (and may

soon become required) that enables single-dashboard, real-time

well integrity management. The kind that could prevent another

Deepwater Horizon.

The whitepaper was the most

successful that the client had

ever published, resulting in:

• 20% uptick in prospect

engagement

• 5 discovery calls for the

sales team

• 2 closed deals

In all, the client saw a return

of $1.75 million on the cost

of developing and marketing

the whitepaper, for an ROI of

17500%.

What They Saw

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The Process – CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Jim Stengel, Former

Global Marketing Officer,

Procter & Gamble

Blog WritingPublishing blog posts on your own website develops your website into a magnet that attracts prospects into deeper engagement with your brand. Publishing a guest post on the blog of an influential individual or organization that your prospects are already reading delivers you straight to the people you’re trying to reach.

Effective white papers provide value to the reader. Actionable insight that helps make their lives better. As high-value assets, white papers make great lead generation and lead conversion tools.

WhitePaper Writing

“What we really need is a mindset shift that will make us relevant to today’s consumers, a mindset shift from ‘telling & selling’ to building relationships.”

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Writing articles is about going to where your prospects already are and engaging them there. Trade journals. Newspapers. Business magazines.

Article Writing

Social MediaSocial media is the cornerstone of content marketing. The purpose? To engage prospects. Find the people whose problems your product or service resolves. Educate them about what you offer.

Case Study WritingCase studies are stories that show prospective customers how you have helped a client overcome a challenge. Use cases are like generic case studies. They invite prospects to think generally about how your product or service can solve their problem(s).

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Build it and they will come? Alas, no.

Developing content, putting it on your

website, then expecting readers to come

flooding in is like a guy waiting around at

home on a Saturday night for a date to

magically appear…it doesn’t work that way.

Content marketing is about creating

an ecosystem to pull prospects into

your content, your brand, and – ultimately –

into a relationship with you.

The Process – CONTENT MARKETING

The Process – CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

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This is your website

Content Marketing Ecosystem

Connections and followers consume your content whenever, wherever. When they want the rest of the story, they click through to...

This is your LinkedIn company page

Twitter is about sharing engaging, valuable content with your

prospects and their influencers. They then more deeply engage by

clicking through to…

This is your company Twitter feed

Here, you’re establishing yourself as a thought leader. Once people see you’re a thought leader, they click

through to…

This is a popular industry website

Fans consume your content wherever, whenever. When

they want to learn more, they click through to...

This is your Facebook business page

Social media is not about publishing content. It’s about engaging in a dialogue with

prospects and their influencers.

This is you joining the conversation

Your website is your home. It’s the main attraction. It’s where your content lives.

It’s also the magnet that pulls prospects in to your content, your

brand, and ultimately, into a relationship with you.

But your website can’t do it alone

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# of MQL leads generated # of prospects engaged

prospect-to-lead

conversion rate=

Measuring engagement

total # of prospects engaged=

Unique visitors, average time on site, average pageviews/visit, referral sources

Website

Page likes/follows, post likes/shares/

comments, click-thrus

Social media

Unique visitors, average time on blog, average pageviews/visit, referral

sources, traffic flow (after exiting blog), blog engagement

(commenting, sharing)

Blog

Click-thru rate, cost-per-click or

cost-per-impression, referral sources

Advertising+

Measuring lead generation

total # of leads generated (aka Marketing Qualified Leads or MQLs)=

+Unique visitors, average

time on page, form submissions (and/or other call-to-action responses),

referral sources

Landing pages

# of attendees, referral sources

Webinars

# of downloads, referral sources

Downloadable content

# of attendees, referral sources

Events

# of responses, referral sources

Call-to-action responses

Metrics to Measure Your Content’s Effectiveness

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=

Page likes/follows, post likes/shares/comments,

click-thrus

Social media

Visits, pageviews, time on blog, traffic flow, blog

engagement

Blog

# of attendees

Webinars

# of downloads

Downloadable content

# of attendees

Events

Open rate, click-thru rate

Emails

# of sales calls,

# of meetings set

Phone calls

+

total # of leads nurtured through sales cycle (aka Sales Qualified Leads or SQL)

Visits, pageviews, time on site, traffic flow

Website

Measuring lead nurturing

# of clients signed

# of SQL leads nurtured

lead-to-client

conversion rate=

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Measuring ROI

ROI=

For ongoing engagements, this is monthly recurring

revenue × average length of engagement

Estimated lifetime value

Cost of all client acquisition-centric sales and marketing activities

Cost of acquisition

Metrics to Measure Your Content’s Effectiveness

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“The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.” ”Arthur C. Nielsen, Market Researcher & Founder of ACNielsen

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IO builds the data center of the future – a software-defined modular data center optimized for security, reliability, sustainability, and agility.Among a range of content that Castelazo Content develops for the company – including social media, blog posts, use cases, landing pages, and articles – we also create white papers, which the company uses as register-to-download lead generation tools.

Aligning the value that IO delivers with what people are talking about

We were tasked with developing a white paper on the topic of security; we recommended writing about data sovereignty. That subject aligned what people were talking about in the marketplace (this was about a year after the Snowden revelations) with the value that IO’s solutions provide.

Getting more “bang for the buck”

To leverage the white paper content to its fullest extent, IO’s public relations team secured spots in relevant publications – both trade (e.g., Data Center Journal) and mainstream (e.g., Forbes). We wrote the articles drawing from the white paper but with each publication’s particular audience in mind. Each article included a subtle call-to-action and link to the white paper on IO’s website, where visitors fill out a registration form to receive the white paper.

C-Suite Primer on Data Sovereignty & Data Custody: What You Need to Know 1

14.0618

1.866.437.4518

io.com

info@io.com

@ioDataCenters

Intelligent Control™

C-Suite Primer on

Data Sovereignty & Data Custody:

What You Need to Know

Executive Summary 1 Data Sovereignty & Data Custody: What They Mean for the Enterprise 3 The Issues 4 The Solution: See and Control Your Data – Where It Is and Who Has Access to It 7 The Bottom Line 11

Executive Summary

It has been almost a year since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released a trove of documents

revealing the large-scale collection, analysis, and storage of personal data on U.S. citizens and foreigners –

much of it out of the data centers of telecommunications, Internet, and cloud service providers. In the year

since, you most likely have heard about the concepts of “data sovereignty” and “data custody.” You might have

heard them in your boardroom.

Data sovereignty is the question of which sovereign’s (i.e., country’s) laws govern your data. The concept is

often taken to mean that your data is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located, but that may not

be the case; data sovereignty may instead mean that the data is subject to the laws of the country in which it

originated, or the laws of the country in which the cloud provider is headquartered. In the cloud, data sovereignty

transmission of data within their borders. Data custody is about who controls your data; essentially, who has the

right – or the obligation – to hand it over if the government comes knocking.

This whitepaper details what data sovereignty and data custody mean for the C-level enterprise executive.

Whether your focus is on growing the business, or keeping it secure, or managing IT, it is imperative to understand

the key issues addressed in this whitepaper. Here’s why: If you don’t know where your data is, and if you don’t know

who controls it, you’re putting the security of your enterprise data, and your customers’ data, at risk.

If you don’t know where the servers that hold your data are, you don’t know whose rules you might be beholden

to. And if you don’t know (or can’t control) whose rules you might be beholden to, you can’t know whether the

jurisdictional laws in that location are in sync with your corporate policies (and your own sovereign’s data laws).

You’re risking non-compliance, or worse.

Yet if your data is in the typical public cloud, the likelihood is very small that you even know where your data is,

much less have control of it.

Content in Action:LEAD GENERATION

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“It was incredibly difficult to find someone who can really understand what we do and then explain it in a way that is engaging, relatable, and relevant to our prospects. On that Castelazo Content really delivers. They can interview a subject matter expert for an hour and then go off and create a white paper that not only really engages the reader, but is also true to the SME’s insight. That is a rare skill.”

Jason Ferrara, VP of

Global Marketing and Communications

IO

Generating more leads

• 18.4% increase in form submissions

• 19.7% increase in downloads

= more engaged prospects and more leads into the sales funnel

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A burdensome review and approval process. For both

external and internal content teams, the review and approval

process can be a significant challenge, sometimes even a

full-on barrier to the efficient production and publication

of content. Sometimes that is because the company is

huge and bureaucratic and getting anything done requires

cutting through a lot of red tape. Other times it is because

the company is small and the thought leaders are working 25

hours a day to grow the business. In both cases, we’ve been

able to overcome the challenges. Here’s how:

Organization. And process. They’re our best friends,

because being organized

according to pre-defined

processes allows us flexibility

where it matters – like turning

around a blog post to

respond to a huge market

development in 2 hours.

Regular communication. Not for the sake of

communication, but

targeted, concise, and

purposeful communication.

Via email, phone, in-

person, web conference,

carrier pigeon, and every

combination thereof,

however the client prefers.

Technology (novel idea!) –

specifically, a Software-as-a-

Service content management

and editorial calendar solution

that makes managing the

approval loop relatively painless.

3Content Challenges – OVERCOME!

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No one can explain what you do. If we had a nickel for every time a prospective client told us, “We just haven’t been able to find someone who can explain what we do,” we’d be, well… Let’s just say, we’ve been told that a lot, and it’s the reason the clients who hire us do. Because while you need a writer who can understand the language you speak, you also need that person to be able to speak the language your target audience speaks. How do we deliver that? We approach our engagement like journalists. A good journalist is not the subject matter expert, but she knows her subject matter. And more than anything: a good journalist listens, and while she listens, takes incredibly thorough notes that she can refer to later when she’s translating your thoughts into insights that your target audience can understand.

Not having enough fodder. If we were raising livestock, that would be a problem. Since we’re not – since we’re taking your thought leadership (that something about your product or service that enables you to solve your customers’ needs better than your competitors do) and using that to create engaging, compelling, actionable content that generates and converts leads – then we can take a little to make a lot. Some call it drafting, others call it newsjacking, but the principle is that we take a little of your thought leadership and mix it in with a big dose of commentary on whatever everyone else is talking about at the moment. That allows us to produce more with less, but it also keeps you relevant in the current conversation. If you want to see some great examples of drafting in action, check out this content (how ‘bout them apples!) at castelazocontent.com/drafting.

2

3

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“The mantra should change from ‘Always Be Closing’ to

‘Always Be Helping.’”David Hahn, LinkedIn

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Notes:

Castelazo Contentcastelazocontent.com

@cmmarketing

content@castelazocontent.com

480.987.7958

Copyright 2014 Castelazo Marketing Ltd. All rights reserved.