EFFECTIVE CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES

INTRODUCING MINTTWIST FULL-SERVICE DIGITAL AGENCY

BASED IN LONDON AND THE GCC

OVER 25 FULL-TIME STAFF

FOUNDED 2002

WHO WE WORK WITH

Marketing, Sales and IT teams in

mid-sized and large multi-national

organisations.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT…

The importance of content marketing in the marketing mix and strategy

The owned, paid and earned model

The impact on SEO

Creating a content plan

How to measure effectively

THE ROLE OF CONTENT MARKETING

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING? Content marketing is the strategic

marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and

acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable

customer action.

Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute

IT’S NOT NEW The Furrow has been published by John Deere since 1895. Jello published recipe books to encourage use of their products. Michelin tyres produced a 400-page guide to car maintenance in the 1900s.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? • Builds trust

• Not about selling

• Helpful, informative, passes on knowledge

• Positions you as an authority on a topic

• Shared by people that your audience trusts

• Drives audience back to your site

• Enhances and supports SEO strategies

ROLE IN MARKETING MIX

Content Marketing

Place

Price

Promotion

People Process

Physical

Product

PLACE Is your content flexible enough to adapt to where you are, e.g. online to offline, languages

PRICE Is your content valued by customers? Would they pay extra for it? Is it an added bonus?

PROMOTIONS How are you using content to promote products? Is it genuinely useful and helpful?

PEOPLE Is your content establishing the authority of key people?

PROCESS Is production of high-quality content part of your processes?

PHYSICAL How is physical content delivered?

PRODUCT Can content pro-long a product’s life cycle? Can old content be repurposed for new products?

ROLE IN MARKETING STRATEGY

? Is content a defined part of your existing strategies?

Is there a clear plan in place for its execution?

Do online and offline work well together?

SUMMARY • Content needs to be strategic, valued by the audience and

profitable

• Content comes in many forms, not just the written word

• Builds trust and authority

• Needs to be considered in all aspects of the marketing mix

OWNED, PAID AND EARNED

ACTIVITIES YOU PAY FOR TO PROMOTE CONTENT PAID

YOUR CONTENT THAT PEOPLE SHARE EARNED

SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS YOU CONTROL FOR PROMOTION OWNED

WHAT IS IT?

OWNED

PAID EARNED

ONLINE ASSETS • Websites • Blogs • Social

networks • Email lists

SHARING • Reposting • Mentions • Shares • Reviews

ADVERTISING • PPC • Social • Retargeting • Promotion

platforms Sharing is increased by paid promotion

Online assets get more exposure

SEO and content drives shares – sharing drives traffic

The Sweet Spot where all three are driving one another

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Make content native to these assets:

• Images and infographics for social media – highly shareable

• Website copy formatted for the web

• Raise awareness of content through email

OWNED

Social media promotion – increase engagement

Use social analytics to understand reach and engagement

Content promotion platforms to spread further online, e.g. Outbrain

PAID

Hardest to achieve

Third parties sharing your content - needs to be discovered

Helps SEO by building backlinks and social signals

Aggregator sites such as Reddit and Stumbleupon will drive traffic

EARNED

SUMMARY • All three elements work best when they work together

• Develop content for each element that works best

• Paid promotion is becoming more important for driving earned and owned media

SEO

SEARCH V CONTENT

AT ODDS WITH KEYWORDS

REQUIRE DIFFERENT WEBSITE STRUCTURE

BUILD POOR BACKLINKS

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of

their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use

and share.” Webmaster Tools Guidelines

I firmly support the idea that people should have a diversified way of reaching

their audience.

So if you rely only on Google, that might not be as strong of an approach

compared to having a wide variety of different avenues by which you can reach people and drive them to your website or

whatever your objective is. Matt Cutts Head of Webspam, Google

WHAT DO SEARCH ENGINES LOOK FOR? Well-structured page:

• Content is a good length – min. 300

words, blog articles 700 words+

• How pages are linked together

• Use of headings – H1s, H2s

• Is it unique?

• How fresh is it?

Site metrics:

• Do users spend a lot of time on the site?

• Do they find it engaging?

IS THIS SITE WORTHY?

HOW DO I PICK THE RIGHT KEYWORDS? 1. IS THE KEY PHRASE RELEVANT?

2. IS THIS KEYWORD (OR SIMILAR

PHRASES) ALREADY CONVERTING?

3. AM I GETTING WEBSITE TRAFFIC FOR

SIMILAR KEYWORDS?

4. AM I ALREADY RANKING FOR IT?

5. ARE THERE CALLS TO ACTION ON THE

PAGE?

6. ARE THERE RELATED PAGES TO LINK

TO?

From 12 Tips for Keyword Selection to Guide Your Content Marketing SEO (http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/01/keyword-selection-content-marketing-seo/)

WHAT CAN I DO? MAKE IT SHARABLE

Hummingbird update last year meant

Google uses social signals as a ranking

factor

USE KEYWORDS WITHIN CONTENT

Look at keyword and content strategy

should go hand-in-hand

DON’T SKIP THE DETAILS

Make sure titles, headlines and metadata

are completed and make sense for

audiences and search engines

MAKE IT EASY TO FIND

Categorise your content – this helps

everyone

SUMMARY • SEO and content marketing strategy should be mutually

beneficial to each other

• Search engines want high-quality, relevant and easy-to-find content

• Keyword research should always consider content requirements

• Keep your website up-to-date so content is shareable, accurate and well organised.

CONTENT PLANNING

CONTENT PROCESS STEP 1 – GET IDEAS • Who wants to contribute? • Meet with them regularly to discuss ideas • Talk to people around your company • Generate lots of ideas for a “content

bucket”

STEP 2 – DECIDE WHAT TO CREATE • What to produce? • Consider the time of year - what events are

happening? • How can one piece of content be

repurposed into other content?

https://twitter.twimg.com/OwnTheMoment

REPURPOSE

HOW DOES YOUR AUDIENCE CONSUME CONTENT? REVISIT CONTENT – CAN IT BE UPDATED? CAN YOU CHANGE THE FORMAT?

SHARE IT!

Article

Add to website

Social media

Email Newsletter

Sales

PR OUTREACH

SEO CONVERT

Article

Presentation

Infographic

Guest blog

Digested version

Article

Add to website

Social media

Email Newsletter

Sales

PR OUTREACH

SEO CONVERT

Article

Add to website

Social media

Email Newsletter

Sales

PR OUTREACH

SEO CONVERT

Article

Add to website

Social media

Email Newsletter

Sales

PR OUTREACH

SEO CONVERT

Article

Add to website

Social media

Email Newsletter

Sales

PR OUTREACH

SEO CONVERT SHARE IT! Not reinventing the wheel

Can drip the content out over time

Optimise for the medium

CONTENT PROCESS STEP 3 – CREATE CALENDAR • Who will produce it • When it is due • Keywords it relates to • Circulate it to all authors

STEP 4 - PROMOTION • Social networks • Paid promotion • Email newsletter • Send to relevant clients

Item Author Due Keywords Type

Title A Person A 14/9/2014 Digital marketing, SEO

Blog

Title A

Person A 14/9/2014 Digital marketing, SEO

Infographic

Title B Person B 10/09/2014 Content marketing

White paper

Title B

Person B 12/09/2014 Content marketing

Presentation

SUMMARY • Find people who are truly going to commit to producing

content

• Regularly share content ideas

• Create a plan with clear deadlines

• Actively promote content – putting it on one or two social networks is not enough

MEASUREMENT

4 metrics to use: • Consumption • Sharing • Lead

generation • Sales

CONSUMPTION How many people have viewed/downloaded/listened to the content item?

• Page views, video/blog/pdf views, downloads

BUT DON’T STOP THERE! Look at their behaviour

• Are they more engaged than other visitors?

• Do they complete more goals on site?

• Do they spend longer on the site?

• Do they come back?

SHARING Do audiences like the content and share it?

• Likes, favouriting, retweeting, sharing, emails etc

• Linking to it

Give it an internal value to understand how it contributes actual value.

• Use paid promotion to create a value

Consider qualitative measures such as who shared it – influencer’s are valuable

• If an influence has shared it is more valuable – consider doubling or tripling the value

LEAD GENERATION How often does content create a lead?

(or What contribution does content make to my lead?)

• Form completions and downloads

• Email subscriptions

• Conversion rate

Balance between conversion and quality

• Give actions a monetary value – use past campaign data to calculate value

• Use page value data in Google Analytics

• Use campaign urls to track website conversions

SALES Did we make any money from this content?

Get regular feedback from the sales team on what content works well with prospects and

customers:

• How did content help a sale

• What do they want more of?

• What topics do they want to hear about?

• Are there content gaps?

CALCULATING ROI THE INVESTMENT

• Hours taken to create content

• Other costs, e.g. design • Overhead costs

Hours + Other costs +Overhead = True

investment

THE RETURN

• Average customer lifetime value

• Average profit margin

Converted leads x (ACLV xAPM) = True return

(TRUE RETURN – TRUE INVESTMENT)/TRUE INVESTMENT = ROI

SUMMARY • Create a content metrics dashboard

• Assign internal values to help calculate ROI

• Balance between conversion , quality and customer lifetime value

QUESTIONS?

MINTTWIST.COM

SOURCES A quick guide to Twitter’s Analytics Dashboard: http://www.minttwist.com/blog/2014/08/28/a-quick-guide-to-twitters-analytics-dashboard/

How to create an online review strategy to improve SEO reputation: http://www.minttwist.com/blog/2014/07/31/how-create-online-review-strategy-improve-seo-reputation/

Something’s rotten in content marketing: 5 signs it’s your article: http://www.minttwist.com/blog/2014/07/21/somethings-rotten-in-content-marketing-5-signs-its-your-article/

A quick guide to content curation tools: http://www.minttwist.com/blog/2014/07/09/a-quick-guide-to-the-best-content-curation-tools/

A field guide to the 4 types of content marketing metrics: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/11/a-field-guide-to-the-4-types-of-content-marketing-metrics-ebook/

Keyword selection for content marketing and SEO: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/01/keyword-selection-content-marketing-seo/

A history of content marketing: http://todaymade.com/blog/history-of-content-marketing/