Meet the people behind today s most innovative and effective content marketing.

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1 Meet the people behind today s most innovative and effective content marketing.

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3 The pace of innovation in content marketing can be intimidating. Not for this group. These five digital marketers come from a wide variety of industries and backgrounds. But they share a passion for excellence that shows in their brands and their results. Reva Harris Purchasing Power, LLC Associate Marketing Manager Page 3 Pat Oldenburg Five9 Senior Manager, Content and Web Marketing Page 4 Jon Ryan Aberdeen Group Director, Marketing Technology Page 6 Scott Stano Arcserve Director, Global Demand Generation Page 7 Brad Young Dun & Bradstreet Global Content Strategy Leader Page 10 About ion Learn more about ion interactive s content software and services. Page 13 1

4 I think of content marketing as a service how can I provide people with information they need or fill a gap in what s already out there?

5 Reva Harris Purchasing Power, LLC Associate Marketing Manager What is your approach to content marketing? I think of content marketing as a service how can I provide people with information they need or fill a gap in what s already out there? People want or need information to help them solve a problem or make their lives easier. As a content marketer, I have the time and resources to deliver that information. Of course, content marketing is still marketing. I can t forget that fact. But when you start with what your prospects and customers need, the business will follow. What content advice would you give to other marketers? Don t forget to strike a balance between timely and evergreen content. It can be easy to get caught up in the trend of the moment, but that content will have a much shorter shelf life. I try to make my bigger pieces more evergreen and use smaller, more easily-produced pieces to focus on short-term trends and seasonal topics. Why did you incorporate interactive content into your program? Interactive content sets us apart. Having our content hosted on interactive landing pages allows our audience to cut through the clutter and get the information that they want. On the back end, we can track their activity so we can know what is and isn t resonating. What s in store for the future of content marketing? I think that user-generated content will continue to grow in popularity. Right now, it s more of a trend in the B2C space, but it will find its footing in the B2B sector. People want to hear from their peers. Interactive content is effective at discovering what resonates with the audience. 3

6 Pat Oldenburg Five9 Senior Manager, Content and Web Marketing What is your approach to content marketing? At Five9, we have an all hands on deck approach to content marketing, as almost everyone in the department is a content creator of some sort. While this may be the case in many organizations, we have tried to improve upon it by creating a systematic approach to ideation, execution, and measurement. We have quarterly content board meetings with representatives from marketing, sales, and product management, where we review our most recent efforts and discuss trends that each of the departments see in their day-to-day interactions with customers and prospects. The output of those board meetings in addition to regular surveys and discussions with analysts and customers are buyer-centric content themes, which are used to drive our content marketing efforts. We have two main themes each year, and we create content pillars for each, which are used to scale our content production efforts. By using the pillar approach, we are able to create more tightly integrated, consistent campaigns that target our buyer personas at all stages of the buying cycle. What content advice would you give to other marketers? Two main things. First, don t create content just to create content! I have seen statistics that say almost 70% of content goes unread. Create content that has a purpose make sure it is targeted to personas and to a sales cycle stage. And secondly, regularly check in with your audience and learn what the latest challenges, needs, and trends are. These are usually perfect topics for content and consistently perform better than unfocused pieces. Why did you incorporate interactive content into your program? I wanted to super-charge the results of our most recent content pillar, which was a research report on contact center agent efficiency. In 4

7 content marketing, I need to measure KPIs ranging from simple engagement metrics to cost per $1 of contract value. In order to increase engagement metrics as well as get the conversion rates high on the landing page, we knew we needed to make a significant departure from our standard landing page format. The interactive content we created not only kept people on the microsite for longer periods of time, but the form fill (conversion) rates were almost 3x what we see on average! What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in content marketing right now? In my opinion, we are starting to see a shift in how we view content marketing, and content in general. Content powers nearly every marketing effort, from website pages to webinar topics to interactive experiences. And when used for sales, content can improve pipeline velocity, close rates, and retention rates. Many executives, ours included, are recognizing this and putting more resources behind this function. What s in store for the future of content marketing? I think the future of content marketing is going to be the next evolution of interactive content, which will have more personalization. So not only will the content topics you see on a website be personalized, but within each experience, your actions and choices will have an effect on the content (think progressive profiling, but in ebook form). This increase in complexity will require a new way to measure influence and attribution to sales, churn rates, etc. So I also think we ll see new technology to measure impact of content across all functions. We have quarterly content board meetings with representatives from marketing, sales and product management, where we review our most recent efforts and discuss trends that each of the departments see in their day-to-day interactions with customers and prospects. 4

8 Jon Ryan Aberdeen Group Director, Marketing Technology What is your approach to content marketing? Content marketing isn t a strategy, a campaign or a tactic. It s a business philosophy. This is the best way to be successful in content marketing. Asking questions like who are you, who is your audience, where do they hang out online, what type of content can you create, etc. are all part of the creation process. What content advice would you give to other marketers? Continue to help solve problems and make sure you tell the full story. Stop obsessing over tools or tactics instead of customer issues or problems. Keep your target audience top of mind and remember content marketing is a strategy that can be executed in campaigns infographic leads to blog post which leads to ebook which leads to a sales-ready MQL. Why did you incorporate interactive content into your program? Interactive is key! People like to click, slide, hover, reveal, overall play. If you offer content that is meaningful and combine it with an interactive component, it will beat the best flat infographic or checklist. What s in store for the future of content marketing? The focus for marketers remains the same. We need to continue to find ways to tell timeless human stories that make brands relevant and important to consumers and businesses. The challenge will be staying ahead of emerging technologies because that s what will impact how human stories are told. What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in content marketing right now? Analytical and behavioral data and how that affects content and marketing decisions. Behavioral data is reshaping content marketing. 6

9 If you offer content that is meaningful and combine it with an interactive component, it will beat the best flat infographic or checklist.

10 Scott Stano Arcserve Director, Global Demand Generation What is your approach to content marketing? We take a streamlined funnel focus to content marketing mapping our pieces with each stage of the buyer s journey. For lead conversion, we focus heavily on thought leadership and engagement. Helping the prospect better understand the industry, their business and evolving trends is a sure-fire way to not only gain credibility for our solutions, but also establish preference in the buying cycle. What content advice would you give to other marketers? I would advise any marketer to focus on quality over quantity. A lot of people think that content has to be a factory that constantly churns out new material no matter what. Quantity no longer matters as much as quality for search engine optimization (SEO), and blasting the market with less valuable materials leads to your audience shutting off your message. Content for content s sake is the wrong move: focus on the right content. Why did you incorporate interactive content into your program? I am a big believer of being different in your market space. Too often people will reference what competitor X or Y is doing, and invariably the conversation turns to should we be doing that? However, this mentality misses the analysis of what isn t our competition doing and is there an opportunity to stand apart? After an overflight of our competition in the backup and recovery space, it was clear that next generation applications, like interactive content, afforded us the chance to not only differentiate ourselves from others, but better and more uniquely engage our prospects, partners and customers. What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in content marketing right now? The personalization of marketing experiences online and on mobile presents tremendous 7

11 opportunities for marketers to reach the right audience like never before. The ability to offer a person the most aligned material based on real-world behaviors is very exciting. By marrying marketing automation, CRM, retargeting and other engagement mechanisms, we are able present a much more complete picture of a person s current level of interest in engaging with the company (or sales!). What s in store for the future of content marketing? Content is king and will continue to be for a long time to come. As people continue to engage more and more with rich media, including applications, videos, gameshow-like interactive experiences or the traditional written word, marketers must constantly assess if what they are providing is truly valuable to their end consumer. In this fast paced, internet and mobile driven world, we often get only one chance to make a good impression make sure you re staying one step ahead of what your audience expects from their experience with your company. Do you look like you re speeding into the future, or stuck with one foot in the past? It s a good question to ask yourself every day. Content for content s sake is the wrong move: focus on the right content. 7

12 Rather than thinking outside the box, I would rather understand the boundaries of the box the persona/audience, our company POV, etc. and absolutely kill it inside the box.

13 Brad Young Dun & Bradstreet Global Content Strategy Leader What is your approach to content marketing? A lot of people ask about content marketing strategy. The answer is easy and hard at the same time. Our content marketing strategy is our business strategy: driving growth. It s that simple. That s what we re all here to do. I just want us to tell our stories in a way that drives our growth. Content can do this by building better relationships with the executives out there who have a lot of questions about how data and analytics can help them drive their own growth, and they turn to our blogs or videos or infographics or salespeople for just that kind of insight. We want to fuel those points of interaction. So that s the easy part saying that our content strategy is our business strategy. The hard part, of course, is delivering on that. Knowing that we are meeting the knowledge needs and curiosities of our targeted personas in a meaningful, relevant, differentiated way. Measuring the impact of that content on the relationship that something we published grew a prospect or existing customer s relationship with us. Being creative. Being on brand. I heard a great thing on NPR about their storytelling they want to be informative without oversimplifying, engaging without being pandering, surprising but not wasting the audience s time. I think that s a pretty good standard of quality to hold ourselves to. What content advice would you give to other marketers? Be 100% connected to the business and marketing strategy as a whole. Don t sit off in the corner in your dreamy brand newsroom making stuff you think is cool. I talk all the time about constrained creativity. Rather than having a blank whiteboard and doing whatever I fancy doing, I want to know the parameters of the objective we are marching toward. I hate to use this cliché but it really says it best: Rather than thinking outside the box, I would rather understand the boundaries of the box the persona/ audience, our company POV, etc. and absolutely kill it inside the box. Another little thing: Encourage your team to have a unique voice. Let them be individuals. I love it when our writers get complimented on having an approachable tone to their writing. 10

14 I like when they bring themselves into the story. We talk about data and analytics pretty esoteric stuff. If writing in an approachable way lets us put a bit of a human face on that, all the better. And I love that my management lets us do that instead of being corporate automatons. Why did you incorporate interactive content into your program? Because white paper is a four-letter word. I m exaggerating, obviously, because every content format has a place in a given strategy or situation. But what we really try to do is think concept first and format second. I want us to spend most of our time on storylines and ideas and not trying to think of what we want to WRITE about next. Interactive storytelling is a terrific way to bring a concept to life. Also, one of our core values at Dun & Bradstreet is to be data-inspired. Not just data-driven, which feels obligatory and forced. Data-inspired means to be wowed by the potential of data and what it can do for us. In the storytelling we do that comes across in three ways, ideally: We want to be data-inspired in our ideas, to know empirically what our target audiences are interested in. We want to be data-inspired in how that content reaches the audience, to have it be served up in a personalized way based on what we know about their needs and areas of interest. And lastly, we want to be data-inspired in the way the content gets presented. It should feel like it is coming from a company with data at its heart and soul. Interactive content has that feel to it for sure. What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in content marketing right now? Credibility. Thanks to the great content creation being done across businesses of every size and shape, and thanks to the power of social to get those stories into audiences hands in a (relatively) democratic way, companies are being seen as legitimate sources of thoughtful, informative, inspiring stuff. I genuinely think audiences don t care if a great article or video or interactive experience comes from the Financial Times or from Dun & Bradstreet. They just care that it makes them smarter and better at their jobs. I love that. I used to work at Fortune, and five years ago we all would definitely have felt like brands couldn t even remotely compare to us in terms of content quality. Now that s not the case. It s funny the editors I worked with back then would never have thought that working for a brand was a good option. They would feel like they had sold out. Now, that s not true. The notion of content marketing has come such a long way because of the quality work so many brands have done. Let s just not blow it by creating commercials and calling it content. What s in store for the future of content marketing? I actually don t think content marketing will be a thing unto itself in a few years. It will just be marketing. It will be the way companies like ours get our stories out there. Quality will continue to elevate, I hope. Investments go into making sure we can be nimble and effective creators of multimedia content. Paid, earned, owned and shared media will continue to converge into one stream and strategy, blending the functions of traditional advertising, creative and communications departments. And business to business companies will continue to adopt accountbased marketing strategies, where they realize they can drive growth by focusing on select relationships and use content and experiences to drive deeper engagements with those companies rather than wider, thinner messaging and engagement across multiple verticals, company-size targets, etc. 11

15 Data-inspired means to be wowed by the potential of data and what it can do for us.

16 about ion interactive ion interactive helps modern marketers produce engaging, interactive content that stands out while generating leads and revenue. Rapidly deploy stunning user experiences across your content marketing, social marketing, marketing and advertising campaigns using our scalable, agile interactive content platform. Powerfully creative, gorgeous and highly interactive experiences can be created and tested without developers. ion s assessments, quizzes, lookbooks, ebooks, interactive white papers, calculators and more are used to differentiate brands, increase engagement, boost sales and improve conversions. Let s Talk Speak with an ion interactive professional, share your needs and learn how we can help you rapidly deploy interactive content without development. Visit LOVED BY HUNDREDS OF LEADING BRANDS

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