Top 10 Steps to a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

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Introduction Digital content is everywhere. Beyond the website, new tools for consuming and creating this content continue to appear all the time blogs, social media outposts, tablets and smart phones are just a few recent examples. Meanwhile, consumers, along with business customers and prospects, show no signs of fatigue in their readiness to embrace these new technologies. Increasingly, people not only research products and services online before making a purchase but, also fulfill a wide array of content and communication needs via digital outlets, querying Facebook friends for recipe suggestions and following their favorite bloggers for news that s relevant to them. Most companies have recognized these changes and are investing in developing digital content, such as corporate blogs and video. Often, however, these same companies are missing valuable opportunities to drive engagement, conversion and revenue from their digital content because they re lacking a well-rounded content marketing strategy and the proper tools to push out relevant content across a variety of platforms. Such capabilities, however, are must-haves if you want to effectively connect with customers and prospects in the information age. There are many reasons why companies don t treat content as the critical business asset it is. Maybe a firm already has a blog and distributes press releases, so its executives assume there is a content strategy. There isn t. Or maybe, a marketing director figures that because everyone and their grandmother has a blog, it must be easy to create Web content. Yes, just about anyone can put up a blog. You can create one dedicated to green silk scarves with tassels, if that s what you re interested in. But, developing content that people want to read makes you a trusted and respected source in your industry and keeps people coming back to your website over and over, isn t so easy. Everybody has the ability to be a publisher in a Web 2.0 world, says Becki Dilworth, Vice President of Digital Strategy at Bridgeline Digital. She points to the ease and low cost of online publishing via blogs, videos, podcasts, forums and social networks as evidence. However, those brands that really think about what kinds of content will be most appealing to their audience, in what format and where they want to consume it, are going to be the most successful going forward, she states.

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and author of the just published (November 2010) Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts,Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business ( www.contentrulesbook.com), agrees: Companies need to refocus their content efforts on producing compelling content that will attract customers to them, and will truly engage them. Content Marketing Management So, what exactly is a content strategy? It s sitting down with the various stakeholders in a company this could be IT, Web strategy, marketing and business development and developing a plan for how to create, publish and manage digital content. To do this, you ll first need to understand what kinds of content will be most appealing to a brand s audience segments and where they are most likely to want to consume it. The really savvy marketers are taking content strategy a step further, using content management and Web analytics tools, like those available in Bridgeline s iapps Product Suite, to help deliver relevant content experiences along every step of a customer s or potential customer s interaction with a brand. This is called Content Marketing Management and it can help establish trust, build authority and, ultimately, create opportunities to convert browsers and visitors into buyers. Companies are also discovering that a content marketing strategy is an important way to create impressions especially as the role of traditional mass media continues to erode. According to recent research from Hubspot, companies that blog have more website visitors, more inbound links and more indexed pages than companies that don t. And this applies to companies that also update their website content more frequently. This means more opportunities to get noticed. Your customers read blogs, they Google their purchases and they query followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook, says Handley. They are always educating themselves by researching purchases online before they make them. This means, of course, that your key to igniting sales is to create online content and optimize it so that it appears on the first page of search results when your customers search for you or the products or services you sell, Handley continues.

But, a good content marketing strategy can do much more than improve your natural search rankings. Just follow the 10 steps we ve laid out below for building and implementing a content marketing strategy, and you ll be on your way to engaging customers, driving conversion and increasing revenue, all through the use of well-conceived and executed content. Top 10 Steps to a Successful Content Marketing Strategy 1. Make a commitment Look around examples are everywhere of companies that have already committed to making content a cornerstone of their marketing strategy. There s the successful outdoor gear and apparel retailer with over 350 articles and videos on its website and the industrial manufacturer that maintains Wiki pages to help the marketplace stay informed, to name just a couple. The longer you wait, the more opportunities you are missing to connect with existing and prospective customers. Treating content like a critical business asset means allocating budget for content, holding planning meetings to discuss content strategy and making a commitment to regularly publishing fresh content. This is how to ensure content supports business goals, drives results and meets consumers needs. 2. Know Your Audience While basic demographic data about website users is easy enough to come by, it can be more difficult uncovering visitors intent on a site. This information, however, is important to have as a company starts to consider the different kinds of content its customers are interested in. The first step is to establish the one or two overarching goals for the website or a particular effort around which you want to develop content. Is the goal to get people to buy something? Or, is it to encourage people to sign up for a Webinar? From here, pinpoint the primary audience attached to these goals. For example, if your goal is to sell shoes, then the audience is people who want to buy shoes. This may sound simplistic, but defining success metrics and then figuring out the audience needed to attract those metrics isn t always so straightforward. It is an important step, however, in developing a successful content marketing strategy.

Customer behavior reports generated by a Web analytics solution can also help reveal user intent. With iapps Analytics, for example, it s possible to track what customers are doing on a site and generate real-time reports on the top referring sites, click-through paths and other site behaviors, as well as to create custom audience profiles. 3. Understand the content needs of an audience Once you know a few things about your customers, it s time to start thinking about the kinds of content they might be interested in. Don t just assume all customers want to read articles on a website. Consumers media consumption habits are undergoing dramatic changes right now and doing a little legwork can go a long way toward improving the results of any content effort. One company s customers might be interested in short items that can be read quickly while another s might prefer how-to videos. It s also important to think about where an audience prefers to consume content. Are your customers just on your website or are they also on Facebook, their smart phone or somewhere else? One way to get this information is to conduct a few interviews with customers, asking them questions about what they are reading and which content sites they go back to again and again. Checking out what the competition is doing can also help. 4. Create an Editorial Calendar If you are trying to market content in anyway online, you need to have an editorial calendar, says Dilworth. Few companies, however, currently have one, mainly because they don t see themselves as publishers, she notes. Very simply, an editorial calendar maps out when content will be published over the course of a 12 month period and, in broad strokes, what that content will be. This forces companies to think strategically about what type of content they should be releasing throughout the year. For example, a company that offers portable storage solutions might want to consider publishing an article on its website after Christmas about storage ideas for holiday decorations. This way, someone who is looking for what to do with Christmas decorations, but not necessarily thinking about portable storage solutions, can be introduced to the brand while searching online for ideas. With an editorial calendar, the company can plan for the article, make sure it is published in a timely manner and support it via e-mail or other appropriate marketing vehicles.

If you know that consumers are looking for certain content and you make it available, it can be a pretty powerful way to capture an audience you ve never captured before, reports Dilworth. 5. Have a strong and consistent voice Grabbing the customer s attention can be a challenge. Every day, people are exposed to content from numerous sources -- TV, radio, the mailbox, in-store displays and kiosks, digital billboards and more. Which is why it s so important that anything you publish not only stands out because it s unique in some way but, also that it be immediately identifiable as coming from you. This should be true even if all the brand markers were removed. Giving content a voice may sound slightly pretentious but, it s an important step. Try taking a look inside the company to search for what s special or different about it. You may also want to consider if the company has a particular point of view on the issues or hot topics in its market sector. Finally, give some thought to how you want to express yourself. Are you looking to establish a lighthearted, conversational tone or an authoritative, scholarly one? The language you use and tone of your voice provide an untapped, powerful way to forge a distinctive identity, says Handley. She suggests using the language of your customers to communicate brand missions, values and philosophy in simple terms and eliminating the use of corporate speak and buzzwords. Whatever voice you do establish, apply it consistently across all communications in order to avoid any confusion. 6. Be a valuable source of information If you recognize that more consumers are going online all the time looking for answers to their questions, then it s easy to see why customers find value in content that solves their problems. Problem-solving content is also a good way to show customers and prospects that a company is interested in helping people accomplish their goals or meet their objectives and isn t simply trying to sell them something, says Handley. Such content builds trust, makes the publisher an authority in their field and encourages people to come back to a site repeatedly. Since case studies and client narratives explain in real-life terms how a product or service brings value to someone s life or business, they can be a good way to inform while keeping the

sales pitch to a minimum. Good content is not about storytelling; it s about telling a true story well, says Handley. 7. Be relevant Now that your content meets customers needs and reflects your brand s point of view, what should you do with it? You could upload it to a website, add navigational tools and hope someone will find it. Or, you could proactively serve relevant content to users, insuring that every step of a visit to your website is a meaningful and interactive experience. With an integrated content management system like iapps, marketers can do just this by automatically delivering relevant content to users based on their website behavior. iapps can also insure that visitors who click through to the site from a search ad will land on a page populated with content relevant to their search. The way it works is that iapps Analytics assigns users to predefined customer segments -- such as new customer or Webinar lead -- based on what they click on a website. IAPPS Content Manager can then take any content that has index tags assigned to it and show users only the content that is associated with the segment they fall into. For example, a company could create three different versions of a flash movie one for existing customers, one for new customers and one for purchasing influencers and serve up the indicated version when someone lands on the homepage. All of this can be done without the involvement of an IT department, giving the marketer the ability to control the content and the messaging, says Brett Zucker, Chief Technical Officer at Bridgeline Digital. iapps is the only Web content management platform currently available that integrates four essential marketing functions: Analytics, emarketing, ecommerce as well as content management. Because all four main marketing functions work from the same database, iapps is able to help marketers more efficiently create customer segments and automatically deliver relevant content to users.

8. Have a clear objective in mind Because good content is created with intent, it s always a good idea to ask, why are you creating what you are creating? says Handley. Then, consider if there are any calls to action, triggers or other ways to further the momentum of users along the path toward your desired objective. Using a robust content management system is one way to help build momentum. With iapps, companies are able to not only serve up relevant content but they can also map out the order in which content appears. By using iapps Analytics to track how content performs, companies can test and come up with the best sequence for driving their desired outcome. Bridgeline Digital calls this persuasive content. 9. Spread the wealth As we ve already discussed, it s a multi-channel world these days. Which is why it s a good idea to always think about ways to repurpose content. Can that Webinar be reworked as a whitepaper? Can whitepaper be broken down into a series of blog posts? (Like the one you are reading certainly will be.) Thinking like this can help insure a brand is presented consistently across channels and that you are reaching consumers who may not be on the website. With the right content management system, repurposing content can be easy. Because iapps is integrated, it s simple to access all of the content and imagery for the website to create e- mails, landing pages and social media content. This consistency helps mitigate bounce rates, which is when customers click through to a website after receiving an e-mail and then quickly leave. iapps can also publish website content out to a mobile device without the need to develop an entirely new mobile site. 10. Track results Once you have an editorial calendar and can repurpose content across multiple platforms, your content should start behaving like any other marketing vehicle, driving engagement, conversion and revenue. At this stage, it s imperative to be able to track the results of your content efforts, just like you would with any other campaign. Using iapps Analytics, it s easy to measure how many people viewed certain content, how many clicked through to another page and how many converted. From here, it should be clear what is and isn t working, enabling you to tweak your efforts going forward and continue to improve your content s ability to drive results.

Whatever technology you use, make sure the vendor totally gets the fundamentals of a killer content marketing strategy, says Handley. What's cool about the iapps Product Suite is the way it helps organizations publish, manage, and measure engaging content across so many platforms like websites, blogs, online stores, and email.

About Bridgeline Digital Bridgeline Digital is a developer of an award-winning web engagement management platform and award-winning interactive business technology solutions that help customers leverage best in class web-based technologies to achieve their business objectives. The iapps Product Suite is an innovative SaaS solution that unifies Content Management, e-commerce, e-marketing, and Analytics capabilities into the heart of websites, online stores, intranets, extranets, and portals enabling business users to swiftly enhance and optimize the value of their web properties. iapps Content Manager is the 2010 CODiE Award Winner for Best Content Management Solution, globally. Combined with award-winning interactive technology development services by Microsoft Gold- Certified development teams, Bridgeline Digital helps customers to cost-effectively maximize the value of their rapidly changing web applications. Bridgeline's teams of developers specialize in web application development, e-commerce development, usability engineering, SharePoint development, rich media development, and search engine optimization. Bridgeline Digital is headquartered near Boston, with additional locations in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Bangalore, India. Bridgeline Digital has hundreds of customers ranging from middle market organizations to divisions within Fortune 1,000 companies that include: Sun Chemical, Honeywell, Healthcore, LG Electronics, Marriott International, Berkshire Life, PODS, Budget Rental Car, Washington Redskins, AARP, National Financial Partners, The Packard Foundation, DTCC, Cadaret, Grant & Co., National Insurance Crime Bureau, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Bridgeline Digital 10 Sixth Road Woburn, MA 01801