The Spider Approach to Content Marketing How it works & why it works

The Spider Approach to Content Marketing How it works & why it works

Contents 1. The Spider Approach: audience-first content marketing 2. Develop an audience-first, resource-sensitive asset 3. A strong pillar is a win-win for audience and marketer 4. Maximum flexibility guarantees big success 5. Why this approach wins In this short guide, we want to show you the Spider approach to content marketing and how it will enable you to solve the main problems involved with content marketing. We thought the best way to introduce the method, was to show an example of how it works in practice. Join us to find out how to win in the new content crazy, cross device world.

1. The Spider Approach: audience-first content marketing 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. 1 This is understandable. Creating great content takes time. And the availability of resource is the biggest barrier standing between marketers and the ability to create content frequently, and to a high standard. How can we overcome this? This is where the Spider Approach will help. The Spider Approach will enable the creation of assets that weave together into a fully integrated campaign. Campaign assets are used to tell authentic stories that showcase your organization s expertise in your business or industry sector, while also delivering the best return on investment and crucially, keeping your audience s requirements first and foremost in mind. 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy The Spider Approach starts by gaining a full understanding of your audience. We ll define your audience and the channels they engage with, which is key to delivering the creative content that they want, when they want it. However, it is also vital to match this up with business marketing goals. The result of an integrated campaign, that is designed by channel, is a longer content lifetime that will maximize your investment, lead to higher engagement and sharing, and demonstrate measurable audience growth. Different channels of discovery Different audience segments Strategy: It s not enough to just create content. You need a strategy to weave it together and promote it across multiple platforms and channels. Optimisation: Use data insight to make sure that it works for every audience, on every device, in every context. Use contextual insight to promote the right story at the right time. Measurement: Building a conversation with an audience takes time. The Spider Approach means identifying and setting the right targets, measuring success against those targets and demonstrating ROI, while also feeding back into strategy to ensure content matches audience requirements on an ongoing basis. Different devices Different stages of user journey Different ways of reacting Audience 1. http://www.smartinsights.com/content-management/content-marketing-planning/the-state-of-content-marketing-2015-infographic

2. Develop an audience-first, resource-sensitive asset The key focus is to improve efficiency of marketing in a cross device world. Content marketing only works if it matches to a visitor s requirements. But we can t be all things to all people in all contexts. If content marketing is to be a win-win, both for the marketer and for the visitor, we need to base it on a solid pillar piece. Let s take a look at an example in practice. It s important to identify audience and one or two specific primary aims for success measurement Challenge: Changing perceptions Solution: Initiate up-sell Increase brand awareness Netbiscuits is a leading provider of cloud based solutions that enable digital marketers to improve web experiences for customers. It s been providing mobile web marketing solutions since the year 2000, but wanted to improve brand awareness for its current mobile solutions. It was also seen as out of date, after many new solutions for mobile web marketing had entered the market. Netbiscuits needed to re-establish itself quickly as an influencer and increase the volume of quality of traffic to its site to cement itself at the forefront of the mobile web space. Netbiscuits saw the audience-first approach as vital for raising the awareness of the company, to establish itself as the definitive thought leader on all areas relating to the mobile web. A compelling integrated campaign based on original research in the form of a survey was devised in order to target the core audience of marketers and tech media. The pillar content needed to be strong and relevant so that the audience would not only engage with the content, but become promoters themselves through their publications, blogs and marketing research. Educate existing customers and deepen loyalty Create leads and convert into sales Attract strategic partners Drive traffic to website and improve search rankings

3. A strong pillar is a win-win for audience and marketer Choosing the right content that resonates with the customer, is flexible for different consumption models and offers longevity to deliver the desired ROI needs planning, planning and more planning. As Abraham Lincoln once said, Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. In this case, a survey was chosen as the most effective way of engaging the audience with relevant content, to provide the industry with new data and findings that would position Netbiscuits as the primary authority on a number of industry related topics, thus matching the goal of adding value to the brand. We designed the survey questions around ongoing themes in Netbiscuits core industry area, the mobile web. This made it topical and relevant to the audience and newsworthy for a press release. The survey enabled the creation of an exciting whitepaper with new, unique findings. This fulfilled the need for long form content. However, it was also straightforward to break up into lots of bite sized themes and segments for blogs and short articles, to easily populate the editorial calendar. Surveys create data and data creates the opportunity to create graphs and lots of other visual media, including infographics, videos and animations. We created numerous assets based on the cuts of different data, which were simple to share on social media channels. The various formats could seamlessly cater for cross device contexts. The Netbiscuits People s Web Report is an example of how a survey can be used as an effective piece of pillar content for ongoing success. It was based on twelve questions relating to topical market trends that explored the views of 6,000 respondents across six countries. New and original research sparks conversation. This means coverage from trade press, journalists, shares from social media channels and most importantly, lots of user generated content. Coverage and feedback makes it increasingly easy to engage the audience and fill the content calendar with new thoughts and ideas. It makes it more than a one-off campaign.

4. Maximum flexibility guarantees big success An asset such as a survey provides a great deal of ideal media for multiple channels and contexts based around visitors different smartphone, PC and tablet use. It s far too tempting to try and re-use or re-purpose content in an entirely ad-hoc way, which is initially quick but highly inefficient. The Spider Approach, however, puts multi-purpose outputs at the core of content creation. Here s why the survey resulted in a highly successful, efficient set of results: A report for download: For those looking for an in-depth study, a report was created that was downloaded over 5,000 times, leading to sales leads and multiple conversions Five infographics that could be released over the following months, further driving the number of report downloads A wide array of themes to explore that could populate multiple blogs based on single chapters from within the report. This encourages ongoing conversation and user engagement Different themes for publications that focus on different audiences, including mainstream publications such as The Guardian; trade press such as The Drum as well as niche and technical publications Lots of themes means it s easy to provoke discussion and produce video content, including six talking head videos and ten consumer vox-pops for use on the website, in articles and on other video channels such as YouTube which collectively secured over 1,000 views Creation of a stats bank, which can be drawn upon to form advance Tweets, LinkedIn and Facebook updates with minimum effort while giving the sales team material to begin new conversations Social media helped broadcast the People s Web Report to over 32,000 influencers with 100% of the tweets being of a positive sentiment across EMEA, NA and APAC. This is an example of an asset that populated the editorial calendar for months to come. It grew Netbiscuits brand influence, allowing it to comment on breaking news stories for more than six months. And even after twelve months, the report continues to be quoted in relevant articles and blogs.

5. Why this approach wins This approach wins because it has the audience s needs at heart. Meanwhile, for Netbiscuits it solved three of the top main issues facing all marketing teams as they launch more formalised content marketing approaches. These are, as voted by marketers: Lack of time or bandwidth to create content (51%); Producing enough content variety or volume (50%); Producing truly engaging content (42%). 2 The Spider Approach, as used in this example, delivers the following benefits to marketers that solves each of these top three concerns: Time friendly The approach facilitates the production of more content in a more timely manner and enables a straightforward way to mass populate the editorial calendar in a coherent, consistent manner. Flexible It can reach larger audiences, as it lends itself to being used in multiple different formats for maximum exposure. It enables the marketer to capture key performance related data that can be used to form the basis of future content decisions: what works and what doesn t, for whom, when and where? If we want to reach the goal of more personalised, more customised content, we need to ensure we base that on sensible assumptions from real life experience. Accessible Not only was it topical, it was also available to the audience on all devices, so they could pick up the story, or parts of the story that were relevant to them in their context. As such, it made it easier to share, and therefore easier for them to take part in a conversation about the piece. This made recording the success and proving the ROI against the original planned targets a synch. Let us show you how to beat the content dilemma and start winning an engaged, cross device audience. Lots of formats mean many chances to customise for context -Phone users like short form content. Short form articles based on this survey are promoted on social media in the morning -Desktop users favour whitepapers. This aspect is therefore pushed in the lunchtime email campaign. -Tablet users prefer visuals. A series of talking head videos are created and promoted in evening social media Applying this approach led to overall growth in total web traffic. Mobile overtook desktop traffic, driven by more engagement at the weekends. 2. http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-statistics-the-ultimate-list/ Device Preference data from comscore.com

About Spider Marketing Spider Marketing is a London based boutique content marketing and strategy agency. Spider Marketing create strategies that weaves different content assets together across multiple platforms and channels. They understand your visitor s context and journey across multiple devices from micro moments on smartphones to video on tablets and downloads on PCs and create bespoke campaigns to engage your mobile visitor so your conversions soar. Find out more at spidermarketing.london or contact us at info@spidermarketing.london.