Thinking of doing a content marketing campaign? READ THIS GUIDE FIRST... www.emlwildfire.com
Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. The best ads are based entirely on services. They offer wanted information Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising (1923) Content marketing without PR is like a shot without a catapult. Debby Penton, EML Wildfire (2013)
Content marketing is the new SEO everyone s claiming to be an expert in it now, but it s something we PR practitioners have been doing for years. Not only do we know how to create great content, but we focus on making it newsworthy too a crucial piece of the mix that is too often ignored. If you re going to the effort of developing compelling content, then why not use it to reach a wider audience, boost your profile and generate more inbound traffic? This guide details five clear steps to help you create compelling content that reaches and resonates with the widest audience possible, to ensure maximum impact for your business. plan create promote convert measure
plan Planning is a vital first step for any campaign. We are going to look at five stages you should go through before even putting pen to paper: 1 Agreeing objectives 2 Understanding your audience 3 Identifying a theme 4 Writing a content brief 5 Creating a project plan What are your objectives? It s vital to have clear objectives before starting any marketing campaign. For, it is even more important. It will be impossible to measure success if you don t know what success will look like. Here are some common objectives for content marketing campaigns: Generate leads Position your company or key employees as experts Demonstrate your expertise in a specific area Grow your contact database Improve your SEO rankings Engage your community Arm your sales team with content to share with prospects. Pick out your key objectives and assign some key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can use to benchmark success.
plan Thinking about your audience Now you know what your objectives are, it s time to think about the content that will help you achieve your aims. Remember you need to put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer. The success of a campaign lies in identifying the content that will resonate with your audience. Identify your audience - who is it you want to reach? Think about existing customers and prospects. Write some personas - help focus your mind by writing some audience personas. When you come to write your content, being able to visualise who you want to write for will really help. You might even want to base them on existing customers if you have trouble making them up. behaviour, and what influences them in terms of traditional and social media, forums, colleagues, peer recommendations or word of mouth. But ultimately you want to understand their specific challenges, what keeps them up at night and how you can help them overcome these concerns. For example, in a business context your target customer might need to save money, understand a new trend, do their job better, improve sales or look good to their boss. And consumers might want to be a trendsetter, make their life easier, manage their health better, get the best product or service to suit their needs, or simply build trust and affinity with a brand. Where possible, use psychographic and demographic information, e.g. age, sex, job title, industry, company size, personality, values, buying
plan Identifying a theme We ve already extolled the virtue of having an audience-centric approach to content creation, but it is critical that any content you create allies closely to your business proposition, messages and culture, so don t lose sight of that. However, in generating a theme that will interest your audience, there are plenty of ways and free tools out there to help you to brainstorm topics that will resonate in a cost effective way. For example: Topsy - search content published on the social web by topic, theme or keyword. Your own blog analytics - which blog posts are most popular? Are there common themes? Google Trends - who is searching for what and when? This will tell you. Social media - put a shout out on your social channels and see what topics are exciting your audience. Industry publications and bloggers - see what issues are being written about on a regular basis. Networking events - check out the events planned in your industry for the next few months. What are the common topics being discussed? Ubersuggest - enter in a keyphrase and this clever search engine will use Google auto-complete data to give you other related suggestions. Content idea generator - this impressive Google Doc will allow you to enter a phrase and will then suggest a range of newsworthy topics based on what is being talked about on the web. Once you have a long list of possible themes, discuss them with colleagues and customers, if possible. Get a sense for the ones that most frequently stand out.
plan Writing a content brief So now you are armed with this information, it s time to write a content brief. The key thing about writing a brief is to keep it short and concise (the clue is in the name). Your brief should answer the following questions for anyone reading it: Why are we using? What is our trying to achieve (objective)? Who are we talking to (audience)? What do we know about them (personas)? What is the main idea we want to communicate (theme)? What is the best way to get that idea across to the audience? What behaviour change or reaction do we want from our audience? What does success look like? Your brief should be one or two sides of A4, preferably presented in a bullet format. Whether you re briefing an agency or inhouse copywriter, this summary will help to ensure you get exactly what you want.
plan Writing your project plan The final part of your planning phase is to produce a project plan. Your project plan should include the following: Key objectives Timeline Breakdown of the steps required in creating and promoting your content and who is responsible for each Third party input required Budget breakdown. It s worth bearing in mind that your project plan could well change, but it is always good to have a clear overview of what the project will look like at the beginning. If you are working with a number of colleagues and/or third parties, then using a shared worksheet could be useful. Consider a Google spreadsheet or even tools like Huddle, Smartsheet, Trello or Asana.
create Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn t mean you ve reached them. - Frank Zappa Create your hero piece At the heart of any campaign will be a hero piece of content. This is the piece of content that all your PR and supporting materials will point to and the piece that you feel your audience will definitely feel educated, enlightened or entertained as a result of reading or watching it. It should embody the core themes that you put together in the planning stage. Deciding the format of the hero piece should be the result of a brainstorming phase using the creative brief that has been put together. Typically, this will be a whitepaper, guide, report or ebook depending on your business or audience. But the content development should not stop there. There are many ways you can atomise, or break up the core content into bite size chunks for your audience and use across many different marketing channels to extend the reach and life of your campaign, as the diagram below shows: NEWSLETTERS GAMES & QUIZZES ROUNDTABLE DEMOS GIFTS & IMAGES VIDEO OR VOX POPS REPORT WHITEPAPER PODCAST EBOOK GUIDE SLIDESHARE TWEETS BLOGS WEBINAR ARTICLES INFOGRAPHIC
plan Make it awesome With so much content now out there on the web, making yours stand out is absolutely crucial. It doesn t just have to be good. It has to be awesome. Stuck with a blank page or struggling for inspiration? Here are a few tips to get those creative juices flowing: Do some research this can be the best way to quickly create content that is really interesting, newsworthy and that says something different. You can interview consumers, businesses, scour the internet or even benchmark industry performance in some way. Interview some experts they might exist within your company, they might be customers or they might be industry influencers. Tap into their knowledge and expertise. Put a shout out on social media channels why not ask your social communities for help? Or check out what people are talking about on forums. What would they like to see in your content? You could even pull out quotes or tweets within the content itself. Looks matter Related to the last section, the way you present your content is now more important than ever. Looks matter when it comes to content. So don t scrimp on design. Think about the best ways to present the content you have created. Does it need some design or development work? Can you do this yourself or do you need to employ the services of a third party? Having done all the hard work, it is amazing how many companies drop the ball at this crucial last stage. Finally, in the era of multi-devices, think about user experience. Where will your audience be when they are trying to access your content? Do you need content that is mobile friendly?
promote You ve done it! Your content is ready, it has been created and it s all ready to be consumed. But how do you get the message out? There is a lot of discussion about inbound and outbound strategies, and there are many very effective tactics you can use via your own channels or earned media to get the content into the hands of your audience: SEO make sure your content is optimised for the keywords you planned for earlier. If your content starts ranking for key terms then you can expect to see a significant amount of traffic. Launch it via a press release, and comprehensive media sell-in if you have newsworthy content, make sure you share with the media, and share it with them first as once it s in the public domain, it s no longer news. Add it to your website homepage and flag it on every page. Write articles/guest blog posts about it tap into the community and demonstrate your expertise by writing for other websites. Create social objects or variations you have your hero piece but, like all good success stories, you need a spin off. Create smaller variations of your hero piece that can be easily shared or embedded on social channels. Blog about it sounds obvious, but many companies forget to talk about their content on their own blog. Why not write a series of posts covering different aspects of the content, with appropriate links back, of course. Social media distribute via your social channels. Think about posts that are relevant for the medium - can you send tips out on Twitter, for example? How about incentivising people to download your content in exchange for a tweet? Bookmarking sites make sure you add your content to bookmarking sites like Reddit and Delicious. Tell communities about it are there groups on LinkedIn or forums that might be interested? Events can you launch your content via an event? Either offline or online via a webinar or Google Hangout. Or could you use it as the basis of a speaking session at an industry event? Share with influencers do you have a list of influencers that would be interested in your content? Email newsletters or eshots make sure you inform your existing customers or prospects. Once you ve exhausted the many possible inbound traffic generation tactics you may choose to augment your approach with some outbound, or paid activity. This can often be an effective way to reach new audiences, for example through Linkedin adverts, promoted Tweets, sponsored stories, PPC search adverts, third party eshots or even banner ads.
CONVERT For the majority of companies, the main aim of a campaign will be to reach some point of conversion. The simplest way to achieve this is to create a landing page or microsite where visitors have to complete some information in order to download or access the content you have created. Any download form should ask for details that are critical for you. If you re providing informative or entertaining content then people won t mind exchanging their contact details in return, but don t ask too much otherwise this will likely impact the number of downloads you receive. You could instead ask for social media shares in return for a download using a service such as Cloud Flood. This would be especially appropriate if your ultimate aim is brand awareness rather than lead generation. Lead nurturing If your aim is lead generation, then making sure you have thought about lead nurturing is important too. Getting the download information is just the first step. What will you do with it afterwards? When will this content work most effectively in the buying cycle and what else can you send interested parties at future dates? There are many good marketing automation platforms available that can run this process seamlessly for you, such as Marketo, Eloqua and hubspot, or you could even talk to your existing email marketing provider, such as dotmailer, who are increasingly building marketing automation functionality into their email platforms.
measure Remember chapter one and those KPIs we discussed? This is where we look at them again. Each KPI should have a specific measurement metric attached to it so that you can measure success on an ongoing basis. Agile measurement Try and record metrics on a real-time basis. This way, if something doesn t seem to be working properly, you can take steps to correct it immediately rather than waiting for the end of the campaign. Looking at the objectives we outlined in part one, here are some possible measurement metrics you could use: Objective Leads Position your company or key employees as experts Demonstrate your expertise in a specific area Support other marketing, PR or social media activity Grow your contact database Improve your SEO rankings Arm your sales team with content to share with prospects Metric / KPI Number of downloads Number of qualified leads Growth in spokesperson visibility Interactions with key influencers Thought leadership pieces in key media/websites Social media activity Conversions driven by social media Data acquired Growth in SEO rankings Content created for sales team Conversions through sales team Once the campaign is complete, make sure you do a thorough post mortem so that you can learn from what worked and what didn t work and make improvements to future activities.
final word Hopefully this guide has been helpful to you, but if you still need inspiration then check out a couple of the content-led PR campaigns we ve done for clients, or just give us a call on 020 8408 8000 or email newbusiness@emlwildfire.com.
Case study: Generating sales The challenge: Position EPiServer as an expert in enabling successful online communities and advanced digital techniques such as personalisation to drive traffic to the website and deliver potential sales leads. Approach: Launch a provocative study, using market research, into how UK businesses are using online communication strategies, in order to highlight the importance community management. Campaign highlights: Fully integrated campaign including media targeting to marketing, business, customer service, ecommerce and new media sectors. Creation of social objects to encourage online buzz, viral sharing and stickiness. Blogging and article placement to promote expertise residing within EPiServer, including regular blog spot on econsultancy. Research report available as redemption item on EPiServer website, with data capture for lead generation. Results //////////////////////////////////// 122 Qualified leads generated with target marketers and web developers 5 Major deals closed 200% Return on investment
coverage Developing your e-commerce strategy: How to deliver what consumers really want
Case study: Client experience dotcommerce - Generating a 1m sales pipeline The Challenge: Create media impact and sales leads around the launch of dotcommerce - an ecommerce platform aimed at a niche B2B audience of SMB retailers - with a very modest digital PR budget. Approach: Launch an industry benchmark report to attract widespread industry attention, provoke controversy and debate, and educate the target market about the full capability of the dotcommerce platform. In-depth study to assess the ecommerce effectiveness of the UK s top 20 retail web sites. Make learnings available in 42-page report to drive home the key sales message, with 130 best practice guidelines drawing on examples from the study. Fully integrated campaign launch, including media targeting in retail, ecommerce and marketing sectors, blogger outreach and promotion across social media channels. Web traffic encouraged by making in-depth report available as a redemption item on the dotcommerce website. Influential bloggers and journalists given exclusive advanced access to the full report. The campaign succeeded against all criteria and drove all marketing activity for the dotcommerce launch. Results //////////////////////////////////// 53 pieces of coverage in traditional and new media channels, including publications such as Internet Retailing, Econsultancy, NMA and SMEWeb 1m value of sales pipeline comprising 117 prospective dotcommerce clients.
client testimonial Successfully launching a new brand in a very competitive and established B2B sector is always going to be a challenge. EML Wildfire developed a campaign that not only generated a sustained buzz around the brand, but also helped drive extremely targeted traffic to the new website and gave us a detailed whitepaper that can be used for marketing activities and data capture in the future. This was an incredibly effective campaign that achieved fantastic results for the business and really put dotcommerce on the map. For these reasons it more than achieved our objectives and gave us a fantastic return on our investment. Cliff Guy, Head of Marketing, dotdigital Group PLC