1. Hooked on Content
Developing a successful content marketing strategy
with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2. 03
13
05
Introduction
Finding the Fish
Baiting the Hook
29
18
Casting the Line
Weighing your Catch
04
16
09
35
25
What is Content Marketing
Creating the Bait
Attaching the Sinker
Reeling it in
About ClickDimensions
and why should I do it?
Developing your content
Targeted messaging
Turn conversions into customers
Analytics and optimization
Content distribution
Call to action
Personas and segmentation
Contents
34
Conclusion
Go fishing!

3. 3
Introduction
There are pages upon pages written by experts explaining the
importance of using effective content as part of your marketing
strategy. Most of these content marketing guides, while very
educational and impactful, are solely focused on creating the
content itself and not necessarily the entire process of turning the
content into dollars and cents.
Having compelling and relevant content is indeed very important,
and there are different ways to determine what content to create.
But that’s only part of the picture. In this eBook, we are going to
explore how to use your content to generate high quality leads.
In the following pages, you’ll learn how to revolutionize the way
you build, execute and measure your content marketing strategies
using Microsoft Dynamics CRM by creating a collaborative and
complete content marketing campaign.
While the ideas and concepts are still helpful even if you are
not working with these platforms, all of the examples in this
eBook were created using Microsoft Dynamics CRM (customer
relationship management) and the ClickDimensions marketing
automation solution. If after reading this eBook, you would like
more information about marketing automation for CRM, please
visit www.clickdimensions.com or contact us at marketing@
clickdimensions.com.
We hope that you find this eBook helpful in casting your content
line into the water and catching the big fish!

4. 4
What is content marketing
and why should I do it?
As most salespeople will tell you, some
of the easiest deals to close are with
prospects that come to you to buy. These
“inbound” prospects are already familiar
with your brand, they trust your company,
and they are knowledgeable about your
products or services. As marketers,
we understand the value of inbound
marketing – enabling potential customers
to become aware of a brand by educating,
helping, or entertaining them in some way.
That’s where content marketing comes in.
For illustration purposes, we will be
relating the creation and execution
of content marketing to fishing. So, in
this example, content is the “bait” that
will attract the “fish” – your potential
customers.
The word “bait” sometimes gets a bad rap
because it is often thought of as being
deceptive or manipulative. However, good
content is designed to provide value to
your audience in exchange for the right to
market to the content consumers. Types of
content can include:
• eBooks
• White papers
• Articles
• Webinars
• Demos / Trials
• Videos
• Online training
• Newsletters
• Blog posts
• Case studies
• Infographics
• Presentations
• Reference guides
• Podcasts
Content marketing costs
62%less than traditional marketing
Demand Metric
For your content marketing strategy to be
successful, you must first and foremost
provide content that a consumer would
want. As mentioned earlier, this is usually
in the form of educating (white papers,
articles, case studies), helping (reference
guides, online training) or entertaining
(videos, infographics) the reader. Your
content must be compelling enough to
engage your audience and eventually
convert them into prospects and leads. If
your content is not relevant or informative,
the fish will not take the bait.

5. 5
Before you go chumming the waters (i.e. spending time and money
on writing, designing, and slinging your content to the masses),
it’s important to take a step back and figure out what type of fish
you’re pursuing. By properly identifying your audience first, you
will be able to plan a successful fishing trip, including what type of
bait to use.
In marketing terms, a persona is a fictional person that represents
your ideal buyer. At what sized company does he work? Where
does she live? What type of software does his company use?
Where is she in the buying cycle? What are his purchasing
motivations and/or pain points? These are examples of questions
you should ask yourself when considering your target customer.
Keep in mind that it’s possible that you may have several different
ideal buyers, especially at different stages of the buying process.
By defining these personas, you can consider them when creating
your content – Will this piece of content be relevant to my buyer?
Will it bring them value?
Finding the Fish
Personas & segmentation

6. 6
While you may already have an idea of
what your typical customer looks like, tools
like Google Analytics can help you discover
specific details about where your audience
is coming from and what their interests
are. What pages do your web visitors view
when they get to your site? What are the
demographics of your audience? Where
are they located?
Dynamics CRM is also extremely helpful
in completing this task. You have an
extremely powerful slicing and dicing
platform to divide your audience into
manageable groups. You can use the
power of advanced finds, views, and
dynamic marketing lists to dive through
the opportunities that you’ve closed to
determine what your best customers
have in common. By doing this, you create
segments and personas that will help you
seek out more of these same buyers.
Google Analytics

7. 7
Perhaps take a look at the industries of
your opportunities and/or active customer
accounts. In this example, sales are strong
in the high-tech and professional services
industries, as well as with non-profits
and educational institutions. However,
sales are not performing as well in the
government sector. So when we develop
our marketing pieces, we should focus on
content that will appeal to “Jeff” who works
for a software company or “Betty” who
works for a leading university. Or, we could
create a content piece directed at “Larry”
who works for the Department of Labor
hoping to stimulate that sluggish market
segment.
What’s the difference between a
segment and a persona?
Segments are customer groups
tied together by common factors
like geography, age, or purchase
history. Often advertising is aimed
at different market segments.
Personas are fictional “people”
that embody a mix of commonly-
known characteristics and other
analytical inferences that are held
by your ideal customer. Personas
are helpful when making strategic
decisions about how to market to
your audience.

8. 8
The point is, in order to decide what bait
to use, you have to understand the reason
behind why that bait works or not. You
need to know more about your audience
than you think you know. Identifying your
customer is not just setting a target, it is
the first step in positioning your value and
essential to creating successful content.
Social discovery tools allow you to gain even more insight into your buyers and their
behaviors. ClickDimensions’ Social Discovery embeds data and direct links from social
networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, right into your lead or
contact’s CRM record.
Use segmentation to compare
leads to opportunities
For example, in CRM, perform an
advanced find to chart the job
titles of your leads, then compare
those job titles to your closed
opportunities. Are they the same
type of person? Are most of your
leads Marketing Managers, but the
opportunities are being closed with
Chief Marketing Officers?
Perhaps that is part of the sales
cycle – the CMO has the final
purchasing decision – or perhaps
you are targeting the wrong
persona.
Try adjusting your content
marketing to appeal to the decision
maker and see how that affects
sales.

9. 9
Creating the Bait
Developing your content
Now that you have identified to whom you are marketing, it’s time
to decide what content to provide them. What bait will attract your
fish?
Remember what we discussed earlier – effective content marketing
does one (or more) things for your audience: educate, help or
entertain. Content marketing is not a sales pitch. Of course you
want your efforts to attract people to your company for the purpose
of buying your products or services, but content marketing is about
developing a relationship with your buyers. You want to attract
them to your brand, but not scare them away with in-your-face
sales tactics.
7 out of 10 consumers Like Custom Content
because information is targeted to specific interests
Custom Content Council

10. 10
Save the sales pitches for your brochures, pricing sheets, and sales presentations.
Customers will want to hear that information when they are ready to buy. In the meantime,
attract them to your organization by providing them with something they will find valuable,
useful or entertaining. When done well, this approach will deliver incredible results.
Prospects will come into the buying process with a knowledge of your company, trust in
your expertise, and a preference for your brand over the competition.
ClickDimensions builds and sells marketing automation tools for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
So, our buyer personas are people that either already use Microsoft CRM, or are at some
point in the process of evaluating or implementing the platform. Knowing this, nearly all of
our content (like this eBook!) is focused to some degree on Microsoft CRM. It brings value to
our audience, whether or not they end up buying ClickDimensions.
In addition to our regular blog, newsletter and webinars, we publish several eBooks per
year. Previous books include our Marketing with Microsoft CRM Idea eBook, Microsoft CRM
Implementation Blueprint, and Marketing ROI for Dynamics CRM Quick Guide. Each of these
content pieces was aimed at helping or educating our readers on topics that are relevant to
them – generating marketing ideas, effectively implementing CRM, and measuring ROI.
One of the primary ways that we select topics for our eBooks is in response to the needs
or wants of our audience. For example, earlier this year as we were brainstorming ideas for
our next eBook, we decided to look at our Google AdWords account to see what keywords
people were searching that led them to ClickDimensions.
Naturally, the list included the expected “Microsoft CRM” and “marketing” related keywords.
But one particular trend caught our eye. Keywords related to CRM “training,” “tutorials” and
“certification” seemed to be ranking high on the list.
With all of that being said, don’t
miss the opportunity to include
information about your company
as a part of your content! For
example, include a link to your
website from within a blog post,
provide contact information in your
white paper, or feature a relevant
product in the sidebar of your
eBook. Make it possible for the
reader to get more information if
and when they want it.

11. 11
That got us thinking... While we’re not
in the business of writing CRM training
manuals, we had a pretty good collection
of places to go to find help – from websites
to blogs to discussion forums and more.
So that’s how the Training Resource Guide
for Microsoft Dynamics CRM was born. We
assembled the Training Resource Guide to
assist CRM users in finding the help they
need and also introduce them to new
resources and products they may not have
known were available.
The content would be valuable to anyone
using Microsoft CRM – perfect “bait” for the
fish that we were seeking to attract. While
the guide was not a sales tool, it would
help us identify prospects who are CRM
users, some of which may be interested
in a marketing automation solution as
well. That’s the key to creating effective
content – provide information that will
educate, help or entertain, and thus begin
the process of engaging and building
relationships with your audience.

12. 12
Where does the content
come from?
As an expert in your field, most of your
content should be generated from within your
organization. If you need help turning your great
idea into a professionally-written piece, there
many resources to find freelance writers and
designers, including:
• Elance
• oDesk
• Guru
• Freelancer
Alternatively, there are organizations that will
develop original content that is applicable to
your industry, including:
• Brafton
• Brandpoint
• Imagination
If you are having a difficult time coming up with
ideas, peruse one of these websites:
• Content Marketing Institute
• Custom Content Council
• Content Marketing Ideas (Forbes)
• Content Marketing Articles (Mashable)

13. 13
Baiting the Hook
Call to action
Behind every successful sales and marketing
communication there is a call to action.
Without it, you might as well dump your bait
in the water and hope that the fish jump into
the boat.
Some content should be given away with no
strings attached. While not as measurable,
“free” content marketing is highly successful
at raising brand awareness, developing
consumer trust and establishing thought
leadership. However, your content
marketing strategy should also include
content pieces that can be used to identify
potential customers and generate leads.
It seems pretty straightforward, but it’s
really an art that you must refine. Too
often, organizations create really good
content, but don’t get great results.
The problem isn’t with the content or the
audience, but rather the request/conversion
process. Content marketing is an exchange
of information. You give your audience
something they value, and they give you
information about themselves. Asking for
too much information can deter potential
readers from submitting a web form.
However, not asking for any information
in exchange for your content will leave

14. 14
you without valuable leads and unable to
measure the effectiveness of your campaign.
As the use of content marketing continues
to grow, readers are becoming accustomed
to providing information about themselves
in exchange for the content they desire.
However, make sure to use the right-sized
hook for your bait. For example, you should
only ask for an email address (and possibly
a name) to subscribe to your e-newsletter,
but you can require much more information
– perhaps title, company name, phone
number – when someone requests a trial of
your product.
Keep simplicity in mind when converting
visitors. If you are driving traffic from ads
or posts, send the reader to a landing
page with minimal navigation options and
a single call to action. Landing pages can
be a very effective funnel for your lead
generation and qualification process, but if
you give your prospects too many options,
they might not commit to any. Below is an
example of the landing page we use for the
Training Resource Guide:
Our form is short – requesting only name,
company and email – and there are
minimal links from the page. Visitors could
click the “ClickDimensions” button or logo
at the top of the page to visit our website,
or click a link to read our privacy policy, but
otherwise the sole call to action is to “Get
the Guide!”
of consumers
understand that the company is
selling something,
but that’s fine as long as the
information is valuable
Custom Content Council
77%
73%Prefer to get information
about A Company in a
Collection of Articles
Rather than as an ad

15. 15
Don’t confuse content marketing with
sales. Scale your call to action to the
content you are presenting. Calls to action
such as “Buy Now” rarely work in content
marketing; less aggressive calls such as
“Download the Whitepaper” or “Watch the
Video” are often the most effective. The
content marketing proposition is not a
one-and-done process to close business;
it is a means of establishing mutual
trust, trading information, and building
a relationship with your prospects that
hopefully will be nurtured into a sales
opportunity.
With ClickDimensions, you can build landing pages and forms directly within Microsoft Dynamics
CRM without knowing any HTML. Our drag-and-drop tools make it easy to build landing pages and
embed forms. When a visitor completes a form, his or her email address is checked against all email
addresses in CRM to avoid duplicate data. Lead or contact records can be created for visitors who
are not already in your CRM, and all the data the visitor submits on the form is linked to their CRM
record.

16. 16
Attaching the Sinker
Targeted messaging
You’ve identified your fish, you’ve created your content bait, and you’re
asking the right questions to hook them, but somehow that’s just not
enough. Fishing line floats, and your baited hook doesn’t sink fast
enough, which means you could be wasting precious time out on the
water. Luckily for you, some brilliant caveman decided to tie a rock to a
string, and targeted messaging was born.
From your personas, you learned more about your audience which
enabled you to create relevant content, but now you need to use that
content to appeal to your audience in a way that speaks to them.
HOW ORGANIZATIONS TAILOR CONTENT
CMI/MarketingProfs

17. 17
At ClickDimensions, our target audience
has two major criteria: use of Microsoft
Dynamics CRM and an interest in
marketing. Our ideal buyer is a marketing
person who is currently using CRM, but
often we will also market to segments who
have only one of the criteria. Generally, we
target our content and messaging to these
audiences:
• Microsoft CRM user
• Marketing professional
• Marketing professional using MS CRM
(ideal buyer)
For example, our Training Resource Guide
for Microsoft Dynamics CRM was targeted
specifically at Microsoft CRM users. There
was very little content in the guide that
directly related to marketing. Our pay-per-
click advertising campaign for the Training
Resource Guide focused on CRM-related
keywords and contained messaging that
would appeal to someone using Microsoft
CRM. This content piece allowed us to
attract and identify individuals in our
first group – CRM users. Hopefully some
marketing folks were captured in that
campaign as well, but that was not the
primary goal of the content.
In contrast, this Hooked on Content
eBook is solely geared toward marketing
professionals. And while there is a CRM
component, this eBook was written
to benefit all marketers, regardless of
their software platform. Our online ads
contained verbiage directed at marketers,
and our campaign focused on marketing
keywords.
Not surprisingly, our most successful
content item to date has been our
Marketing with Microsoft CRM Idea eBook.
This eBook is targeted directly at our ideal
buyer – a marketing professional who
uses Microsoft CRM. People who show an
interest in this eBook are the most likely to
also subscribe to our newsletter, download
other content, or request a demo of our
solution.
When developing your content marketing
strategy, consider either (a) developing
different content items for each of your
target audiences, or (b) create advertising
campaigns for your content that appeal to
your audiences in different ways. Consider
each persona’s interests, motivations, and
pain points.
As we discussed earlier, content marketing
is not about closing the deal on the first
eBook download or newsletter subscribe,
but opening the door to developing a
relationship with individuals that have an
interest in what your company is offering.
Use CRM marketing lists to manage
segmented audiences
As visitors download your content, add
them to marketing lists in CRM that are
relevant to their interests. For example,
anyone who downloads the Training
Resource Guide would be added to a
“CRM User” marketing list and/or labeled
as a “CRM User” on their lead or contact
record. That way, when we get ready to
distribute another relevant content item,
we can easily send a targeted message
to these people whom we know have an
interest in CRM.
Using ClickDimensions with your CRM
makes this process even easier, as
contacts and leads can be added to a
marketing list (or lists) automatically as
they submit a form. ClickDimensions
can also trigger other actions as a form
is submitted, such as sending an auto-
response email, notifying a salesperson
of the new lead, or starting the lead on a
nurture marketing campaign.

18. 18
Casting the Line
Content distribution
If there is one absolute truth about fishing, it’s that you won’t
catch anything if you don’t have your line in the water. After you’ve
committed to a content marketing strategy and have content
ready to go, cast it out! In our fishing metaphor, your “line” is
how you distribute your content. In what way do you need to be
communicating with your customer to be relevant? How much
depth do you need in email, social, mobile, and web? With a
braided fishing line, the strength is in the collaboration of the
strands, as it is with your marketing channels.
Content marketing campaigns that generate and qualify leads
don’t have to use all of the available options, but they should take
advantage of the same channels that your target customers are
using. You may already have an idea where most of your leads
are coming from – perhaps through organic search or online ads.
But try some different outlets and test to see how your audience
responds. You may be surprised to find that your Twitter followers
are also interested in your blog, or that your infographic is
repinned all over Pinterest.

19. 19
SEO, SEM, PPC, blogs, shares, tweets,
pins... it can get confusing. Your instinct
may be to take a single piece of content,
and blast the same message throughout
every channel. However, different channels
are used in different ways. Let’s review
some of the most popular options and
see how they can help with your content
distribution:
EMAIL MARKETING
What it is: Directly sending a marketing
message to an individual (or group of
individuals) via email. Email marketing
can be sent to either internal customer/
prospect databases or purchased
marketing lists.
Advantages: Widespread usage (nearly
everyone has an email account). Relatively
inexpensive. Immediate delivery directly to
the recipient. Interaction and ROI can be
measured easily.
Disadvantages: Messages are often
ignored or deleted by the recipient.
Marketing emails can be rejected or
filtered if perceived as spam.
In this discussion, we are focusing
on digital marketing rather than
traditional marketing methods
such as direct mail, telemarketing
and tradeshows. However, there
are still opportunities to integrate
your content marketing into your
traditional campaigns – maybe
distribute a white paper at a
tradeshow or include a URL for your
latest eBook in your next print ad.
Investment: In its simplest form,
marketing emails can be sent from
any email program. However, many
organizations utilize email marketing or
marketing automation solutions (such as
ClickDimensions) to manage and distribute
their email campaigns. Costs vary
depending upon the volume of emails sent
and the features included in your email
distribution program.
Best practices: Opt-in or permission-
based email marketing has become
the standard for communicating with
consumers via email. If someone has
“opted in” to receiving emails from your
company, then the emails are expected
and not considered spam.
For content marketing: Email marketing
can be a great way to reach a targeted
audience. Particularly by utilizing
segmented marketing lists of CRM leads
and contacts, you can directly reach
individuals who are interested in your
content. Newsletters delivered via email
are also a very popular method of content
marketing.

20. 20
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
(SEO)
What it is: The process of trying to
increase the visibility of a website in a
search engine’s organic (unpaid) search
results. Using tactics such as editing the
content of the website, customizing the
HTML code, and increasing the number of
links to a site, the website owner tries to
get the site to appear higher in the search
results so more viewers will see the link.
Advantages: Search engine usage is very
popular among web users, giving you
access to a large audience. Essentially free
advertising if your website can place highly
in search results.
Disadvantages: Search engine algorithms
frequently change, making it difficult to
maintain your placement in organic search
results. There are no guarantees of your
placement in the results or the amount of
traffic you will receive.
Investment: Very minimal if you follow
the generally-accepted methods of
improving your search engine placement
(i.e. sitemaps, keywords, meta-tagging,
crosslinking); your website administrator
should perform those tasks when
building your website. However, many
companies also choose to invest heavily in
professional SEO services to monitor and
improve their ranking.
Best practices: Follow the “white hat”
techniques to optimize your website
(tactics recommended by the search
engines). “Black hat” SEO strategies
attempt to improve search rankings by
using deceptive methods that are not
approved by search engines. Black hat
techniques sometimes work in the short-
run, but may result in your website being
blocked from the search engine entirely.
For content marketing: Whenever
you create a landing page for a piece of
content, follow the basic SEO best practices
to improve its exposure with search
engines. Link your content to relevant
websites, and encourage other reputable
sites to link back to your content. Blogs
are especially useful in improving SEO as
they are typically rich in keywords and
the content is updated frequently. While
search engine results are not guaranteed,
implementing standard SEO techniques
will improve the chances that your content
is ranked highly.
Content+
Blogs give websites
434%more indexed pages
and
97%more indexed links

21. 21
PAY-PER-CLICK (PPC)
ADVERTISING
What it is: Online advertising where ads
are placed on a website and the advertiser
is charged a fee by the website owner (or
ad network) when the ad is clicked. The
most popular websites that offer PPC
advertising are search engines such as
Google and Bing. In this case, advertisers
bid on keywords to decide the cost per click
of the ad displayed when a user searches
on that keyword.
Advantages: Immediate search engine
visibility with guaranteed exposure if you
pay the required amount (i.e. the highest
bid). Control over budgets and audiences
enables highly-targeted ads. Ability to view
real-time results and statistics. Remarket
ads to users who have previously visited
your website.
Disadvantages: Many PPC programs
are complicated and must be consistently
monitored to have guaranteed success.
Can be costly depending upon your PPC
strategy and desired results. Many users
ignore online ads.
Investment: PPC requires a small initial
investment to get started – you only pay
when your ad is clicked. However, costs
can skyrocket if you are aggressive and
wish to maintain the highest bid for
popular keywords or if you do not actively
monitor your budget and spend. Many
companies also choose to invest in a PPC
marketing firm to handle their online
advertising.
Best practices: Before starting your
PPC campaign, clearly define your goals,
audience and budget. Create relevant
ads that will increase your click-through
rate. Make sure each ad has a clear call to
action. Test and analyze your results often
to ensure that you are reaching the right
consumers with your keywords and ads.
For content marketing: PPC advertising
can be a great way to quickly reach a target
audience that would be interested in your
content. Ads can link directly to a landing
page for your content item, streamlining
the process of converting visitors.
Remarketing ads can be particularly helpful
when content marketing; set up campaigns
that remarket only to visitors that have not
yet seen your content, and stop showing
those ads to them once they have visited
your site and downloaded the content.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
What it is: The process of gaining
exposure (i.e. website traffic or brand
awareness) through social media sites
such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+,
LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube. Social
media marketing relies heavily on word-of-
mouth communication between users to
share information or content. Relationship
building and positive interactions with
users drive social media success.
87%
of marketers use social media
to distribute content
CMI/MarketingProfs

22. 22
Advantages: Cost effective. Ability
to provide unlimited information to
your audience. Gain insight about your
customers with two-way communication.
Ability to reach target markets, increase
brand awareness, and generate brand
loyalty.
Disadvantages: Time intensive as social
sites must be highly active and continually
monitored to bring value. No control
over what users say or post about your
company – negative feedback can be
publicly available.
Investment: Very low cost as most
social media sites are free to participate.
Companies may need to invest in staff
to manage an active social presence,
however.
Best practices: Before you start, decide
how you want to interact with your
audience through social media. Invest
time and resources in developing an active
social presence. Listen to your followers
and engage with them in a way that builds
trust and brand loyalty.
For content marketing: Since anyone
can share and distribute your content,
social media offers unlimited organic
reach. Widely distribute your content
across your social networks and position
it in a way that will resonate with your
followers. The goal is to make your content
compelling enough that they want to share
it with their social network.
At ClickDimensions, we use a combination
of all of the marketing channels described
above to distribute a new piece of content.
When we released the Training Resource
Guide, we first shared the guide via email
to our newsletter subscriber marketing list.
Next, we wrote a blog post about the guide
and then shared it across our social media
networks. We also created a pay-per-click
ad campaign that included search ads and
remarketing display ads promoting the
guide. The result was over 500 downloads
of the Training Resource Guide in the first
few days.
Regardless of which channels you choose
to distribute your content, carefully
construct your ads. You will want to track
Many social media sites also offer
PPC advertising programs. For
example, advertisers can purchase
ads on Facebook that appear in
users’ news feeds, or they can pay
for promoted tweets on Twitter that
are displayed when triggered by a
keyword or hashtag.

23. 23
where your readers came from, which ad they viewed to get to your content, and what
content item they accessed or downloaded. Analytics will be discussed in detail later, but
first we want to be sure that we are capturing the data we need.
URL TAGGING
If you use Google Analytics, then you are probably familiar with the concept of adding
parameters to your URLs to capture more detailed, useful data about your visits. Basically,
you are adding a special tag to your destination URL. Then, when a customer clicks your ad
and visits that page, the parameters are passed to your website.
In the example URL below, we are passing the parameters “source” and “campaign” with
this link from a Google AdWords ad for our Idea eBook. Tags follow a slash (/) and question
mark symbol (?) at the end of your URL. The value of each parameter follows an equal sign
(=). So, in this example, our “source” is tagged as “adwords” and our “campaign” is tagged as
“RMK-ideaebook.” Multiple parameters are separated by an ampersand (&).
http://www.clickdimensions.com/ebook/?source=adwords&campaign=RMK-ideaebook
In ClickDimensions, information about every visit to your website is captured, including the
parameters in your URLs. So when you review your site visits in ClickDimensions (or look at
your traffic in Google Analytics), you can use the parameter information to help you analyze
your campaign performance and improve your targeting and return on investment.
CONVERSION PAGES
Most pay-per-click websites will offer a way to track conversions – actions completed by
your visitors (i.e. filling out a form or downloading an eBook) after clicking on your ad.
Typically, conversions are tracked by inserting a piece of HTML code provided by the PPC
provider into your “thank you” page (the page the visitor will see after they have submitted
Using CRM and ClickDimensions, we have
created dashboards to monitor downloads of
our premium content items. Our marketing
team can see at a glance how a content item
is trending from week-to-week, and see how
many leads have been generated from each
content marketing campaign.
For more information about URL
tagging, visit:
http://blog.clickdimensions.
com/2012/09/gaining-more-
intelligence-from-paid-search-clicks-
through-url-tagging.html
https://support.google.com/
adwords/answer/2375447

24. 24
the form). When that page is loaded, the tracking code will notify the PPC provider that not
only did a visitor click on your ad, but they also converted by completing your form.
Each PPC provider (i.e. Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook) has unique tracking code, so it is
important to remember to include scripts for each site before running your ad.
You can also track conversions in CRM using ClickDimensions. In our Training Resource
Guide example, we created a web form in ClickDimensions to capture name, company and
email when a visitor downloads the guide. Not only can we see when a visitor views our
Training Resource Guide landing page, but we can also view the posted form in CRM using
ClickDimensions. And since any ClickDimensions form can be linked to a CRM campaign, we
can easily perform an advanced find to see how many conversions (posted forms) occurred
for our Training Guide campaign.
For more information about tracking
conversions, visit:
http://blog.clickdimensions.
com/2012/01/using-google-
adwords-conversion-tracking-with-
clickdimensions-web-forms.html
https://support.google.com/
adwords/answer/1722022

25. 25
Reeling It In
Turn conversions into customers
As we discussed earlier, the purpose of some content marketing is to develop thought
leadership and brand awareness. You offer the content to your audience for free with no
strings attached (often blogs and infographics are distributed this way). However, some
content – we call it our “premium content” – should be offered in exchange for information
from the visitor. This content is your “bait” to identify potential customers.
But what happens when the fish takes the bait? Do they immediately pop out of the
water and flop into the boat? Not on this planet. Fish must be reeled in – often slowly and more leads per month
67%
On average, companies
with blogs produce
Demand Metric

26. 26
methodically – and so do your prospective customers. Jerking the line too early, or waiting
too long to set the hook can cost you missed customers and missed opportunities.
That’s where using CRM and marketing automation becomes invaluable. Tools like lead
scoring and nurture programs can help you target the right fish and reel them into
becoming customers.
WEB TRACKING AND LEAD SCORING
With marketing automation solutions like ClickDimensions, you can use web tracking to
see and measure the interactions a person has had with your content, including all the
pages they viewed leading up to the content download, and all the visits, emails, and other
interactions they’ve had afterwards. This gives you incredible insight into whether a visitor is
interested in becoming a buyer, or whether they are just “surfing around,” perhaps looking
for a job with your company or perusing other non-sales topics.
Lead scoring refers to quantifying the interest level of the individual based on email clicks,
web form submissions, visits, page views, link clicks and file downloads. This lets you
prioritize your leads and make the best use of your selling time. The more someone clicks
on your emails and visits your site, the more interested they are. Certain activities, page
visits or clicks can have higher or lower scores based on your priorities.
Internally, we’ve tweaked our default scoring values to weights that are right for us. Email
link clicks are of high value to us, so they get 10 points each by default. Likewise, form
submissions are worth 25 points. Each visit is worth 5 points. Most page views are worth 3
points each, but each of our product tour pages is set to 5 points (except for the main tour
page which is 10) and our overview video is worth 15. When someone passes 50 points, we
assume that they are interested. When they hit 100, it is time to really give them attention.
Learn more about web tracking >>
Learn more about lead scoring >>
ClickDimensions lead score and web tracking
data on a contact profile in CRM

27. 27
NURTURE PROGRAMS
Nurture programs are also highly
recommended for use with your content
marketing campaigns. For example, when
a visitor downloads your content, they get
added to a marketing list. That list can be
tied to a nurture program so that everyone
who has downloaded that content item
receives an email a few days later asking
for feedback or pointing them to other
content items. If they open or click a link
in the email, then that lead moves on to
another follow up process in the nurture,
while leads that take no action receive a
different message.
Let’s look at a nurture program for the
Training Resource Guide. After someone
downloads the guide, we place them on
a marketing list aptly called the “Training
Resource Guide Nurture” list. This list
contains anyone who has downloaded the
guide and who is actively being nurtured
as a result. After one week, the nurture
program will send an email asking the
lead, “What did you think of the Training
Resource Guide?” This email opens the
door for the lead to engage with us and
begin a dialog about the content item.

28. 28
If the initial email does not get a response, we wait a little while and then send the lead
other emails with invitations to download other eBooks, subscribe to our newsletter or
attend a webinar. The entire nurture consists of about six different emails over the course
of 6-8 weeks. This is not a high-pressure sales tactic, but a slow drip marketing campaign
to entice the lead into engaging with ClickDimensions by downloading other content or
watching a demo of our solution. If a lead begins to show interest through interaction with
our emails, a salesperson will get involved and contact the lead directly.
Since they are fully automated, nurture programs can be reeling in your fish in the
background, while your sales team spends time and energy only on the leads that are ready
to buy.
Our Training Resource Guide nurture also
contains steps to notify a salesperson when
someone clicks a link in one of our emails.
The salesperson can then decide – perhaps
by looking at the lead score – if they want to
follow-up with the lead immediately, or let
the nurture program continue to run.
Learn more about nurture
marketing >>
Learn how to align your customer
life cycles with your automated
nurture campaigns >>

29. 29
Weighing Your Catch
Analytics and optimization
A good fisherman knows how to count his keep. You should have a
method of easily analyzing the results of your content strategy and be
able to attribute success, as well as adapt for optimization. You need to
measure all aspects of the campaign – from the different promotional
tactics, to the traffic driven to your landing page, to the number of
conversions and leads, and ultimately to the dollars and cents generated
from opportunities related to the content campaign.
Marketers’
Criteria for
Measuring
Content
Marketing
Success:
Web traffic 60%
Sales lead quality 51%
Social media sharing 45%
Sales lead quantity 43%
Direct sales 41%
Feedback from customers 41%
SEO ranking 41%
Time spent on website 39%
Inbound links 35%
Company awareness 26%
Increased customer loyalty 24%
Product/service awareness 22%
Cross-selling 13%
Cost savings 5%
CMI/MarketingProfs

30. 30
The more you analyze the results of your content marketing campaign, the easier it is to
derive what is working and address what isn’t. In fishing terms, if you aren’t marking down
your numbers (i.e. plotting your coordinates, water clarity and depth) when you catch one
fish, how can you expect to know what to do or where to fish the next time?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ClickDimensions make this process easy. The classic sales
and marketing funnel is strengthened because all historical data is in one place (CRM) and
flows from initial impression to bottom line revenue. You don’t have to spend valuable time
sorting through different datasets from separate tools trying to tie sales numbers to your
marketing activities, because it happens automatically. And best of all, you can attribute
revenue to your content strategy using CRM campaigns to prove real ROI.
Let’s look at a couple of examples of how we have analyzed our content marketing efforts
and used the results to strengthen our campaigns at ClickDimensions:
EMAIL NEWSLETTER
Each month, we distribute an email newsletter to our subscribers. The monthly newsletter
contains articles about marketing automation, best practices for using our software, and
occasionally some news about our company. Using ClickDimensions with CRM, we are able
to view statistics for each email sent. By monitoring the results of our newsletter emails
each month, not only can we can see how well each newsletter performs, but recently we
were also able to see the value of our premium content revealed through email clicks.
In early 2014, we released two eBooks – the Connected Campaign Guide in February and the
Training Resource Guide in April. While our newsletter email open rates for these months
were consistent with our average (around 28% open rate each month), our click rates were
significantly higher in both February and April with click rates around 7% -- an impressive
increase above our normal newsletter click rate of 5%. So while the same number of people
One way we monitor the performance of
our monthly newsletters is through a CRM
dashboard. On one screen, we can easily see
trends for newsletter opt-ins, unsubscribes,
clicked links, and social sharing.

31. 31
opened the emails, many more readers interacted with the newsletters that featured
premium content.
Looking at the ClickDimensions Click Heat Map report (a report that shows the distribution
of clicks to links in your email) for these newsletters confirmed the interest in our premium
content. In both the February and April newsletters, over a third of the clicks were to links
for the eBooks.
Heat maps are also helpful in
deciding what content to include
in your newsletter. Each month,
review to see which stories perform
well and which do not. Adjust your
editorial calendar to include more
content that resonates with your
readers.

32. 32
OPTIMIZING AD CAMPAIGNS
As we discussed earlier, by using URL tagging
and conversion pages, you can evaluate the
success of your PPC campaigns and make
adjustments where needed. At ClickDimensions,
when we post a series of Google AdWords ads,
we include URL parameters that are unique
to each ad. If we get a better response to one
version over another, we refocus our resources
and budget towards what is working.
For example, we have been running a series
of ads on Google AdWords encouraging
visitors to watch a 7-minute demo video of our
solution. We ran two different display ads in the
same campaign – one set of ads includes the
Microsoft Dynamics logo and the other set has a
computer screen illustrating a demo.
Looking at click-through rates in our Google
AdWords account, it appears that the ads with
the Dynamics logo are performing better than
the computer screen ads. And our text ads for
this campaign confirm these results – the text
ads that include marketing with CRM in the
headline are performing better than the ads
with a generic demo headline.
Click-through rates for the display ads
featuring Dynamics CRM are performing
higher than the generic demo ads.
Text ads that feature CRM are also
performing better than the demo ads.

33. 33
It would seem that consumers may be
attracted to the Microsoft Dynamics brand.
Or perhaps that particular ad resonates
with CRM users more than the other one.
Given these results, we could increase our
budget for the successful CRM ad group, or
refine our ads based on their performance
and discontinue unsuccessful ads.
To take the analysis even further, because
we have tagged each URL with the name of
the ad, we can run a report in CRM to see
the leads that were generated from each
ad and compare the results. Are we getting
better quality leads from one ad set over
the other?
Using CRM and ClickDimensions, we
would perform an advanced find for web
visits where the entry URL contained
“content=DemoVideo-336x280” (the first
ad) and where the lead record contained
data. We would then review the leads –
perhaps comparing lead scores – to see if
we are getting high-quality leads.
This type of comparison can be performed
not only for different ad types, but also for
content items, campaigns, or any other
metric you wish to track. Because all of the
data is captured in CRM, it can be queried
in a variety of ways.
No matter what method you use to analyze
performance, the key is to define the key
indicators that matter to you, accurately
measure those metrics, and respond to
the results in a way that will continually
improve the performance of your content
marketing campaign.

34. 34
With so many options for creating and distributing your ideas,
content marketing can be one of the most valuable and cost
effective strategies in your marketing toolbox. An organization of
any size, in any industry, can develop and market content to its
audience to improve brand visibility, establish thought leadership,
and identify prospects for future sales.
As you develop your content marketing strategy, remember to:
• Use personas and segmentation to find your fish
• Develop content bait that will be valuable to your
audience
• Bait the hook with an effective call to action
• Attach the sinker to target your message
• Cast your line into the water and distribute your content
to various channels
• Reel in your fish and turn conversions into customers
• Use analytics and optimization to weigh your catch
Tools like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the ClickDimensions
marketing automation solution will help you execute your content
marketing strategy and evaluate the results. Review your CRM
accounts to identify buyer personas, build a ClickDimensions
landing page to distribute your call to action, capture prospects
with a ClickDimensions web form, and use CRM dashboards and
advanced finds to analyze the data.
It’s a beautiful day and the boat is ready to go, so what are you
waiting for? Cast your line into the water and catch some fish!
Happy marketing!
Go fishing!

35. 35
About ClickDimensions
ClickDimensions is the top-rated, award-winning,
Microsoft-certified email marketing and marketing
automation solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
ClickDimensions can streamline your marketing
program by gaining insights about your leads and
contacts, resulting in reduced costs and increased
revenue. Providing email marketing, web tracking,
lead scoring, nurture marketing, social discovery,
campaign tracking and web forms and surveys,
ClickDimensions allows organizations to discover
who is interested in their products, quantify their
level of interest and take the appropriate actions.
For more information about ClickDimensions, visit
www.clickdimensions.com, read our blog at blog.
clickdimensions.com or follow us on Twitter at
@ClickDimensions.