An article about Content Marketing.

1. Content
Marketing
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2. What is?
Back to the basics. Every company has content, lots of it, and
this content is often under used, under leveraged as the sales
pitch to the customer base. Preparing and amplifying this
content to a broad audience, is “Content Marketing”.
Customer testimonials, core values and mission statements,
product reviews and interviews or even the sales material that
was once prepared by the marketing department, this is the
marketing manager’s playground and should be vastly
explored, tested.
Also, great products often drive good PR, and while product
reviews and interviews are powerful, they unfortunately don’t
last much.
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3. 1. Look for great content on unexpected
departments within the company, but also
on news clipping and sales department for
customer testimonials.
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4. Targeting
In the same way as marketing managers and agencies where
busy defining advertising campaigns, audience targets and
creative messages, the content marketing managers also
have to understand their audience in social media sites and
define which of the available content is more suitable to this
audience base on the company objectives.
The media available for content amplification is quite different
from the media available for traditional (even digital)
advertising. Beyond the well-known social networks and
search optimized blogs, there are innovative tools like
Outbrain.com that enables distribution of content on a large
selection of first class publishers that should be considered as
well.
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5. 2. Understand the media available and
select the content based on the audience
segment you will reach. Also consider the
company objectives.
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6. Audience
Now that you selected the content and the media, you have
to look into what to do with this audience in one of your
digital properties. While the short term objective in most cases
is to drive conversions (click to sales funnel or to a promotional
site), the broad reach of content marketing will drive lots of
prospect customers that are not yet ready to make a
decision.
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7. 3. Consider acquiring leads and drive
them into a lead grooming strategy to
maximize the results of your content
marketing campaign.
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8. Leads
Lead forms are a complex science, and while I won’t detail
lead form strategies, keep it simple, validate only the
fundamental information and add a “qualificator” to help you
understand how to drive these leads to a sales funnel. Use the
“thank you page” to measure lead engagement by asking
“Would you like to buy now? Click here.”, or maybe
something more subtle, you got the idea, right?
The concept of lead grooming is also simple, but often not
used. Create a relationship with your audience to help them
make an educated (not impulsive) decision. That’s where you
have to leverage on all the company content to build trust
(on your brand), lust (on your product or service) and must.
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9. 4. Create a relationship with your
audience, drive trust, lust and must. Use
marketing automation tools to make this
work better instead of mass solutions.
Remember that each of your prospects is
in a different stage of the decision making
process.
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10. Sales
Since most companies will measure the results of any
campaign based on ROI, don’t forget to apply the traditional
techniques to increase the conversion to sales. Always keep
some real estate in your digital properties to promote your
product with a “limited time special offer”.
Also keep in mind that you usually have less than 6 touch
points with your prospect before you lose him, every rule has
its exceptions, but don’t try to keep them engaged forever.
Do your job, provide a great experience with the brand… if
the prospect doesn’t buy, remember that he might in the
future and don’t blow the chances.
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11. Thank you.
(SORRY ABOUT THE TEXT ONLY, THIS WAS
AN ARTICLE, NOT A PRESENTATION).
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