Content That Fuels Growth

Content Marketing that Fuels Growth How to Create, Promote, and Utilize Your Content to Beat Your Growth Goals

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INTRODUCTION Content marketing is king and any company worth its’ salt is jumping on the content bandwagon. Why? Well, today’s buyers have changed. No longer is sales on the front lines of customer communication, it is now the marketer that owns the relationship.

Instead of talking with sales during a purchase, today’s buyers are self-educating through the buyer journey—and that means researching and reading content. And since your buyers are doing their own research anyway, as a marketer you want to make sure you are the one providing that educational content to help your buyers find and engage with you before your competition has a chance to influence them.

But creating content can be too much guesswork. What are your content priorities? How effectively are you leveraging your existing content? Are you generating leads with your content marketing programs?

Here are some cold hard facts about content marketing that you need to know: »» There are 27,000,000 pieces of content shared each day (Nielson)

»» C onversion rates for brands using content is 6–7x higher (Aberdeen) »» T he average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2008 to 8 seconds (Statistic Brain) »» T he average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds (Statistic Brain) But… according to Aberdeen only 32% of marketers say they are effectively leveraging their content assets.

This ebook will help you create and promote content that generates leads and customers for your business. It will walk you through how to create your content marketing strategy, how to produce content for demand generation, and how to promote your content to get the biggest bang for your buck.

»» B 2B marketers spend more than 30% of their budget on content (CMI) Content Marketing that Fuels Growth l 2

CREATING YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY To be effective with your content marketing (or any type of marketing programs for that matter), you need a strategy. And to be effective generating leads with your content marketing, you need a strategy that maps to your business goals.

The following section goes into more detail outlining what you should think about when it comes to creating a cohesive content for demand generation strategy.

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PERSONA AND BUYER JOURNEY MAPPING In order to map your content to business priorities, you should determine your buyer personas—fictional representations of your buyers, and their buyer journey—the steps that your buyers take when making a purchase. By completing these two exercises you can begin to map your content to your sales funnel, so that you have content at every stage of the buyer journey.

Buyer Persona

And you can ask your interviewees questions such as:

You want to create content for the right people. If your target audience is the VP of Sales at an enterprise company you don’t want to be creating content for a sales coordinator at a startup. But, you have no way of knowing who your target audience is without creating buyer personas.

»» What are the challenges in your job?

Plus, through the buyer persona creation process you can craft key messaging, combat objectives, and know exactly what type of content to create and where it should be posted.

»» What are your career objectives, hopes, and dreams? »» What are your key job responsibilities? »» What is the one thing that would help you do your job better? »» W hat type of content do you consume and where do you consume it?

The best way to create buyer personas is to set up a series of interviews with your: »» Sales teams »» Customer service teams »» Actual customers (happy and unhappy) »» Prospects (if you can get them on the phone) Content Marketing that Fuels Growth l 4

PERSONA AND BUYER JOURNEY MAPPING Take a look at this sample persona so you can see what we mean.

You can even give him a name and add a photo to make him seem more realistic and human.

Facility/Operations Manager: Fred Personal Background: Age: 45–55 Married with 1 kid in college, 1 in high school Education: Undergraduate Role: Facility or Operations Manager Job duties: Operations efficiency, employee productivity Skills required: People management, analysis, industry knowledge Reports to: CEO or General Manager Manages: Operations staff Company Information: Industry: Distribution, Manufacturing, 3PL Yearly Revenue: $20M Employees: 100

Goals and Challenges: Success means: A raise and promotion Values most: Job security, family, recognition for success Biggest challenges: New systems, managing people, keeping all balls in air Shopping and Industry News Preferences: Preferred communications: Email, phone Use internet for buying research: Often Consumes content: Industry publications, major news sources Industry publications: Trade magazines Industry associations: Industry trade groups Social networking sites: LinkedIn Once you have your personas mapped out, you can create content that speaks directly to that person, so it is more relevant and personalized.

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PERSONA AND BUYER JOURNEY MAPPING Buyer Journey The next step is to work on your buyer journeys. Every buyer has a process that she goes through. From when she first determines she has a problem, to when she researches solutions and evaluates, to when she makes her final decision. Since your buyer does much of the education on her own, you need to make sure you have content that speaks to her throughout that process. Guaranteed that if you create content that answers her questions at every stage in her decision process you are a shoe-in for the win!

You can be as detailed or as general as you want with this activity, but here is an example of how you can map your buyer journey and make sure your content is relevant. This buyer journey map is from TechTarget and shows the buying stages and what content is mapped to each stage.

Notice this buyer journey map is broken up into 3 parts—Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. For each stage of the buying journey there are applicable content types.

Online IT social communities ebooks Editorial sites White Papers Trial software downloads Online vendor demos Vendor comparisons

Begin Decision Process

Awareness (1–2 Months)

Make Decision

Consideration (3–4 Months)

Decision (1 Month)

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MAPPING CONTENT TO YOUR SALES FUNNEL The next step in your content planning process is to map content to your sales funnel. Luckily, the buyer journey research that you did should also map to your sales funnel--so your work is already most of the way done.

Most content marketers divide their content up into early, mid, and late stage content. Your early stage content is very educational and thought leadership focused, your mid stage content is closer to your product core competencies and can even include some product details, and your late stage content is product-related and promotional.

Industry trends Benchmarks Awareness

Analyst coverage 101 education

Early

Knowledge

How-to’s

Liking

Here is a nice example from Crazy Egg that shows funnel content mapping:

Mid

Preference Conviction

What is the service and how does it work?

Solution comparisons Pitfall analysis Readiness and suitability assessments

Late

Purchase

How do I choose a vendor

Demonstrations Case studies “How to buy”/ “working with us” guides

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CONTENT MARKETING TEAMS The most important piece of your content marketing strategy is how you plan to staff your team.

Many companies try to offload content creation to a marketing generalist, a demand generation manager, or a product marketer, as part of his role. However, since content is such a unique part of the marketing organization and is the fuel for all of your demand generation campaigns, you should have at least one full-time person in the role responsible for strategy, writing, production, measurement, and project management.

Content marketing should follow a service bureau model since content is used for demand generation, product marketing, corporate marketing, partner marketing, and so on. For instance, if you lump content into demand generation you are likely to only get content that drives lead generation, but not the core sales content your sales team needs. Conversely, if content is being produced in product marketing, it might not have that education, thought leadership focus you need for your content to be successful.

Chief Content Officer This is the executive leadership of your content organization.

Sometimes this is an individual role, the responsibilities here could also be included in a VP of Demand Generation or VP of Product Marketing title.

Responsibilities could include: »» Owning the story of the business »» Content final approval »» Audience development/influencer relations »» Measurement business accountability

Though many organizations will not have large, full blown content teams, Captora included, for the sake of being thorough, we will present to you profiles of content team members to consider hiring:

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CONTENT MARKETING TEAMS Director of Content Marketing/Managing Editor

Additional Content Creators

This is your key role, and the person who should be devoted to content creation full-time. If you hire any content role on your marketing team, it should be this one.

It’s great if you have the budget for a large content team, but most organizations do not. And that is OK. Outsourcing is a fantastic way to extend your team.

Responsibilities could include:

Here are our suggestions on who to tap into for additional content creation:

»» Content strategy and creation »» Vendor coordination and management »» Content team management »» Content writing and production »» Scheduling and consistency »» Blog management

»» Additional Content Team Members: If you can hire someone else devoted to content, that is awesome! This person should assist your Director of Content in content production and writing. »» Internal Subject Matter Experts: There are other people in your organization who should be creating content. These are your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who know a lot about your industry, product, or service. Leverage their expertise in order to create blogs and ebooks. You may have to schedule time with them so they can do a “brain dump” with you—an information transfer. Then you can take their expertise and craft it into content. »» Outsourced Writers and Designers: Whether it is an agency or finding your own talent, there are many creative people out there who want to be an extension of your team. Just make sure you manage the relationship properly and choose well-vetted people.

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CONTENT THEMES AND ARCS Once you have your content framework planned out, you can start thinking about your content arcs or themes.

These are essentially story arcs that should be determined based on: »» Business priorities

Here is an example of what a content arc might look like: Content Topic: Social Media for Lead Generation

»» Industry trends

Messaging: “Modern marketers should be using social media to generate leads”

»» Product/service launches

Content Assets:

»» Market penetration needs

»»

Ebook 1: Facebook for Lead Generation

»» Demand

»»

Ebook 2: Twitter for Lead Generation

»» Competitor content

»»

Ebook 3: Slideshare for Lead Generation

»» Organic and paid search priorities

»»

Ebook 4: LinkedIn for Lead Generation

»»

Cheatsheet 1: How to Create the Perfect Promoted Post for Facebook

»»

Cheatsheet 2: How to Create Visual Content for Facebook

»»

Cheatsheet 3: How to Create a Promoted Post for LinkedIn

»»

Infographic 1: Facebook Growth Stats in 2014

»»

Blog 1: Top 5 Best Facebook Tabs From Innovative Companies

»»

Blog 2: 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Lead Generation

»»

Blog 3: What Gets Shared on Facebook and Why

Your content themes should last through 1–2 quarters and essentially mirror what messaging you are going out into the marketplace with.

Once you have your content arcs and your assets planned out, consider using an editorial calendar for visibility throughout your organization (and to keep on pace).

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BUDGET After you have planned out your content arcs and assets, you can create your budget. This is an important step in crafting your content marketing strategy geared towards demand generation.

You need to set your initial budget to determine ROI, which we will discuss in a later installment of our content ebook series.

In our experience and research, here are some basic costs associated with content marketing:

»» Standard ebook 5–10 pages: ~$4000 »» Large ebook 30–60 pages: ~$6500 »» Cheatsheet/onepager: ~$500 »» Infographic: ~$4000 »» Slide deck: ~$7500 »» Writing services (monthly): ~$2500 for ebook and blog writing »» Managing Editor Yearly Salary: ~$60,000–$100,000 per year (depending on location and years experience) »» Director of Content/Chief Content Officer Yearly Salary: ~$100,000–$200,000 per year (depending on location and years experience)

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CONTENT CREATION FOR DEMAND GENERATION Once you have your content strategy planned out and a budget in place, it’s time to start the content creation process. Since this is an ebook focused on content for demand generation, we will provide you with best practices for creating content that converts!

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LEAN CONTENT CREATION Most organizations have a small content team, which becomes problematic as the needs of the organization grow. In order for your marketing team to be effective, you constantly need fresh content to fuel campaigns. But how can you get all of that done when your demand generation team has their hand out for 10 pieces of new content in the next 2 months?

Well, lean content creation is the answer. Do more with less by taking one big piece of content (your main event) and slicing and dicing it to create smaller, more digestible content assets (your supplementary assets). What’s great about this concept is you only have to create the main content once.

For instance, at Captora, we will take this one ebook and make multiple shorter cheatsheets and other accompanying assets to stretch out the value of this one piece.

Take a look at this graphic: Blogs Slide Presentations

Infographics

Webinars Video

If you are using a platform like Captora for your content creation efforts, you can get suggestions on what supplemental content you should be creating based on content types.

Here is an easy analogy created by Rebecca Lieb from Altimeter Group—the content marketing turkey dinner comparison. Your “big rock” content asset is your turkey and the supplemental content is your leftovers.

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LEAN CONTENT CREATION Another way to create content quickly and on a budget is by repurposing content you have already created. As an example, imagine you are marketing for a personal finance software company.

Last week you created a blog titled “10 Easy Ways to Tweak Your Budget to Save an Extra $200 Per Month�. Your demand generation team is begging you for a new ebook they can send to early-stage buyers. All you have to do is take that blog, put it into a template, give it a well-designed cover, and voila! An asset your team can use to generate new leads.

Take a look at this screenshot from within Captora. Our platform suggests what supplemental content you might consider creating from your original piece:

Captora Supplemental Content Recommendation Content Marketing that Fuels Growth l 14

VISUAL CONTENT MARKETING It is a fact that today’s buyers are highly visual. Due to the abundance of information on the internet today, your buyers don’t have the same attention span that they used to. In fact, according to Statistic Brain, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2008 to 8 seconds… and the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.

So, what can be learned from this? Your buyers are very distracted.

Therefore, you have to engage them with visual content to capture their attention, particularly on social media if you are putting paid promotion dollars behind your content (which you should be. More on that later).

Visual content can take the following forms: »» An ebook that is designed to be beautiful »» An infographic »» A slide deck »» A video »» Short, digestible pieces of micro-content for social

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VISUAL CONTENT MARKETING Here are a few examples of brands doing visual content marketing well: Well-Balanced Blog Infographic from LinkedIn

Content Marketing Tactical Plan from Marketo

The Power of Visual Storytelling from NewsCred and Getty Images

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INTERACTIVE AND DYNAMIC CONTENT Creating content that can be engaged with by your audience in a dynamic way is the future of content marketing. How can you create personalized, relevant content that speaks 1:1 directly to your buyer?

Let’s take a look at an example piece of interactive content that speaks directly to an individual: At Captora, we created a Content Marketing Scorecard. A visitor comes to our website and easily fills out a short form.

Captora’s Content Scorecard

Once a visitor adds in their URL and a few competitor URLs, a piece of dynamic content gets created that shows their company’s content score, how it compares to their competitors, and what their buyers are looking for.

Captora’s Content Scorecard Results

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BENCHMARKING WITH BUYER AND COMPETITOR CONTENT One of the best ways to determine what content you should create for lead generation is to monitor what your buyers are searching for and to benchmark against your competitors’ content. If you are using a platform like Captora you can easily do this by looking at our content score.

Captora sources what your buyers are searching for across social, advertising, and search channels and gives you a score that benchmarks your content to your competitors. That way you can see what your buyers are searching for compared to what type of content you and your competitors are creating.

Here is a screenshot in Captora that illustrates what we mean. Your buyers’ search queries (Demand Signals) are summarized on the far left, then you have your own score for each pain statement, and all of your competitor’s content scores.

From there you can determine where you are doing well and where you need to increase your content creation efforts.

Captora’s Content Scorecard

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CONTENT LANDING PAGES FOR CONVERSION It will have to be a discussion within your organization what content you want to put in front of a form. Some companies do not gate anything, others gate only some content, and some companies gate all of their content.

Here are some suggestions when determining whether or not you want to put a form in front of your content: »» Consider putting a form only in front of your mid-stage content since downloading something closer to your core competency signifies buying intent. »» Consider gating all of your content if you are a small company, that way you can begin to build your database. »» Put a form and landing page in front of all content offers you use for paid programs—you want to make sure you are collecting lead information if you are paying for promotion.

If you do gate your content you will need to create a landing page that is optimized for conversion and lead collection. The standard formula for a high-converting landing page is as follows: »» Headline that matches the pain statement and offer— make sure that your page headline always matches the offer your lead clicked on. In other words, if your lead clicked on a paid ad that says “10 Tips to Sell Your Car in Less Than 30 Days”, your landing page should lead with that headline. »» Your copy should be short and to the point—no need for lengthy copy on your landing pages. Create a one-paragraph intro, a few bullet points, and a conclusion. »» Create a clear call-to-action (CTA)—your CTA should be clear and you should only have one. Make your CTA button stand out and make sure the language used is clear and concise. »» Use a hero image—add a hero image to your landing page. This could be an image of your ebook cover or an interior page. Either way, make sure you are grabbing the attention of your leads.

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CONTENT LANDING PAGES FOR CONVERSION Take a look at a landing page we have created in Captora using Capture Sites, which auto-generates landing pages optimized for conversion on organic and paid channels. Notice how this landing page has a headline applicable to the search term “advantages of digital marketing�, contains a couple of paragraphs of copy, a numbered list, and a clear CTA for downloading a content asset.

Take a look at another example of a landing page created using a marketing automation tool. This also follows the same structure, compelling headline, main paragraph, bullet points, and a strong CTA.

Capture Site in Captora

Once a lead clicks on the CTA, a form appears.

Marketo Definitive Guide Landing Page Lead Form in Captora

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CONTENT PROMOTION FOR LEAD GENERATION Once you have created your content you need to create a promotion plan. Remember, your content is only as good as your promotion, so make sure you have an integrated plan that includes multiple promotional tactics. In order for your content to be effective for lead generation, you need a wide reach.

The following pages suggest various lead generation techniques you can use to get your content seen and downloaded—therefore generating more leads and revenue for your company!

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WEBSITE MERCHANDISING Your content needs to be well merchandised on your homepage.

When someone comes to your site, give her the option to download an educational content piece, in addition to your traditional demos and contact us CTAs.

A suggestion here is to always make sure that your homepage content is tied to a form. Your homepage is very high-value real estate, so make sure every CTA posted there is generating leads for your company.

The other area you want to focus on is your resources section— the home base on your website where all of your content is housed.

Your resource section should be easy to navigate, and visually appealing for the visitor.

Take a look at this example from the subscription billing service Zuora. They are offering an ebook on mastering your subscription pricing game plan. They include this CTA right on their homepage rotator, making it very appealing and eye-catching for their audience.

Pardot’s Marketing Resource Center

Zoura Website Content CTA

Take a look at marketing automation vendor Pardot’s resource section. They have a visually appealing resource banner, a featured resource section with custom thumbnails, and then you can click to see all of their resources or webinar library.

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BLOG PROMOTION Always write a blog post to promote your content asset. The key here is to make sure your blog post is stand-alone—meaning, if a website visitor reads the post he will learn something, even if he doesn’t download your ebook.

You are trying to ultimately create value with your blog.

A recommendation is to take a section from your ebook and use that as a blog post promoting the full content asset. Give your blog visitors a taste of what is inside the full-length asset so they will be compelled to download it.

Take a look at this blog post from Marketo that promotes their new content Asset Pin to Win:

Marketo Blog Post Promoting Content Asset Content Marketing that Fuels Growth l 23

SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION All of your content should be promoted on your social channels, tied to a landing page for lead generation and channel tracking. Ideally, putting paid promotion behind your social posts gives it that extra boost it needs for maximum visibility.

The key is to tap into not only your own network, but the large friend of friend related network that you can gain by adding some extra budget for paid promotion on social. Our recommendation?

Start small and test. A good rule of thumb is to start with $1000 per channel and see what works best.

The key here is to make sure that you use custom visuals (remember how important visuals are to social), a strong call-toaction, and a lead generation form. And don’t be afraid to use playful language. It’s social media, so have some fun.

Here are the different paid advertising types you can expect to see on the major social channels: »» Facebook

Promoted posts

Facebook ads

Custom audiences

»» Twitter

Promoted Tweets

Twitter lead gen cards

Promoted trends

Promoted accounts

»» LinkedIn

LinkedIn ads

Sponsored updates

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SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION Take a look at a Facebook post from Optimizely. They have catchy language (including a stat), a strong CTA, an eye-catching image, and a link to download an ebook.

You also don’t want to forget about social media real estate like your Twitter profile page and your Facebook cover. Take advantage of that space and include a CTA to download your ebook. Check out a Facebook cover image example from Xactly. They use an image of their new report, the report title, and tell their audience that this report is the first of it’s kind.

Xactly Facebook Cover Page

Optimizely Facebook Post Content Marketing that Fuels Growth l 25

EMAIL PROMOTION You always want to send out emails to promote your content. Depending on how much content you create and how many times you email your database you may want to either a) send emails out each time you release a new asset, b) send out newsletters bi-monthly or monthly announcing any new content assets you have launched, or c) send out emails to your database only for the important and large content assets you created.

Your emails should follow the same rule-of-thumb as your landing pages—a compelling title, a headline that draws people in, a short explanatory paragraph about the offer, a few bullet points, a hero image of the content asset, and a strong CTA. Take a look at an example from Content Marketing Institute to promote their content checklist. It includes a compelling headline, an image to get readers hooked, a short explanatory paragraph, and a clear CTA.

Content Marketing Institute Email Content Marketing that Fuels Growth l 26

PAID PROGRAMS To increase the amount of leads that your content will yield, it’s critical that you integrate paid programs in with your organic programs.

Paid programs, like sponsored emails, content syndication, Pay-PerClick (PPC), and other paid programs are integral to getting more eyeballs on the content you create. Plus, by increasing your reach through vendors and other paid programs, you can get more leads by tapping into other vendors’ lead databases.

The key to both sponsored emails and content syndication is to make sure you choose a trusted vendor who has a lead database that matches your target audience. Then, you have to choose the right offer. Be sure to test which content asset works best for each channel, which will help you optimize and ultimately get more leads.

For paid channels consider using more mid-stage content assets that are closer to your business core competencies—that way, you know that leads who engage with your company are more qualified than those that might engage with an early-stage content asset.

For sponsored email you can estimate how many opens/clicks you will get from your program, and most sponsored email vendors charge by the lead, which can very, usually from $5–$40 cost per lead, depending on the vendor. Therefore, if a vendor has a database of 100,000 leads and you estimate you will get about 300 new names, the cost is calculated off of those numbers.

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LEAD NURTURING Lead nurturing is a critical piece of the puzzle to ensure that your leads ultimately convert into paying customers.

By keeping in touch with leads who aren’t ready to buy right away (which could be most of your leads), throughout their buying journey you can enhance your relationship with your leads and move them through your funnel until they become customers.

Lead nurturing is typically a function of your marketing automation tool and can be combined with lead scoring for optimal conversion.

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CONCLUSION Creating content with demand generation in mind is a key imperative for marketers today. It isn’t enough to create content that increases brand awareness, you also need to create content with an eye towards conversions and moving your leads through your sales funnel. At the end of the day every executive will be looking for conversion numbers, including the amount of new leads your content acquired. By following the steps outlined in this ebook, you will be much better positioned to create content that impacts your funnel.

Stay tuned for our next installment, which will be all about tracking ROI for your content marketing efforts.

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About Captora: With Captora marketers discover, engage, and convert new buyers by intelligently and automatically scaling content-driven campaigns across multiple channels (search, advertising, and social.) Using advanced data analysis techniques and automated technologies, Captora not only dramatically increases new leads, but also significantly reduces the cost of acquiring of new buyers. Captora customers include AppDynamics, Eucalyptus, International Culinary Center, Marketo, Salesforce ExactTarget, ServiceMax, and SnapLogic.

For more information visit captora.com