CONTENT

MARKETING
CONTENT MARKETING
CONCEPTS AND
STRATEGY
1. Content Marketing
2. Content Intent
3. Topical and Evergreen Content
4. Content Marketing Strategy
CONTENT MARKETING
CONTENT MARKETING
What is it?

 The internet is simply a means to navigate content, words, text, opinions, images, and videos.
 Content marketing is an opportunity for organizations to create the type of content that people want. It
can be seen as a strategic way to create content with the aim of building brands and educating
customers to the benefits of your products and services.
 Content marketing drives valuable search traffic and email and social media engagement to increase
the number of valuable actions taken by your target audience.
 It begins a relationship, a familiarity and trust as you repeatedly show up when people search online
for information or just to be entertained.
CONTENT MARKETING
Benefits

1 Grow awareness of your brand or business

2 Recruit advocates of your brand

3 Increase and improve search engine rankings, or SEO

4 Generate new business leads, nurture sales prospects, and convert customers

5 Enhance understanding of your business proposition

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Summary

CONTENT MARKETING CONCEPTS AND STRATEGY

 Matching the benefits of content marketing to your business objectives will help you form a content marketing plan that’s right

for your business.

 Always make sure your content has a clear intention on what you are aiming for it to achieve. Content that lacks intention will be

easily spotted by customers!

 There are two main types of content: topical and evergreen. A good content mix should factor in both types of content.

 A content marketing strategy is an ever-evolving plan that outlines your content marketing goals and target audience. It sets out

the objectives and scope of your project.

DEVELOPING A
CONTENT MARKETING
PLAN
1. Content Goals

2. Buyer Personas

3. Walkthrough: DMI Persona Builder

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WALKTHROUGH: DMI PERSONA BUILDER

Create target personas using the DMI Persona Builder. To do this, complete the following sections:

Company information
Sales cycles
Tools and access
Demographics
Interests and personal habits
Media habits
Buyer behavior
Decision

Build out your four priority target personas. Then use the summary matrix to discover how they rate
against each other, and which ones you should focus on.
Summary

DEVELOPING A CONTENT MARKETING PLAN

 Making sure content is aligned to your overall business goals will ultimately help drive your commercial message. Key goals

are: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Affinity, and Advocacy.

 Developing customer personas helps with targeting, format, and discovery. Bear in mind objectives, location, demographic,

job details, platform, devices, purchase behaviors, and interests.

USING CONTENT
RESEARCH TO FIND
OPPORTUNITIES
1. Social Listening
2. Walkthrough: Sparktoro Content Insights
3. Competitor Analysis
4. Walkthrough: Google Alerts
5. Content Topics
6. Walkthrough: Keyword Research for Content
Ideas
7. Brand Storytelling
8. Defining Your Personality
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WALKTHROUGH: SPARKTORO CONTENT INSIGHTS

Use SparkToro to find out what type of content resonates with your audience.
Step 1: In the dashboard, select an option from the drop-down menu (for example, “My audience
frequently talks about”).
Step 2: Enter a few keywords.
Step 3: Click Search.

SparkToro then provides interesting information about your chosen audience. It can reveal:

The size of this audience

The hashtags they use
The top phrases used in their bios
What social accounts they are engaging with
What websites they are on
What podcasts they listen to
What YouTube channels they watch
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
The value of competitor monitoring

 Whether you're a B2C brand or a B2B organization, looking at what your competitors are
doing is a hugely beneficial way for you to understand what kind of content audiences are
interacting with out on the web.
 Get into the habit of regularly checking out your competitor's social media, website, and
email activities to see how they're using content in their channels.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Key considerations

1 What is their content development schedule?

2 How is their customer feedback from and to customers?

3 How do their search engine rankings look?

4 Are they making use of back links?

5 Is their website optimized?

6 How is their social following?

7 Are they connecting with influences or ambassadors?

8 What's their tone of voice and does it work well?

9 What new formats and channels are they using?

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Competitor analysis tools

There are some great tools out there to help you and your social listening and competitor
content analysis.

1 TweetDeck

2 TweetReach

3 BuzzSumo

4 SparkToro

5 Google Alert

6 Fanpage Karma
WALKTHROUGH: GOOGLE ALERTS

Stay on top of brand mentions, competitor mentions, and updates in your industry by using Google Alerts.
Do a Google search for “google alerts” and navigate to the Google Alerts homepage.
Enter an alert in the Create an alert about… field (for example, enter the words “digital
marketing”).
Select Show options and choose how often you want to receive alerts, your preferred source,
language, and region, where alerts should be delivered, and so on.
Click Create Alert to create the alert.
You will receive an email summary of your mentions in due course.
CONTENT
TOPICS
CONTENT TOPICS
Keyword research

 Before you set out to create your content topics, it's important to do your research to make
sure that the content you're creating is right for your audience. The first place to start is
keyword research.

 Keyword research helps guide your content development. Content marketers can look at the
things that people are searching for and the questions that they ask Google. You can then
create the content for your website that people are actively looking for, so when they search,
your website shows up.
CONTENT TOPICS
Keyword research

 Get the right kind of visitors to your site by creating the content people are actually searching for.
 Identify keywords that have high search volume, helping you to create content that pulls more visitors
and potential customers to your website.
 Identify content gaps on your website by comparing new keyword topics to your existing content
topics.
 Provide unbiased statistical rationale for creating your content themes.
 Identify new opportunities and stay fresh by using emerging themes and trends based on what people
are searching for.
CONTENT TOPICS
Keyword research

1 Pick a topic.

2 Brainstorm ideas about the topic.

Enter your keyword ideas into an SEO keyword tool, and find related keywords
3
that people are searching for.
Prioritize keywords in the list in terms of how important these topics are to your
4
business and goals.

5
Focus on writing topics and creating content around your list of priority
keywords.
CONTENT TOPICS
The creative brief

 A creative brief is an important aid to getting your content marketing right from the
beginning.

 It will allow you to identify the most important insights and understandings that will inform
your creative outputs.

 You can get insights for your content from the different types of research that you've been
doing for your strategy on personas, competitors, and the general industry landscape and
keywords.
CONTENT TOPICS
Benefits of a creative brief

1 Develop a better understanding of your audience, goals, and campaign idea.

2 Tease out the nuances of the campaign.

3 Develop consistent engaging messaging across all channels and formats.

4 Use time with writers and designers more efficiently.

5 Use your budget more efficiently by minimizing the number of amendments and
rebriefs.
CONTENT TOPICS
The creative brief – key steps

1 What is the campaign idea, and what are you hoping to achieve with your campaign?

2 What do you want the audience to do or feel when they see the campaign?

3 Describe your audience, i.e., buyer personas.

4 What's your brand personality and story?

5 What channels will be used in the campaign?

6 What are the formats and sizes required?

7 What's the budget?

8 What's the deadline?

9 Are there other mandatory elements to be included like logo or legal disclaimer, etc.?
WALKTHROUGH: KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR CONTENT
IDEAS
To get content ideas:

Anticipate the type of questions your consumers ask Google.

Create the content that answers these questions.
Position your product as the solution.

You can use Moz to conduct keyword research:

In Moz, navigate to Moz Pro and then Keyword Explorer.

Enter a keyword.
Click Analyze.
The monthly volume, difficulty, organic CTR, and priority are revealed for that keyword.
In the Keyword Suggestions area, select See all suggestions in relation to your chosen keyword.
A list of all keyword suggestions is revealed – this gives you an idea of what people are actively searching for.
Adjust the search volume, so your data gets a minimum number of searches per month.
In the Display keyword suggestions that drop-down menu, select are questions and adjust the search volume.
A list of questions that relate to your keyword appears.
Analyze the list and look for interesting content topics.
Fill your website with this content so when people search, you are likely to show up as the solution to their query.
Repurpose your content and share on social media and email.
BRAND STORYTELLING
BRAND STORYTELLING
What is a brand?

 What exactly is a brand? For companies and organizations, your brand is many things. It can be:

1. The commercial and the non-commercial actions you do as a company

2. The stories your customers and communities create around your mission
3. Your customer service and how you relate to your customers

4. The experiences every single person has with your company, in every channel

5. The image and style associated with your company

BRAND STORYTELLING
What is brand storytelling?

 Brand storytelling is a marketing competency that drives engagement at an emotional level.

 This results in improved business performance through communicating engaging and memorable stories
about your business with your target audience.
 It's a way of connecting with people who share your values and your beliefs and builds a personality for
your company. It invites others into your community and embraces them in an authentic way.
 Stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts and figures.
 Storytelling is a very powerful tool for creating meaningful, relatable engagement with your audience.
BRAND STORYTELLING
What is brand storytelling?

It will highlight It will support

It helps your
your you in any times
credibility
authenticity of crisis
BRAND STORYTELLING
Key considerations for great content

1 Know who you are

2 Understand your goals

3 Find your story

4 Identify your audience's knowledge level

5 Map your story elements to the personas you researched

6 Craft your story

7 Share your story

8 Engage with your communities

9
BRAND STORYTELLING
Key considerations for identifying your brand's story

1 Focus on the audience and their needs.

2 Stick to a single message in the narrative.

3 Use facts appropriately.

4 Create characters in the story who reflect your audience.

5 Develop dramatic tension in your ‘plot’ where possible, like: what's next, and how
will it end?

6 Structure your story, so that it's easier to understand.

DEFINING YOUR
PERSONALITY
DEFINING YOUR PERSONALITY
Brand personality

 Every company or business has a brand personality.

 People don't like thinking of brands as cold, unfriendly businesses. They like to see brands as
people with a story to tell, and certainly having the why behind what you're selling and being
able to act with authenticity and a personality will help you resonate with consumers.
DEFINING YOUR PERSONALITY
Categories

Functional Emotional Essential

Purely fact-based content The realm where you tap The absolute bare minimum
that's not very emotive. It into the human experience amount of information that a
is a strong driver of action- and show a personality that consumer needs to know
based content and is allows consumers to relate about what you're selling. It
directly related to the to your business. It includes includes things like prices or
business or brand. It's the user testimonials and contact information, which
hard sell. It includes information about how your people will need to help
announcements or news brand or product benefits them make a decision to buy.
items. your customers.
Summary

USING CONTENT RESEARCH TO FIND OPPORTUNITIES

 Social listening is finding out what people think about a brand, product, or topic. It can define good content, spot gaps, identify

risks, and avoid content clashes.

 Looking at what your competitors are doing is a hugely beneficial way for you to understand what kind of content audiences are

interacting with out on the web!

 You need to conduct keywork research when defining content topics. A creative brief guides you when creating your content

 Brand purpose and brand storytelling help drive content engagement.

 People don't like thinking of brands as cold, unfriendly businesses. Functional, emotional, and essential content all help fill out

your brand personality.

CREATING AND
CURATING CONTENT
1. Content Creation
2. Content Types
3. Content Curation
4. Walkthrough: LinkedIn Company Page Content
Curation
5. Content Repurposing
6. Content Personalization
7. Content Calendars
8. Content Platforms
CONTENT CREATION
CONTENT CREATION

 When you've completed your research, developed personas, defined your brand personality, and written
your creative brief, it's time to turn these insights into content.

 Content creation is a process of generating varying formats of collateral that serve the needs of your
content strategy objectives.

 They will serve these objectives and amplify your brand personality by engaging your buyer personas in
a way that helps build your brand or company's authority and creditability, and is useful for connecting
your target audience with your brand or business.
CONTENT CREATION
Creative process

1 Think about and absorb the research and information you've gained.

2 Brainstorm some ideas and identify themes.

3 Take a break and do something else. Leave the idea alone for a while.

Return to your idea and critique or validate it in terms of your objectives, audience,
4
and strategy.

5 Create prototypes where possible to explore and test your content in its simplest
form before investing any more time in it.

6 Create your content.

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WALKTHROUGH: LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE CONTENT
CURATION
You can use LinkedIn’s content curation feature to share content from your company page:
On your company page, navigate to the Content section.
In the Industry area, select the industry, location, and job function you want to get results from.
Review the content topics that appear.
Share topics from your page by clicking the Share button beside each topic.
CONTENT REPURPOSING
CONTENT REPURPOSING

You can repurpose content into different formats to

maximize its use. Repurposing it means you adapt it
or break it up to use for another purpose, such as
taking an infographic and turning it into a number of
individual images, each of which could be used in
single social media posts or added to an email.
CONTENT REPURPOSING
Benefits

1 Saves time

2 Cost-effective

3 Efficient

4 Reinforces the message

CONTENT REPURPOSING
Considerations

1 Be aware of video aspect ratios and length requirements.

2 Understand what works best on different platforms.

3 Aim to keep the content on-brand when using templates.

4 Stagger content publishing for different times and days.

5 Be aware of how text descriptions vary across platforms.

CONTENT
PERSONALIZATION
CONTENT PERSONALIZATION

 Content personalization is a powerful process of using different content at different stages of

the buying process to be fully relevant to the right user at the right time.

 It is especially relevant to B2B organizations where the buying process is longer or more
complicated and deals tend to happen between individuals and companies.

 Personalizing content to the individual buyers and stakeholders is essential.

CONTENT PERSONALIZATION
Benefits

Target the right

people in the Increase your Improve brand
relevant platforms conversion rates affinity across
and in the right platforms
context
CONTENT PERSONALIZATION
Personal touch

Research Target Measure and analyze

Do your research around your Target your messaging. Make sure to measure and
audience segments and Make sure you're getting analyze what you do.
understand their consumer them on the right
journey. Make sure you're platforms, the right
leveraging as much consumer channels at the right time
data as possible. Are they on and with the appropriate
your website? Have they message.
looked at a newsletter that
you've sent them?
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CONTENT
PLATFORMS
CONTENT PLATFORMS

Think carefully about how content will appear on different platforms and
social media channels in terms of formats and messaging. Audiences can
vary across platforms and people react to and engage with content in
different ways. Think about the formats and tone you use – a long blog
post with video snippets might not work well in an email newsletter.
Summary

CREATING AND CURATING CONTENT

 Content creation is a process of generating varying formats of collateral that serve the needs of your content strategy objectives.

Be guided by audience, competitor, and keyword research

 Be aware of the various advantages and limitations of using a variety of content types and formats.

 Content curation is a great way to appear less promotional and generate goodwill. Aggregation, distillation, mashups, and

chronology are types of curated content.

 Repurpose content to reach new audiences and extend the lifespan of your content.

 Content personalization maximizes the return on your creation efforts, as it’s tailored to potential and existing customers at their

specific stage of the customer journey.

 Content calendars are an essential tool to avoid missing important dates, focusing on your message, and over-spamming one

channel over another. But remember to align your calendar with business activities!
PUBLISHING AND
DISTRIBUTING
CONTENT
1. Content Seeding

2. Content Scheduling

3. Content Promotion

4. Community Management
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CONTENT SCHEDULING
CONTENT SCHEDULING
Types of scheduling

Native scheduling Third-party applications

This is a method of Tools like Buffer,

publishing content that Hootsuite, and Sprout
uses a social platform's Social are used by
own upload function. For validating logins for your
example, Twitter Studio, or platforms and scheduling
Facebook Publishing or spreading content across
Tools. multiple platforms through
the single hub.
CONTENT SCHEDULING
Benefits

Time efficient Cross-posting

CONTENT PROMOTION
CONTENT PROMOTION
What is it?

Content promotion is defined as the strategic approach to

getting your content seen by a wider audience than your
immediate own channels.

This applies to both the earned and paid space.

CONTENT PROMOTION
Paid methods

Paid media and advertising Influencer marketing Affiliate marketing

Paid content promotion Consider the benefits of Includes paid third-party

campaigns, such as using influencers, co-create blogs or publications that
LinkedIn, Instagram, content with influencers, produce content that drives
Facebook, Twitter, and so understand how to measure engagement with your
on. influencer marketing, and brand and traffic to your
guideline compliance as website. Usually paid as a
well as influencer contract commission per lead or a
considerations. percentage of the sale
value.
CONTENT PROMOTION
Unpaid methods

Owned media Hashtags and Guest blogging and Interviews or Q&A

channels tagging takeovers
Your website and These allow you to Extend the reach of Interviews conducted on
your blog, your join conversations your content by the basis of outreach or
email list, your or categorize your writing a piece for a press release can
company's social content relevant to another promote your content to
media channels. your audience and publication, a wider audience and be
theme. company, or repurposed in many
influencer. ways.
COMMUNITY
MANAGEMENT
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
An important complement

• Community management is the stage that comes after content has been
published.

• It involves engaging with and handling complaints or feedback on your content,

brand, and organization to drive better customer relationships.
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Why is it important?

1 Manage negative experiences and turn them into positive solutions.

2 Respond to business queries and help drive sales, leads, and conversions.

3 Gain insights about your business from real people in real time.

4 Find opportunities to network with like-minded businesses or influencers.

5 Drive new sales and repeat business.

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Methods

• How do you do this? Use social listening to pay attention to what people are
saying to you about you and to others online.

• You might be surprised when and where people will engage with you and spark
a relationship. A small comment in an Instagram post could lead to someone
becoming an eventual brand ambassador.
Summary

PUBLISHING AND DISTRIBUTING CONTENT

 Content seeding allows your content to reach a much wider audience, drives more traffic to your site, and ultimately generates

more leads and conversions.

 Content scheduling is the method by which content is uploaded for future publishing.

 There are two main methods for content scheduling: native and third party.

 Content promotion is a great way to get your content seen by a wider audience and can be done through a number of methods:

influencers, guest blogging, tagging, affiliate and marketing, and media partnerships.
 Community management is essentially the customer service aspect that can arise from the content you seed. It’s an important

consideration in resourcing in your overall content marketing plan

METRICS AND
CONTENT MARKETING
1. Content Marketing KPI Measurement

2. Campaign Metrics

3. Analyzing Content Performance

CONTENT MARKETING
KPI MEASUREMENT
CONTENT MARKETING KPI MEASUREMENT
Benefits of measuring content

1 Justify spend and resource allocation.

2 Provide learnings for future campaigns.

3 Unearth unexpected insights.

4 Create a valuable roadmap on how to produce a content strategy.

5 Clarify topics and themes that resonate with an audience.

CAMPAIGN METRICS
CAMPAIGN METRICS

Engagement Conversion
CAMPAIGN METRICS
Engagement metrics

1 Higher average time on site, reduced bounce rates

2 Increased numbers of returning visitors

3 More pages viewed per session

4 Scroll depth, for example, 50% of users get to the end of a blog

5 Growth in discovery through organic search or social visitors

6 Increased number of people searching for your brand

7 Higher channel engagement metrics

CAMPAIGN METRICS
Conversion metrics

1 Higher number of goals achieved

2 Increased conversion rate

3 Shorter path to purchase

4 Reduced cost per sale or lead

ANALYZING CONTENT
PERFORMANCE
ANALYZING CONTENT PERFORMANCE
Choosing metrics

Choose the appropriate metric

Begin with your objective Look for changes
set

Was it an awareness or Choose one to report Examine these metrics

conversion objective? on your campaign. before the campaign
started, during the
campaign itself, and
after the campaign has
concluded, to see if
there are changes.
ANALYZING CONTENT PERFORMANCE
Steps to derive insights

1 Choose the metrics you want to measure.

2 Group the metrics for your themes and formats together.

3 Examine the performance of the content.

4 Dig deeper for insights.

5 Examine the elements to see what worked best.

6 Examine the times to see when content performs best.

ANALYZING CONTENT PERFORMANCE
Determining return on investment (ROI)

1 Look at the weeks prior to your campaign and set benchmark metrics.

2 Subtract benchmark metrics from campaign metrics to see the increase.

3 Divide the campaign spend by the increased metrics.

4 Determine the value.

5 Use simple language when creating metrics for non-analysts.

ANALYZING CONTENT PERFORMANCE
Presenting the findings

1
All content that was produced and the cost and campaign metrics associated with
these costs

2 Overall performance versus KPI or objective

What worked, headlines, channels, times of day. Show the metrics and anything
3
else that's relevant

4 What was less effective, for example, formats, messaging, and so on

5 A summary of the insights you've derived from the data

6 Recommendations for the next campaign based on the data

7
Summary

METRICS AND CONTENT MARKETING PERFORMANCE

 Measuring the success of your content marketing efforts shows the value of your work in terms of how it has achieved KPIs

you've set for the activity.

 When measuring how successful your content marketing campaign has been, you need to measure engagement metrics and

conversion metrics.
 When analyzing content performance, first consider your objective (awareness or conversion). Then look for change in the

metrics to derive insights. And finally determine the return on investment (ROI).
ENHANCING YOUR
CREATIVITY
1. Generating New Ideas

2. Removing Barriers to Creativity

3. Persevering When Your Ideas Fail

GENERATING
NEW IDEAS
GENERATING NEW IDEAS

Thinking creatively is an invaluable skill in today’s workplace. It can lead to the

development of new products and services, and optimizing business processes. It
can lead to marketing campaigns that stand out and really catch the customer’s
attention. And, down the line, it can lead to business growth and increased
revenues.
GENERATING NEW IDEAS

 Creative thinking doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t occur in a vacuum.

 It’s a skill that needs to be consciously applied, honed, and practiced.
 It can reveal effective and innovative solutions to various types of problems, from marketing
communications to operational roadblocks, and it can generate new ideas.
GENERATING NEW IDEAS
Five-stage creation process

Prepare Incubate Illuminate Verify Practice

GENERATING NEW IDEAS
Five-stage creation process

Prepare Incubate Illuminate Verify Practice

 Research the problem.  Write down your goals  Write your idea down.  Sense check your idea  Use the five-stage
 Review solutions and findings.  Remember the mantra, and verify that process to generate
to similar problems.  Read it, take a break to ‘write it straight, then it is the correct ideas.
 Learn about your do something else, write approach.  Practice helps you
audience. then come back and it great’.  Critically assess to discount poor ideas
review.  Once you’ve safely whether it satisfies all early on and save time.
written it down, leave elements of the  Practice also helps to
it alone. problem you are naturalize creativity in
solving. your thinking.
REMOVING BARRIERS TO
CREATIVITY
REMOVING BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY

Successful creative thinking requires you to be aware of the barriers which may
weaken your creativity, and prevent you from coming up with innovative ideas and
finding great new solutions to problems. The most common barriers to creativity
are fear of failure and relying too much on old ideas and established ways of
thinking.
REMOVING BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY

To eliminate barriers to creativity:

 Challenge your biases and preconceptions.
 Use different thought processes to generate solutions.
 Avoid ‘Functional Fixity’.
 Change your daily routine.
 Change the order in which you tackle work.
 Take creative risks.
PERSEVERING WHEN
YOUR IDEAS FAIL
PERSEVERING WHEN YOUR IDEAS FAIL

1 Stop and pause.

2 Compose yourself.

3 Refocus your thinking.

4 See objections as requests for more information.

5 Empathize with the person who rejected your idea.

6 Respond using facts and hard data.

7 Explain your reasoning using the word ‘because’.

8 Wrap up the discussion with a motivated response to find a solution.

9 Wrap up the discussion with a motivated response to find a solution

10
Summary

ENHANCING YOUR CREATIVITY

 Thinking creatively is an invaluable skill in today’s workplace.

 Thinking creatively can reveal effective and innovative solutions to various types of problems.

 You can use a five-stage creative process to enhance your creative thinking.

 The most common barriers to creativity are fear of failure, and relying too much on old ideas and established ways of

thinking.
 When an idea is rejected, use all your powers of creative thinking and try to find a better solution that solves your original

problem and is acceptable to everyone.