An introduction to content marketing, with everything you need to get started. Learn how to research your audience, find out what they need, and then execute a campaign to maximise your brand exposure.

1. What Content Marketing Is All About
And Why It Matters
Dani Mansfield. Content Strategist
dani@builtvisible.com
Read Builtvisible’s full introduction to content marketing at
builtvisible.com/introduction-to-content-marketing/

2. “Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating
and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and
engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the
objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Content Marketing Institute

3. A few examples
What can Content Marketing do for you?
• Build reputation
• Grow community
• Increase traffic
• Generate leads
• Reach new audiences
• Create ambassadors
• Establish brand thought-leadership
• Communicate CSR
• Drive more sales
• Increase retention

4. Content Marketing across the Sales
Funnel
Awareness: Broad, sharable content that inspires and entertains
readers. Activity on wide range of channels. Brand visibility.
Research: Provideuseful an d educational information and tips for
customers to help them solve their related problems. Build trust.
Purchase: Consumer stories and testimonials, present content that
spells out what makes the brand unique. Build trust and help action.
Retain: Keep conversations going through top of funnel and middle
of funnel content.
Awareness
Research
Purchase
Retain

5. Strategy

6. Content Marketing and the Sales Funnel
Awareness: Broad, sharable content that inspires and entertains
readers. Activity on wide range of channels. Brand visibility.
Research: Provideuseful an d educational information and tips for
customers to help them solve their related problems. Build trust.
Purchase: Consumer stories and testimonials, present content that
spells out what makes the brand unique. Build trust and help action.
Retain: Keep conversations going through top of funnel and middle
of funnel content.
Awareness
Research
Purchase
Retain

7. The
Content
Marketing
Lifecycle
Research
Plan
Produce
Promote
Monitor
&
Evaluate
Manage
The Content
Marketing
Lifecycle

8. The
Content
Marketing
Lifecycle
Content-
focused
components
Workflow
What processes, tools, and human
resources are required for content
initiatives to launch successfully and
maintain ongoing quality?
Governance
How are key decisions about content
and content strategy made? How are
changes initiated and communicated?

9. The
Content
Marketing
Lifecycle
People-
focused
components
Substance
What kind of content do we need
(topics, types, sources, etc.), and what
messages does content need to
communicate to our audience?
Structure
How is content prioritized, organized,
formatted, and displayed? (Structure
can include communication planning,
IA, metadata, data modeling, linking
strategies, etc.)

10. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute
Content marketing is not about “what you sell” it’s about
“what you stand for”.

11. Create an overarching mission statement to keep content focused and to screen
and tweak concepts.
Statement should identify:
− The core target audience
− What will be delivered to the audience
− The outcome for the audience (what they gain)
Mission Statement

12. Research: Data-Driven Insights

13. Audit your own content to learn about the scale, quality and location of
your site’s content.
Content Audit
Quantitative Inventory
• Catalogue of site content, includes for instance:
• Content format
• Page type
• Content location
• Traffic
• Shares
• Can offer a quick clear overview of the amount and complexity of your content

14. Qualitative Inventory
• Analyses the quality and effectiveness of the content
• Best practice assessment – evaluates content against industry best practice
• Search optimisation
• User friendliness
• Copy quality
• Strategic assessment – evaluates content against strategy
• Messaging
• Call to action

15. − Where can your online audiences be found?
− What are they passionate about?
− What content topics and types do they share?
− Which sites do they read?
− Who are they influenced by?
− When is the best time to reach/engage them?
Audience Research:
What Should You Be Asking?
?

16. Creating audience segments/personas is an important part of forming a
highly targeted strategy.
User Research Methods
• User interviews – an in-depth, structured
conversation with a user, usually conducted
in person.
• Focus groups – A moderated group
discussion, where several users answer
your questions en masse.
• Survey - a series of multiple choice, fill-in-
the-blank, and open-ended questions
• Site analytics – detailed statistics about
how visitors use your website.
• Search and keyword analytics –
measurement of internal search queries (on
your site) and search engine queries.
• Contact analytics – measurement of how
and why users contact

17. • A/B test of landing pages
- a comparison of how different versions of
a landing or product page performs on
your live site
• Customer Service Analysis – a look at
most frequently asked questions, issues,
and requests your customer sales people
get from users
• Syndicated research – research
conducted by an independent company or
organization, often sponsored by multiple
companies within an industry.
• User testing – sit and watch someone
interact with your content.
From Content Strategy for the Web
By Kristina Halvorson, Melissa Rach

18. Look into suggested and related
search queries
Break data into monthly volume
to explore seasonal trends
Identify new content pages
based on keyword groups
with significant volume
Keyword Research

19. Quantitative and qualitative analysis
of the social channels and content
strategies of a client’s brand and its
competitors.
Aims to segment the wider audience to
determine an ideal format, focus,
style, and placement strategy for
future content in order to maximise
chances of success.
Audience Profiling

20. − How is their site and content organised?
− What topics do they cover?
− What content formats are they using?
− How do they position their brand identity and voice?
− How do they interact with their digital communities?
− How is their content performing?
Understanding Competitors: What Should
You be Asking?
?
Looking into your competitor’s content can help you
identify and understand important opportunities.

21. Planning

22. “Your data is
your eyes not
your brain”
Colleen Jones, author of Clout:
the art and science of
influential web content
Insights informed content
Content
Ideation
Content
audit
Keyword
research
Audience
research
Competitor insight
opportunities
Businness Objectives
& Marketing Themes
Social Trends Research

23. Content Campaigns

24. Heavy weight “big ideas” content rooted in deep research and insight.
Often gated. Embodies key vision, values and marketing messages:
Core Content
• Print books
• E-books
• Guides
• Whitepapers
• Research studies
• Long-form video
• Tools

25. Mid-light weight content deriving from source material in core content.
Diversify and improve accessibility and consumption through use of different
formats. More focused and concise:
Derivative Assets
• Video
• Infographics
• Case-studies
• Articles
• Slide shares
• Webcasts
• Podcast
• Quizzes
• Games
• Long-form and short-form blog posts

26. Simple low-cost content focused on expanding reach and starting
conversations. Reuses and repurposes messages from core content for
this purpose.
Promotional Micro-Content
• Social media content
• Curated content
• Newsletters
• Blog comments
• Participation in blogs and forums

27. Determine what you want each content piece to achieve, and through
which channel:
For example:
Set Objectives
• Build followers and likes
• Improve search visibility
• Increase sign-ups
• Increase brand engagement
• Increase email CTR
• Generate leads

28. Production

29. Focus on quality, not quantity, even when it comes to quick and simple
on-site content:
According to a recent survey by Acrolinx, 59 percent of respondents
said that bad grammar and spelling mistakes would
prevent them from purchasing from a website.
Quality not Quantity

30. Characteristics of Quality Content
Characteristic Description
Usable and Findable The content is easy to find, access, and read.
Clear and Accurate The content is understandable, organised cohesively, and correct.
Complete The content meets customer needs with the right amount of content for
the situation.
Consistent The content across the website or interactive experience is similar in style,
tone, and approach.
Useful and Relevant The content meets user and business goals. It is timely and pertinent.
Colleen Jones, Clout, 2011

31. Great Examples

32. ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ by Metro Trains
Melbourne (2012-2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq-­‐GYfRjxhM
http://dumbwaystodie.tumblr.com/

33. ‘New Ideas’ by Sprint Business (2015)
https://business.sprint.com/new-­‐ideas/?INTNAV=Header:NewIdeas

34. ‘Experience Curiosity’ by NASA (2015)
http://eyes.nasa.gov/curiosity/

35. Distribution

36. Internal Links
Home page
Relevant landing pages
From your most popular past content
Metadata
Strong title tag (50-60 characters)
Targeted h1
Targeted meta description (160 characters)
Social mark-up
Engaging social mark-up for easy sharing
Always include image in social mark-up
On-site Optimisation

37. Influencers
Contact influencers to comment on and share the piece
Encourage your sources to read, share and link to content
Social media
Contact people who have shared similar content
Create 20+ snippets for diversified social media sharing:
Variations of the title
Short quotes from the content
Statistics from the content, etc.
Share on tumblr feed
Email marketing
Test titles on social media
Third party sites
Contact people who have linked to similar content
Other:
Turn into slideshow to host on SlideShare
Amplification tools (e.g. Outbrain, StumbleUpon)
Print
Events
Off-site distribution

38. Read Builtvisible’s full introduction to content marketing at
builtvisible.com/introduction-to-content-marketing/

39. Thank you
Dani Mansfield. Content Strategist
dani@builtvisible.com