Content Marketing –
And How It Can Help Grow
Your Business
Mark Colgan
Feel free to follow me @markpcolgan

Intro
• 5 years experience of Digital Marketing
• 9 to 5 - B2B SaaS/Technology companies
• Digital Marketing Consultancy – B2C and Startups
• 4 Years in Recruitment/Sales
@markpcolgan
Thanks Mum!

Let’s Begin
@markpcolgan
1
Purpose
Why Is Content Marketing Important?
2 How You Can Create Content?
3 What Do You Do After You Have Created Content

What is Content Marketing
Content Marketing is about creating content at all stages of the sales
funnel with the goal of advancing people to the next stage in the funnel
(Ian Cleary)
@markpcolgan
Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating
and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and
retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable
customer action.
(Content Marketing Institute)

Why?
@markpcolgan

The current landscape
@markpcolgan
Digital Campaigns
CONTENT
PR
Website/Blog
Social Media
Customer Success
Lead Nurturing
Lead Generation
SEMSEO
Email Marketing

Why is it so important?
@markpcolgan
SEO Table
Search Ranking Factors
Infographic
Additional Resources
1. The best way to add value to your customers
lives
2. Quickest way to resonate with your audience
(if you properly understand them)
3. Very important for SEO as Google looks for
quality content
4. Key to driving inbound traffic and leads
5. You can’t market without it

The Basics
People Buy From Those They:
• Like
• Trust
• Know
Build an emotional connection between the audience and the content
BY
Providing content that is useful and interesting that increases interactions
and engagement over time.
@markpcolgan

How?
@markpcolgan

Buyer Personas
What is a buyer persona:
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer (can be
more than one). And is developed based on their demographics, behaviours
and your understanding of their motivations and challenges.
Only once you understand who your
buyers are you can start to engage
with them about the right topic, in the
right place at the right time.
@markpcolgan
Hubspot’s Guide To
Buyer Personas
Additional Resources

The Buyer’s Journey
By the time a buyer contacts a company they’ve done their
research; they’ve identified that they have a problem, they’ve
identified the solution and they’re ready to take action.
@markpcolgan
T
M
B
AWARENESS
Research, prioritise criteria
CONSIDERATION
Further research, comparison &
justification
DECISION
Selection and purchase
AWARENESS
“I think I have a need...
Yes, I do have a need”
CONSIDERATION
“What are my options?
Who offers the best solution?”
DECISION
“This company offers the best solution…
I’m going to go with them”

Content & Buyers Journey
Content is most effective when it matches the buyer’s journey
@markpcolgan
T
M
B
Awareness
Slightly generic content, beginners guide, things to
consider etc. - blog posts, website copy, social media
CONSIDERATION
More specific content, X vs Y, pros and cons of X etc.
- case studies, whitepapers, comparative articles, webinars
DECISION
Content to eliminate buyers remorse, evidence based, express value etc
- demos, in depth video walkthrough, case studies, referrals, tutorials

The Buyer’s Journey Example
@markpcolgan
AWARENESS
Thinking of buying a car – maybe a VW…
CONSIDERATION
What model shall I buy?
DECISION
Where do I buy it from?
RETENTION
Are you happy with what you bought?
ADDITIONAL SALES
Here are our new models

Content Partnerships
Core and Peripheral content
• Core – content about the challenges your
product helps overcome
• Peripheral – content that is related to
your customers needs, motivations and
desires*
Partner with other companies / individuals
in your industry who share a mutual audience
Reach out the them to co produce valuable content
which allows you to create content quicker
Leverage their marketing resources @markpcolgan
Core Peripheral
Both need to provide value

Coming up with ideas
• Speak to your business and ask them what the
hot topics in your industry are
• Listen on social channels to see what your
network is talking about
• Think about your prospects challenges and help
them overcome them
• Interview customers and ask them (could send
out a survey)
• Ask prospects when they sign up for emails
• Research to determine the hot topics and trends
• Ask your audience to contribute – tell their story
• Think about how you can make your audience’s
lives better
@markpcolgan
Marketo’s Lean Content
Marketing
Backlink.io’s
Skyscraper Technique
Additional Resources

The Content Pyramid*
Primary / Secondary Research & Thought Leadership: Books,
eBooks & Whitepapers
Long-form Blog Posts & Presentations
Infographics & SlideShares
Short-form Blog Posts & Contributed
Content
Social Media Posts & Curated
Content
*Curata

What do you do now?
@markpcolgan

Share with your audience
• Via Social Media, and share again
• Via email
• Via events / webinars
• Via journalists / bloggers
• Via your employees
• Enable sharing on your content / blog
@markpcolgan
RivalIQ - how is your growth compared to competitors?
Narrow.io – growing your Twitter followers by relevant keywords/influencers
Grytics – analysing Facebook groups
Take advantage of analytics (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google)
Growing Your Audience

PR / Influencer Outreach
Reaching out to Journalists and Bloggers help
spread the message about your product /
service.
1. Plan and refine your pitch/angle
2. Use tools to help find Journalists
3. Reach out and build relationships with
Journalists and PR companies.
4. Build your PR database
5. Nurture these relationships
@markpcolgan
Journorequests
HARO
FollowerWonk
BuzzSumo
Tools

Paid Advertising
Combining earned, owned, and paid media will help you attract, nurture,
and close more leads,
1. Social Media Advertising (targeted)
• LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook ($1 a day), Instagram
2. Retargeting
• Re target those people who have already visited your site
3. Google Adwords - around relevant and popular events
• Can be a cost effective way to reach your relevant audience
Make sure they link to landing pages!
@markpcolgan
Earned Owned Paid

Content Distribution
Spend 90% of the time creating the content, but
often spend 10% of time promoting it
• Reschedule the content on the same network
• Reach out to influencers / Tweet to specific
people
• Engage with communities (Inbound.org
Quora)
• Ask employees to share
Use a checklist to ensure you always promote
your content
Understand what works best – and reshare @markpcolgan
ContentMarketer.io
Hootsuite
CoSchedule
Buffer
Tools

Automation is your friend
Buzz-word – but not as complicated as it sounds
Focus on internal and external processes that
are repetitive and take steps to automate them
• Cross promoting social media posts
• Adding form submissions to Slack
• Saving Twitter mentions to Google Sheets
• Sharing content internally
• Saving common answers to popular questions
in your drafts
@markpcolgan
Zapier
IFTTT
Tools

Bringing it all together
@markpcolgan
Create
Content
Social
Media
Multiple
Blog Posts
Email /
Newsletter
Landing
Page
Automated
Email
(internal)
Review
Quality
Sales Team
Contact
Add to
nurturing
Nurture
Email 1
Nurture
Email 2
Nurture
Email 3
Automated
Thank You
Email
(prospect)
Journalist
/
Influencers
Paid Social
Ads
Retargeting

Summary
@markpcolgan
1 Create Valuable Content
2 Share and amplify the content in the right places
3
Make sure you have systems and processes in
capture leads (or interest)

Download the slides:
www.yellowo.co.uk/Content
Any questions?
@markpcolgan