1. How to Plan and Build a
Successful Content
Marketing Strategy
#thinkcontent
Michael Brenner
NewsCred – Head of Strategy
@BrennerMichael

2. Agenda
• The key factors for content marketing success
• The core components of a content marketing strategy
• How to utilize content across the buyer journey
• How to work with NewsCred to document your strategy
and achieve success
#thinkcontent

3. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey

4. There’s been a fundamental
shift in the way we create,
consume, and share content.
Every single day…
4.75 billion piece of content are shared
1.8 billion photos are uploaded and shared
500 million tweets are posted
700 million snapchats are sent
#thinkcontent

5. 5
“Marketing used to be about making a
myth and telling it. Now it’s about
telling a truth and sharing it.
- MARC MATHIEU -
Unilever
”
#thinkcontent

6. 6
I have no patience for useless
things.

7. 7
“The buyer journey is nothing more
than a series of questions that must
be answered.
- IDC -
”
#thinkcontent

8. Awareness Consideration Preference
Online Communities
Search Engines
eBooks
Email Newsletters
Editorial Articles
White Papers
Podcasts
Case Studies
Online Videos
Webcasts
Virtual Trade Shows
Product Literature
Trial Software
Online Vendor Demos
Begin
decision
process
Make
decision
Identify
business
problem Establish
requirements/
build RFP
Align IT with
business
objectives
Explore
technology
options
Research
solutions
Determine
solution
strategy Assess ROI
Research
products/
vendors
Build
short
list

9. “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
• Not Advertising or PR
• It is Customer, Not brand-focused
• Seeks to answer customer questions across the buyer journey
• Owned media
Content Marketing Defined
#thinkcontent

10. Behind every tweet, share,
and purchase is a person,
like you and me.
#thinkcontent

11. Put Your Customers’Needs First.
Make them the hero.
Our Natural Instinct
Content
Marketing
Brand
Purpose
What
Customers
Want
Charity
#thinkcontent

12. “We need to stop interrupting what
people are interested in and be what
people are interested in.
- CRAIG DAVIS -
”
#thinkcontent

13. Unique Point of View Trap
Too easy to become consumed
with your story, not your customers.
#thinkcontent

14. Six key factors to content marketing success:
1 Document content strategy
2 Have someone in charge of content
3 Consistently publish quality content
4 Map content to buyer journey
5 Balance Paid, Owned, Earned Media
6 Track Content Marketing ROI
#thinkcontent

15. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey

16. • Delivering content your audience wants
• Managing content as an asset (with an ROI)
• Thinking and acting like a publisher
What is a Content Strategy?
#thinkcontent

17. Why is it important to have a documented
content strategy?

18. 3 Steps to Building a Content Strategy
1 Why?
What’s the Business Case?
3 What?
Show results tied to your business objectives.
2 How?
Team, actions, and budgets needed.
#thinkcontent

19. Content Marketing Roadmap
• Budget
• Destination
• Frequency
• Amplification / Optimization
• Collaboration (Who does what)
Discovery Destination Team Topic Models
Customer
Journey
KPIs /
Reporting
Optimization
• Business Case
• Current State
• Budget
• Branding/Design
• Platform
• Firm Integration
• Who does what?
• Agency
• NewsCred
• Distribution
• Structure
• Topics
• Types
• Content by Stage
• Conversions
• Subscriptions
• Define report
• Who / when?
• Content
• Platform
• Distribution
#thinkcontent

20. Content marketing mission statement
Become a destination for [target audience]
interested in [topics]. To help them
[customer value].
This will help us [content marketing goals]
• Earn your audience’s attention vs. just
buying it
• Reach, engage and convert NEW buyers
AmEx Open Forum Example: Help Small
Businesses Do More Business. To become
the largest source of inbound leads.
#thinkcontent

21. Commit To Measuring Your Results
Awareness / Reputation:
Classic Brand / PR objectives. SOV, SOC, and press mentions. With Whom? On What Topic?
Measured by?
Reach:
Who is the target Audience? What are their online interests? How can we measure?
Engagement:
Drive deeper relationship with the brand. Measured by time spent, bounce rate, social shares
Convert:
Subscribers, Leads, Sales
#thinkcontent

22. Define Content Marketing Roles and Functions
Content
Marketer /
Editor
Strategizes, writes,
and oversees
content projects to
ensure brand
consistency and
alignment with
business
objectives.
Community
Manager
Distributes content
across social
channels, engages
online communities,
and contributes to
content projects.
Designer
Brings content to life
through the user
experience and rich
visuals.
Contributors
Any content creator-
blogger,
photographer,
designer — who
contributes to your
project.
SEO / Paid
Specialist
Manages the paid
distribution of
content online.
Analytics
Defines best/ worst
performers,
conversion
optimization and
measurement
communications.
Curation
Fines and re-
purposes the best
content from your
business and from
around the web.
#thinkcontent

23. Define The Business Case, Workflows,
Gain Organizational Buy-in
• Make sure all stakeholders understand your mission statement and business goals
• Determine who needs to sign off on content
• Set approval processes for publishing and sharing content in order to cut down on
back-and-forth
• Leverage technology to automate that entire process is a great way to get ahead

24. Consider Your Destination and Branding
#thinkcontent

25. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey

26. Conduct A Content Audit
A Content Audit will help you:
• Give you a true sense of scale
• Identify gaps
• Seize opportunities for content repurposing
• Determine performance issues
• Evaluate content quality
• Improve your information architecture

27. Look at Content by Buyer Stage
Early Stage
Middle Stage
Late Stage
66% 28%
Early-Stage Content
Late-Stage
Content
Middle-Stage
Content
6%
#thinkcontent

28. Where in the journey do we want to connect?
Online Influences Discover Consider Decide
• Reviews
• Comments
• Blogs
• Forums
Why buy?
• Educate
• Search
Why buy now?
• What
• When
• Who
Why buy from you?
• Trust
• Capability
• Capacity
#thinkcontent

29. Defining Topics
What are we going to talk about?
• [Sample at left – SAP “The Customer
Edge” blog keyword analysis]
#thinkcontent

30. Content across the buyer journey
Top of the Funnel
Quality, licensed content around broader, shareable topics that drives visibility
and engagement
Middle of the Funnel
A combination of licensed and custom content that’s not only useful and timely,
but also hits on niche topics specific to your offering and solutions. Potentially gated.
Bottom of the Funnel
Custom content promoting your products and services: case studies, product
offers, customized demos, etc.
Customer Stage
Consistent cadence of TOFU/MOFU content as well as personalized
recommendations, service options, case studies, etc.
Awareness
Retain
Evaluation
Purchase
#thinkcontent

31. Show me the money!

32. Utilize The Right Mix of Content
Custom Content
Share on-brand stories and recipes which are created
specifically for your brand.
Social Content
Leverage snackable content through UGC that
engages your target audience.
Licensed Content
Boost credibility, publishing cadence, and direct traffic
with a high-volume of fully-licensed, compliant content.
#thinkcontent

33. 3
Distributing your content
“Even great content needs a push!”
Average Hollywood movie splits 40-50%
production with 50-60% distribution
#thinkcontent

34. Maximizing the Reach of Your Content
We believe in a “converged media” approach utilizing paid, owned, and earned media
to deliver content the audience wants and maximizing the reach of that content.
Paid Social Influencer/
movable media
Leverage your owned
content and channels
Maximize organic buzz,
social engagement,
and PR
Organic Traffic & SEO
Quickly grow your
audience & jumpstart
engagement
Converged
Native Ads (Nativo)
Paid Content Distribution
(Outbrain, Sharethrough)
Earned Paid
Owned
#thinkcontent

35. Distribution Recommendations
• Make sure your social accounts demonstrate interaction
• 4-1-1 Rule: 4 of your posts, 1 influencer post, 1 publisher post
• Follow and mention influencers, publishers in each topic
• Help your authors build social presence
• Test paid distribution with LinkedIn and Outbrain
• Measure engaged visitors from paid vs. organic visitors
• Based on time on site or pages per visit
Client Influencer Publisher
#thinkcontent

36. Blog Benchmarks
Uniques Per
Month
346,400
Time Spent
On Site
46 Seconds
Pages Per Visit
1.3 Average
Bounce Rate
85%
#thinkcontent

37. Define Key Measures and Targets
#thinkcontent

38. Organic and Social: Up and To The Right
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
UniqueVisitors
Traffic from Organic, Social & Referrals
#thinkcontent

39. Content Marketing
Success
Building a Successful
Content Strategy
Working with NewsCred:
Crafting a Successful
Content Strategy
Utilizing Content Across
the Buyer Journey

40. No matter where you are in your journey,
NewsCred can help.
Our team of strategists can help you:
• Document your content strategy
• Build Business case / Define ROI
• Content Audits
• Buyer journeys
• Content Mix
• Build / Source Content Team
• Distribution strategy
• Provide metrics and ROI guidance
#thinkcontent

41. We’re helping some of the world’s
largest brands with their strategy:
#thinkcontent

42. Ways to work with our Strategy Team
1 Ongoing Strategy Engagements
2 One-Day Strategy Workshop
3 Multiple Strategy Sessions
4 Strategy Health check
5 Custom engagements
#thinkcontent

43. Sample content strategy
exercises we’ll help you with
#thinkcontent

44. Brand Map Framework
Audience
The content that you publish largely depends on your target audience – their interests, behaviors and motivations. This demographic plays a key role in your content creation and distribution process. The
publications you license content from, the topics you write about and the distribution channels that you use.
What is your target demographic? What kind of publications does your audience
read?
What social channels does your audience
frequently engage on?
What events does your audience care about?
Brand Strategy
Understanding your brand's identity is key to understanding the type of content that your brand should source and create. Content marketing should always convey your unique brand personality
consistently, from the photos that you publish to the blog posts that you create.
What is your brand’s ambition or purpose? What is your brand voice? What are the design principles of your brand’s
visual identity?
What owned assets (color, typeface, etc.) signal
your brand?
Content Strategy
Our mission is to help brands simplify and scale their entire content marketing process: content planning, discovery, creation, publishing, distribution and measurement. Understanding your current process
and challenges as well as your future goals will help us shape a content marketing strategy unique to your brand, resources, internal creative/compliance processes.
Who is the organization responsible
for your content strategy?
What does your current content
workflow look like?
Do you currently use a mix of content
types (original, licensed, social, etc.)?
What do you like about your content
marketing strategy and what do you
want to change?
What are your content pillars?
What are your SEO keyword
priorities? What longtail keywords are
you interested in?
What type of content do you want to
feature?
What products or services (if any) do
you want us to keep in mind?
Are there specific geographic
regions or cities we should keep in
mind?
Which social channels would you like
to prioritize? What is your ideal
content cadence?
Distribution Strategy
Distribution is just as important as the content itself. It is important to understand which channels will reach your target audience and how you should share content across each channel.
What channels do you use for organic distribution? What channels do you use for paid distribution? What demand generation programs do you use?

45. Xyz Early Xyz
Late Xyz Xyz
Persona Questions/Concerns
Xyz
Middle Xyz Xyz
Keywords
Xyz Early Xyz
Late Xyz Xyz
Persona Questions/Concerns
Xyz
Middle Xyz Xyz
Keywords
Stage
Stage
#thinkcontent

46. SUCCESS METRICS
MEDIA METRICS
What do we measure?
KPIS: BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
Is our content producing the desired result?
ROI: MEDIA PERFORMANCE
How efficiently is our content and distribution working to
produce the desired result?
CONTENT PERFORMANCE
• Impressions
• Social shares
• Time spent
• Return visits
• Is our content being seen?
• Are people engaging with our brand & content?
• How much time are people spending with our brand and
are they returning?
• What is our cost/value per exposure, action or view?
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
• Subscriber / audience size
• Share of voice
• Audience penetration across org
• How large is our audience?
• What’s our share of voice in a market/ channel?
• Is engagement growing across the workflow chain of a
single organization?
• What is the cost/value per point of share?
• What is the cost/value per active audience member?
BRAND AWARENESS
• Brand lift
• Perception / attitudinal change
• Are we creating awareness? Is our message memorable?
• Are we changing perceptions?
• What is the cost/ value per point of lift?
LEAD GENERATION AND SALES
• Behavioral conversions
• Lead generation
• Sales lift
• Are people discovering and understanding our product &
service offering?
• Are we driving quality leads?
• Are we driving overall sales?
• What is the cost per qualified lead?
• What is the multi-touch attribution cost?
• What is the cost per sale?

47. How To Implement A Successful
Content Marketing Strategy
Key Takeaways:
1 Commit to publishing content that your customers actually want
2 Figure out what questions your customers ask (Google) what content
they share (Social) and what channels they use.
3 Start publishing content
4 Distribute the winners
5 Measure what works
#thinkcontent

49. michael.brenner@newscred.com
sales@newscred.com
#thinkcontent | @newscred
Thank you!
Learn more about our strategy services:
http://newscred.com/learn-professional-services
Enter our raffle for a free
Content Strategy Workshop:
http://newscred.com/content-strategy-workshop-raffle