My presentation from SEO Barcamp on how to create a measurable content marketing strategy using onsite optimisation to measure the value of your content

1. A content first approach to user
experience and optimisation

2. Director of Content and optimisation at Funding
Circle
Head of Social and Content at PayPal UK
Head of Social at Gumtree / eBay Classifieds
And yes I am South African but please don’t ask me
about Oscar!

3. 763
224
138
£50 million £100 million £150 million
£235
million
Lent in 3 years
$37m funding round
70k+ Investors
4000 loans
Days

4. First, we build the content machine
To take a content-led approach to onsite optimisation and
positioning, you first need to build up content assets

5. This was the homepage when started at Funding Circle
Of the many things this
home page was lacking,
trust, vibrancy and
social proof were the
main concerns for me

6. Trust creates conversion
Trust:
Consistency
Credibility
Transparency
Friendliness
Beautiful / professional
Vibrancy
Pride / making a difference
We needed to portray more trust
amongst our users:

7. Data-led transparency
So we created
transparent, data-led
content on the
marketplace dynamics
of Funding Circle

8. The naked company
We took the naked
company approach
and opened up the
doors to our
business by
interviewing teams,
being honest about
the tricky sides of
the business etc

9. Become a thought leader

10. Building up premium, genuine case studies
We put in a huge amount
of time and effort into
sourcing and creating top
quality, genuine customer
case studies, using
professional
photographers and
videographers to tell our
story through our
customers

11. Then we used that content
to help build trust and pride
amongst our users
Actual
business
customer
A little
product
exposure!
Explaining our value prop
in one sentence using a
genuine example

12. Social proof
News
coverage
helps with
trust

13. Genuine
testimonials
Testimonial videos
showing a number
of different
businesses we
helped

14. Content best practice: The 20:1 rule
One case study of Bramley & Gage has been seen on:
Blog headerMagazine inserts Home page Slide share
Blog post x2 Facebook album G+ album Youtube x2
This is a great method for creating content cost effectively and also building brand consistency

15. Content best practice: The 20:1 rule
He even appeared on the tube!

16. Then we test and optimise

17. Who are
these
people?
And
this
guy?
Why
should
I?
Forgot
password as
important as
join?
Why
not
live?
Home page A/B/C test

18. 25%
26%
The revised homepage
increased overall
conversion rate by 26%

19. 11.6%
9.9%
Test and test again
Don’t stop there, we tested
different CTAs and increased
the conversion rates for
each customer group again

20. Improving advertising
with content

21. Content approach to advertising
Creative A – Control version Creative B – New version
60%
reduction in CPA

22. Transactional content
Mining opportunities through data:
Only 8% of the businesses on our business email list had taken out a loan with us. Adjust to appeal to these businesses

23. Transactional content
Sep-13 Oct-13 Nov-13 Dec-13 Jan-14 Feb-14
So, very simply, we moved the loan CTA to
the top of the email in Nov 13
Revenue generated from email

24. Transactional content
And improved the
CTAs on the blog post
the email link sent
traffic to

25. Thank you
Jon Bishop – Online Marketing Consultant
@jonin60seconds
jonmichaelbishop@gmail.com