A Trail Map to Content Marketing Success
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Dan Sherman, CMO, Ski.com at C3 2018 Ski.com, the largest provider of ski vacation packages in North America, will recap the journey they took to find content marketing success while balancing SEO opportunities, company goals and the bottom line with a small team and limited resources.
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A Trail Map to Content Marketing Success
- 1. #C3NY @skicom WINNING TACTICS #C3NY A TRAIL MAP TO CONTENT MARKETING SUCCESS: SKI.COM CASE STUDY Leah Boucher Director of SEO & Content, SKI.COM Dan Sherman CMO, SKI.COM
- 2. #C3NY @skicom 2 SKI.COM’S TRAIL MAP TO CONTENT MARKETING SUCCESS
- 3. #C3NY @skicom 3 WILD WEST
- 4. #C3NY @skicom 4 1. Improve organic performance of bottom-of-the-funnel product pages 2. Interact with qualified customers at other points in the buyer’s journey 3. Creating a more robust research experience Content Marketing Mountain Goals
- 5. #C3NY @skicom 5 LET’S START FROM THE TOP Organic Sessions are up by 223%
- 6. #C3NY @skicom 6 LET’S START FROM THE TOP 677 searches moved onto 1st page
- 7. #C3NY @skicom 7 LET’S START FROM THE TOP We’ve seen an 82% increase in conversions on important product pages
- 8. #C3NY @skicom 8 Industry story-teller Analytically-minded Supportive Supervisor HOW DID WE GET THERE? WE DIALED IN OUR “SKI TEAM”
- 9. #C3NY @skicom 9 COMING IN HOT!
- 10. #C3NY @skicom 10 SLOW DOWN • Is it relevant to our business AND customer? • What about resources?
- 11. #C3NY @skicom 11 TRAIL MAP CHECK-IN
- 12. #C3NY @skicom 12 WE’RE READY TO SKI CONTENT MARKETING MOUNTAIN
- 13. #C3NY @skicom 13 WE’RE GETTING BETTER Think critically to avoid looking like this:
- 14. #C3NY @skicom 14 TRAIL MAP CHECK-IN
- 15. #C3NY @skicom 15 PRIORITY POINT
- 16. #C3NY @skicom 16 DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE COMPETITION Weigh rank and competition
- 17. #C3NY @skicom 17 SEND THE GAP
- 18. #C3NY @skicom 18 SKI GLOSSARY PAGE
- 19. #C3NY @skicom 19 FIRST TIME SKI TRIP
- 20. #C3NY @skicom 20 TRAIL MAP GRAPHIC
- 21. #C3NY @skicom 21 NAVIGATIONAL KNOLL How would I get users and bots to all of these newly optimized pages?
- 22. #C3NY @skicom 22 LODGE BREAK Topical House Dance Party
- 23. #C3NY @skicom 23 LET’S GET TOPICAL, TOPICAL
- 24. #C3NY @skicom 24 LET’S GET TOPICAL, TOPICAL
- 25. #C3NY @skicom 25 LET’S GET TOPICAL, TOPICAL Topical Preference Pages collectively account for 26% of Organic Traffic and 10% of Online Booking Widget Traffic:
- 26. #C3NY @skicom 26 RIDE CHANGEMAKER CHAIRLIFT
- 27. #C3NY @skicom 27 RIDE CHANGEMAKER CHAIRLIFT Business Decision Makers Should Consider SEO + Content Marketing Opportunities
- 28. #C3NY @skicom 28 TRAIL MAP CHECK-IN
- 29. #C3NY @skicom 29 MONITOR MOGULS Understand the Technical
- 30. #C3NY @skicom 30 TIME TO CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESS ON CONTENT MARKETING MOUNTAIN!
- 31. #C3NY @skicom 31 Leah Boucher Director of SEO & Content Instagram - @skicom Facebook.com/SkiVacations #ToTheMountains Thanks for skiing with us!
- 32. #C3NY @skicom 32
Editor's Notes
- Dan Sherman - First a little bit about who we are. We’re the largest provider of ski vacation packages in North America, and we’re about to recap the journey we took to find content marketing success while balancing SEO opportunities, company goals and the bottom line with a small team and limited resources. A little more about who we are…OTA vs Travel Agency, technology…partners are competitors, etc. Why is SEO and Content Marketing important to us? So unsurprisingly everyone at our company, especially the marketing department, is super passionate about skiing. So, to be memorable and have some fun, we decided to theme our case study. Welcome to Content Mountain Marketing. We’re going to show you how we’ve conquered this peak with the help of our handy Trail Map.
- Dan Sherman – Around 2012, when we first started considering content marketing was the Wild West , like social media in the late aughts (2008). It seemed like a bit of an experiment still. In those early days we had a lot of internal debate. We knew some bigger companies in different industries were venturing into publishing. We obviously knew quality content was king and was great for brand building, but we were more interested in qualified content. Namely because we didn’t have the resources to hit everyone hard at every point in the buyers journey. Plus, we didn’t want to be blowing in the wind like a tumbleweed hoping something would stick and resonate or worse potentially confuse people about our brand/products/services. In addition, our business model is very unique for the ski travel industry and travel industry in general. There was no blueprint for how content marketing would fit in.
- We did have a couple early goals, though. We knew we needed: 1 – Improve performance of high-priority product pages (cover our bottom line/fill beds). 2 - Find qualified customers at different points in the buyer’s journey (other than just when credit card is in hand). Knew we were missing out on a big chunk of the market. Important to diversify. 3 - Keep customers on the website by creating a more robust research experience, so they wouldn’t have to leave to get the info they needed. As it turned out, these initial goals set us out on a successful path, which you’ll see in the following slides.
- Dan Sherman - Since we started taking Content Marketing and SEO seriously, which includes subscribing to Conductor’s services, we’ve…
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- Dan Sherman - Bullet 1 – We hired a ski writer to build out more content we knew we needed. The expectation was that she would always examine other opportunities and utilize some basic SEO best practices for on-page optimizations. But, she actually ended up taking SEO on in a much bigger way and becoming an evangelist in the early days and now our in-house expert.. She discovered tools that we would have never considered, such as Conductor. Tip: there are a lot of smart, starving freelancers in every industry out there who would make great Content Marketers. In our experience, SEO can be taught, but deep audience understanding is more difficult. I would argue that journalists and writers will enjoy learning about SEO because there’s a big research component to it and it’s ever changing. P Bullet 2 - Initially we were shooting in the dark with some keyword ideas. We were inserting our own internal understanding of our audience and customer behavior too much, instead of letting the data speak for itself. Soon we realized, a little bit of strategy combined with search volume data would go a long way. Having someone who knew they needed to interpret the data and marry it with the realities of our business made all the difference. Bullet 3 - A supervisor who believes in content marketing and understands it’s place. Note: Leah will jump back after this
- Why supportive supervisor is so important. We’re pretty unique within our space. We’re a wholesaler, meaning we don’t actually own any properties or ski resorts. we sell as both an OTA and traditional travel agency. There’s no one really doing what we are and definitely not at the level we are (within the ski travel space). The Expedia’s of the world don’t need an intricate content and SEO strategy and the resorts’ would prefer to get a PR hit on a publisher website. We obviously want and need that sort of web traffic. Because of who we are, what we’re selling and how we’re selling it, there’s no model for us to follow. That’s were strong leadership and vision has been key. I feel quite privileged to be working with someone who identified this early on and has fearlessly set out to carve out our niche. Back to me. I was pretty radical back then…huh? This was the pinnacle of my ski bum/ski writer career. Working at a desk, versus doing this four days a week definitely means my google tan isn’t as radical as it used to be, but there’s a lot to be said for having a real job. Just kidding. I’ve become a huge SEO/Content Marketing nerd and get just as stoked for digging into duplicate content errors or alt tags as crushing a powder day. But, back in the day, I came in hot with hundreds of content ideas…
- But, I trying to ski a black diamond run, but my tips were crossed. And you can imagine what happened. Thankfully, Dan was patient. He wanted me to learn on my own. So, back in my early days using Conductor, about 3 years ago and even earlier than that, I’d be digging into some keyword data and think I had found a golden goose: decent search volume and low competition. Let’s say it was a keyword like “the best snow tires.” Super relevant to our audience: skiers and snowboarders, but not our products and services: booking ski travel and all the components of a vacation package: flights, lodging, lift tickets, ground transportation, car rentals, equipment rentals and demos, ski and snowboard lessons or guides and activities.
- So I had to spend a little time in the beginner learning zone, learning to balance…
- Finally, it all started to click when I started thinking critically. Tip to Execs: If you see potential in someone, they are sharp and driven (and maybe a little stubborn at time), don’t give up on them. They just need a little direction and big-picture insight. So, we’re a new Conductor customer…conceptual strides were being made and I was starting to see the bigger picture. In Conductor, I was building out workspaces, views and segments that I knew we wanted to focus on based on all the aforementioned stuff. Unsurprisingly, because we have so many products, the list was still huge and overwelming. It was time to figure out a way to prioritize.
- So we’re linking our turns at Critical Corner, which means it’s time for a blue run.
- I had to dig in and really think about our products and the goals around them and where people are in the buyer’s journey and weigh it against search volume.
- If you want to start skiing black diamond runs with the big girls and boys, you’ve got to also weigh in rank and competition. Using Conductor’s rank sorting tools and applying my own internal priority list, I’m able to maximize my results.
- After this big product page optimization project (Priority Point), it was time to look at any content gaps. Of course, I had to weigh resources/budget/biz goals/opportunities and employ Conductor’s Content Mapping Tool, etc. I soon realized we also didn’t have much in the way of educational/top of the funnel content, so I made it.
- In Conductor, I noticed a lot of search volume around educational/early stage skiing keywords. A lot of “what is apres ski, mogul definition, skiing terms, what is freesking” etc. so I pitched a ski glossary landing page idea to Dan and he liked it. This page answers some big, very early stage questions and provides a great first experience for those who are maybe curious about skiing or ski trips. We don’t sell on this page, but we do brand our expertise. The hope is they’ll think of us when it’s time to book. Unsurprisingly, this page has become one of our top visited pages this season via organic traffic. The next step is to link to more blog posts that hone in more specific topics/terms to keep them on the site/reading our content longer. And for someone in the early stage/research phase that’s exactly what we want them doing.
- Another opportunity I noticed in Conductor was “first time ski trip” This catch-all/resource page about a first time ski trip has actually revealed via Conductor’s Discovered Keyword tools there’s keyword volume for more regionally specific trip-planning info, which we’ll be adding to this page and thus adding more links into relevant bottom of the funnel/product pages.
- Next on Content Marketing Mountain we’re stepping it up yet again on an intermediate run: Navigational Knoll.
- OK, we’re going to jump back a bit for a second. So, I had optimized my high-priority product pages on Priority Point. It took me months. There were a lot…literally, thousands. It was a big project. My challenge wasn’t over. I knew I couldn’t stuff that many links in my header and footer, drop down navigation and some sort of JavaScript wasn’t an ideal bot or user experience (especially at the time)… In terms of social, blog and PR, we didn’t have the resources to promote these product page make any significant gains. So I had to pause and think about it a bit.
- For me, nothing gets me back on track like a little leisure time. I wish I could say that I got the idea for topical pages while après-skiing, but that would be a lie. However, I’m sure the rose and ski-boot dance party played some sort of role. Really, I had just been reading on Contently or Newscred about the trend in content marketing towards topical. It just clicked. Over time, I had come across so many preferential keywords at east destination we sold, that I knew this had legs. I presented the idea to Danthat we should create market-specific preference pages that feature priority products/destination. He went for it, and it also ended up aligning perfect with PPC campaigns.
- So I built them out. Yes, I also do HTML in Bootstrap. Pages live on Homepage/Header or Footer Navigation Crafted social media/email and video campaigns around these pages and ran targeted ski-trip giveaway campaigns that aligned with these pages and sent campaign traffic to these pages.
- In addition for serving as way to get more eyeballs and bots to the high-priority product pages, but it’s a way to brand our expertise, i.e. “we know resorts because we’ve been there and we know which one is best for every type of traveler.” We also included our Trustpilot Reviews on these pages, it’s an ideal place in the customer shopping process to give them the warm fuzzies about our brand.
- That Topical Dance Party hangover was worth it…
- Hop on the chairlift and have some conversations. Keep the executives and your higher ups in the loop. Let them know when you see real opportunity.
- One of our first big Conductor successes: Lift Tickets. This is a product we sell at each ski resort, but we’ve shied away from promoting or optimizing these pages because of our contracts. However, we were seeing a ton of keyword volume and not a lot of competition, so we decided to test it out and see if we could drive some demand. Well, we did. So much so that we’re adjusting our business model and online technology to accommodate this opportunity. 15% of Organic Traffic is landing on Lift Ticket pages.
- We rode Changemaker Chairlift and about take Monitor Moguls trail down for an epic finish to the base area.
- I needed to understand the potential ways my content marketing strategy and optimization could fail and that’s where technical SEO comes in. Once I realized it was a big circle or rather, interconnected web, I felt like I was in on this big secret. Like conquering moguls, technical SEO can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve found success in monitoring by following these steps. I think it’s an easy, non-intimidating way for more silo-ed content marketers to ease into SEO, too Look at Content or Segment Performance weekly, I’m talking about on-page traffic. I think you get an accurate picture when you’re looking at a page set or roundup of similar pages, that’s why I like the Segment Performance. If you see a sudden drop, don’t freak out immediately, wait a week If it’s still a problem, have a look under the hood. Start with Crawl Errors in Search Console or if you have Deep Crawl or another audit software. If you don’t know what hreflang is, LMGTFY If your developers aren’t familiar with how to fix it, LMGTFY If they don’t like to listen, get Pat Reinhart involved. Monitor your overall site health or have regular check ins with whoever does. If Google is having trouble crawling your site, all of your hard work doesn’t matter. Don’t pigeon-hole your monitoring just to pages you touch, you need to look at everything since crawling issues can affect everything. If you have problematic pages that uses up your crawl or slows your page speed down, that affects the bots abilities to consistently crawl.
- We tried to bring a shotski, but couldn’t….so this will have to do!