How to build a content marketing program to generate leads, convert clients, and delight customers. By Castelazo Content. Content is Queen!

1. “Content is King.
”(
“Queen,
”we say.)
But what does that really mean?
Done {right}, content helps you
1. Engage prospects
2. Generate leads
3. Convert customers
$
Here’s how to do it {right}…

2. 1
3
5
7
11
15
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25
27
30
What’s Inside
Translating Insights into Results .....................................................................
Content in Action: Thought Leadership .....................................................
7 Content Myths – Busted! ...........................................................................
Your Sales Machine .......................................................................................
The Process – Content Strategy ..................................................................
The Process – Content Development .........................................................
The Process – Content Marketing ...............................................................
Metrics to Measure Your Content’s Effectiveness .....................................
Content in Action: Lead Generation .........................................................
3 Content Challenges – Overcome! ..........................................................
Notes ..............................................................................................................
castelazocontent.com | 480.987.7958

3. 2
Castelazo Content is a global content strategy,
content development, and content marketing firm.
We are privileged to work with some
of the most successful organizations
in Arizona and beyond.
Among them:
®
IT SOLUTIONS
a TDS®Company
WHY
WHAT
HOW
WHY:
To help our clients sell more.
HOW:
By establishing your company
as a thought leader – one
who leads prospects through
the sales cycle by addressing
their problems and needs,
questions and concerns.
WHAT:
White papers, blogs, bylined
articles, videos, infographics,
and other content that
engages prospects,
generates leads, and
converts leads into clients.

4. 3
There is something about your product or service that enables you to solve your
customers’ needs better than your competitors do. By articulating what that “something”
is and demonstrating (showing, not telling) your authority to meet those needs, you
become a thought leader. Your prospects come to recognize you as a trusted source
of value-added information. And, at the end of the day, as the trusted source for what
you’re selling.
But articulating that “something” – developing your company’s thought leadership – can
be difficult. Especially in technology, subject matter experts (SMEs) are often so enmeshed
in what they do that it’s hard for them to explain its value in a way that prospects can
understand. That’s where we come in. With the ability to both understand the “language”
your SMEs speak and to speak the language of your prospects, we’re the bridge between
your SMEs and your target audience. We translate your insights into results.
Translating Insights into Results
“When it comes to content development in the tech space, Molly
and the team at Castelazo Content are truly one of the best. I’ve
worked with Molly on a variety of projects over the years, so I’ve
seen how her dedication to whatever she takes on always pays
dividends to everyone involved.”
Steve Zylstra, CEO, Arizona Technology Council

5. 4
“Content is
anything that
adds value to
the reader's life.
”Avinash Kaushik, Google

6. 5
FiREapps develops Software-as-a-Service solutions to help multinational
corporations manage their foreign currency exchange risk. The
company is an example of thought leadership at its finest.
Crafting value-added thought leadership content
In addition to a wide range of other content we develop for FiREapps,
every quarter Castelazo Content produces a research and analysis-
based report, the Currency Impact Report. FiREapps’ PR team delivers
the report’s standalone Executive Summary to both mainstream news
publications (the likes of Wall Street Journal and Forbes) and trade
publications (Treasury Management International, CFO Magazine).
And FiREapps’ CEO does a series of interviews with broadcast media
(Bloomberg, CNBC).
Because it is based on research and analysis and because it never
explicitly sells FiREapps, the Currency Impact Report is true value-added
thought leadership content. Journalists eagerly await the report, and
cover it in a range of different ways. Readers take away valuable,
actionable insight.
Leveraging thought leadership to close deals
For a business that has profit maximization as its bottom-line aim,
incredible media coverage like the kind FiREapps gets is only valuable if
it engages prospects, generates leads, and/or converts leads into clients.
That is exactly what we leverage it to do.
Content in Action:
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
FiREapps 2014
Q1 Corporate Earnings
Currency Impact Report – for
North American and
European Corporates

7. 6
Generating significant ROI
• An email campaign highlighting a bylined article
taking off from the Currency Impact Report leads to
discovery calls, which lead to deals = ROI of 1300%
• The Currency Impact Report emailed to prospects in
the sales cycle leads to discovery calls, which lead to
deals = ROI of 506%
We work with FiREapps’ in-house marketing team
to leverage the Currency Impact Report for the
company’s sales and marketing efforts in a variety
of ways:
• An email campaign highlighting a bylined
article taking off from the Currency Impact
Report leads to discovery calls, which lead to
deals = ROI of 1300%
• The Currency Impact Report emailed to
prospects in the sales cycle leads to discovery
calls, which lead to deals = ROI of 506%
• The executive team uses the report findings in
webinars and presentations.
• The sales team uses the report as a conversation
starter when making sales calls.
In that variety of ways, FiREapps is able to
leverage its thought leadership content to engage
prospects, generate leads, and convert clients.
“Castelazo Content has been instrumental in
helping us develop content that is targeted
to our prospects and serves as a highly
effective sales enablement tool. The content
addresses problems our prospects face
every day and provides them with insights
into why those problems occur and what
they can do to overcome them.”
Andy Gage, Vice President
of Strategic Market Development
FiREapps

8. 7
7Content Myths – BUSTED!
I don’t have time to do
content. That’s probably very
true; we’ve included it here as
a myth because not having
time to create your own
thought leadership content
does not give you an excuse
to not publish regularly. When
you hire a firm that produces
content for a living – one
whose business it is to make the
creation of thought leadership
content an efficient, effective
process for the thought leader
– then creating content can
be a painless and even, dare
we say it, enjoyable process.
1. I can’t afford content. Effective content is not cheap. But rather
than think about the money you’ll spend to develop the kind of
content that gets results, think about the money you’ll earn as
a result of it. It is not at all unusual for our clients to see returns of
800% on their investment in content
marketing. So then the question
becomes, can you not afford
content?
2.
“To be honest, I was
worried that this process
was going to take a lot of
time. But Castelazo Content
downloaded my insights and
came back with an article
that was right on target.
Perfect, actually.”
Tony Portela, CEO,
onTop Technology Corporation

9. 8
4. Content marketing is a fad. Content marketing is a buzzword, no
doubt. Most people who profess “content is king” have no idea
what that means in practical terms – as in, on the bottom line. But
that doesn’t change the fact that thought leadership content – call
it whatever you want – is now the single most important element in
the B2B sales toolbox. Your prospective clients make it 60% of the
way through the buying process before they ever engage with a
salesperson. For that 60%, your content is your salesperson. And
that’s no fad.
I’m the thought leader, so I have to create the content. For most
companies, the thought leader is actually not the best one to
create the content. We assume that you are not in the business of
writing/tweeting/drawing/speaking. If that assumption is true – if
it’s true that you do not produce content for a living – it will take
you much longer to produce high-quality content than people
who do produce content for a living. It’s the focus-on-your-core-
competency-hire-the-rest argument at its best.*
3.
*Not every writer can interview a
thought leader and translate her
insights into content that gets results.
But that is our specialty. We’re like really
smart journalists who also happen to
know a lot about the industry they
cover. We’re not the experts, which is
actually the point. We can understand
the language you speak, and then
translate it in a way that both remains
authentic to who you are and also
resonates with the audience you’re
trying to reach. We speak your
language, and theirs. We’re translators.
Translating your insights into results.

10. 9
7Content Myths – BUSTED!
I have a website. I advertise. I’m doing content. Yes, in the Merriam-Webster
sense of the word, you are. But the kind of content that we’re talking about
– thought leadership content that engages prospects, generates leads, and
converts clients – is very different than website copy or ad copy or any other
kind of sales or marketing copy. People don’t want to be sold anymore; they
want to be educated. People don’t want to be told; they want to be shown.
And that is what thought leadership content does that sales and marketing
copy does not – it educates, it shows. And it works.
6.
I don’t really need content. Oh yeah? So how are prospects engaging
with you in the 60% of the sales cycle before they ever talk to an actual
sales person? It’s a serious question; if you have figured out a way –
without content – to bring prospects into your sales pipeline and keep
them engaged until they’re ready to pick up the phone and call, then
we’ll eat our hats. (We’re not worried.)
5.

11. 10
My prospects are too busy to read content.
That may be true. See, the first rule of
effective content is that it’s all about your
audience. Knowing what your audience
wants to read/watch/hear/see is important,
but it’s also important to know how your
audience wants to consume content.
And it’s not always by reading an 8-page
whitepaper. Or a 500-word blog post.
Sometimes, it’s watching a 60-second video.
Or poring over an infographic. So while it’s
true that your prospects
might be “too busy” to read
content, that’s not an excuse
to forego content altogether.
Prospects who have a need
for what you’re selling still
want to be educated about
how you can help them.
Learn how they want to
be educated, then create
content that educates.
7.THE PANDA FACTOR:
SEO Is All About Content
“Our site quality
algorithms are aimed
at helping people
find ‘high-quality’
sites by reducing
the rankings of low-
quality content.
”Amit Singhal
Google Fellow

12. 11
Your Sales Machine
An effective sales organization is a machine. But instead of turning raw materials
into widgets, it turns prospects into customers.
White papers, articles,
blogs, case studies, use
cases, social media, videos,
infographics: All cogs in the
machine
Within the sales machine,
many parts contribute
to turning prospects into
customers. Content is one
of them. A cog in the sales
machine. And because
the average B2B buyer
gets nearly 60% of the way
through the buying process
before ever engaging a
sales person, for the majority
of the sales cycle, your
content is your sales person.
Engage
prospects
Turn prospects
into leads
Nurture
leads 60% Close
deals
Socialm
edia
W
hite
papers
W
hite
papers
A
rticles
C
ase
studies
Videos
C
ase
studies
Use
cases
Videos
A
rticlesBlogs
Videos
$$
$

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Engage prospects
Social
media
Articles
Blogs
Videos
The first step in the sales
process is to engage
prospects.
Find the people whose problems
your product or service resolves.
Educate them about what you
offer. Engage them.
Prospect: noun – a person regarded
as likely to succeed as a potential
customer or client
1

14. 13
Lead: noun – a person or entity with the
interest and authority to purchase a
product or service
The second step in the sales
process is to turn prospects
into leads.
Entice them with valuable,
actionable content that they
can use today to solve a
problem. In exchange, you
get their contact information,
and the anonymous prospect
becomes a qualified lead.
2
Turn prospects into leads
Videos
White papers
Case studies
Use cases
Your Sales Machine

15. 14
Customer: noun – a person or
organization that buys goods or services
from a store or business; aka the
reason you exist
The third step in the sales
process is to convert leads
into customers. To do that, you
have to nurture them through the
buying process.
• Answer questions
• Overcome objections
• Build trust
• Establish yourself as the authority
(implicitly – show, don’t tell)
3
Nurture leads to
close the deals
White papers
Articles
Case studies
Videos
To nurture leads, leverage a mix of automated marketing and human-to-human selling. Content is the backbone
of an effective automated marketing strategy. Here, you are walking your leads through the sales pipeline. Giving
them progressively more valuable content, targeted to their preferences. In human-to-human selling, content is an
enablement tool. From sales presentations and one-sheets to leave-behind case studies and white papers, content
is the extra “oomph” your sales people need to close the deal.
$$
$

16. 15
The Process – CONTENT STRATEGY
The only content that’s effective is content that
resonates with your audience. Period.
1. Who is my target audience?
2. Where is my target audience?
3. What does my target audience care about?
What questions do they have?
4. How can I provide value to my target
audience?
Articulating the answers to those questions is a
critical first step in the content strategy process.
Developing content in alignment with your
answers to those questions is the only way to
resonate with your audience.
“The buying process map and buyer
personas that Castelazo Content
helped us develop are a critical
foundation for the work we’ll be
doing to target a new demographic.
Before, the content we developed
for our new enterprise prospects
just wasn’t resonating, and it wasn’t
articulating the value we provide.
Now that we have articulated the
buying process and ‘gotten to know’
our prospects through the personas,
our content is really resonating – and
that means it is helping us at that
beginning stage of the sales cycle
before the prospect engages with a
sales person.”
Enterprise Partner Manager,
Inc. 500/5000 SaaS Provider

17. 16
Your buyers are people. And people like stories.
What We Did
The client is a NASSCOM Top 20 global IT services company. They
came to us for a whitepaper that would articulate the value of their
oil and gas well integrity management services. When we sat down
with the SME, a PhD engineer in Houston, he talked about his vision
for the paper: a technical discussion of the firm’s solution. “What is
the risk of not having real-time access to well integrity information?”
we asked the SME. “A disaster like the Deepwater Horizon,” he
responded. And we had our story.
We crafted a narrative around the fact that relying on Excel
spreadsheets and a single engineer to monitor thousands of wells
makes it impossible to catch the kind of equipment fault that led
to the loss of 11 lives, the spillage of 4.9 million barrels of oil into
the Gulf of Mexico, and $42 billion (and counting) in losses for BP.
And then we highlighted the fact that technology exists (and may
soon become required) that enables single-dashboard, real-time
well integrity management. The kind that could prevent another
Deepwater Horizon.
The whitepaper was the most
successful that the client had
ever published, resulting in:
• 20% uptick in prospect
engagement
• 5 discovery calls for the
sales team
• 2 closed deals
In all, the client saw a return
of $1.75 million on the cost
of developing and marketing
the whitepaper, for an ROI of
17500%.
What They Saw

18. 17
The Process –
CONTENT
DEVELOPMENT
Jim Stengel, Former
Global Marketing Officer,
Procter & Gamble
Blog Writing
Publishing blog posts on your own
website develops your website into
a magnet that attracts prospects
into deeper engagement with
your brand. Publishing a guest
post on the blog of an influential
individual or organization that your
prospects are already reading
delivers you straight to the people
you’re trying to reach.
Effective white papers
provide value to the reader.
Actionable insight that helps
make their lives better. As high-
value assets, white papers
make great lead generation
and lead conversion tools.
White
Paper Writing
“What we really need
is a mindset shift that
will make us relevant
to today’s consumers,
a mindset shift from
‘telling & selling’ to
building relationships.
”

19. 18
Writing articles is about going to
where your prospects already
are and engaging them there.
Trade journals. Newspapers.
Business magazines.
Article Writing
Social Media
Social media is the cornerstone
of content marketing.
The purpose? To engage
prospects. Find the people
whose problems your product
or service resolves. Educate
them about what you offer.
Case Study Writing
Case studies are stories that show
prospective customers how you
have helped a client overcome
a challenge. Use cases are like
generic case studies. They invite
prospects to think generally
about how your product or
service can solve their problem(s).

20. 19
Build it and they will
come? Alas, no.
Developing content, putting it on your
website, then expecting readers to come
flooding in is like a guy waiting around at
home on a Saturday night for a date to
magically appear…it doesn’t work that way.
Content marketing is about creating
an ecosystem to pull prospects into
your content, your brand, and – ultimately –
into a relationship with you.
The Process –
CONTENT MARKETING

21. 20
This is your website
Content Marketing Ecosystem
Connections and followers
consume your content whenever,
wherever. When they want the rest
of the story, they click through to...
This is your LinkedIn
company page
Twitter is about sharing engaging,
valuable content with your
prospects and their influencers.
They then more deeply engage by
clicking through to…
This is your company
Twitter feed
Here, you’re establishing yourself as
a thought leader. Once people see
you’re a thought leader, they click
through to…
This is a popular
industry website
Fans consume your content
wherever, whenever. When
they want to learn more, they
click through to...
This is your Facebook
business page
Social media is not about
publishing content. It’s about
engaging in a dialogue with
prospects and their influencers.
This is you joining
the conversation
Your website is your home. It’s the main
attraction. It’s where your content lives.
It’s also the magnet that pulls
prospects in to your content, your
brand, and ultimately, into a
relationship with you.
But your website can’t
do it alone

22. 21
# of MQL leads generated
# of prospects engaged
prospect-to-lead
conversion rate=
Measuring engagement
total # of prospects
engaged
=
Unique visitors,
average time on site,
average pageviews/
visit, referral sources
Website
Page likes/follows,
post likes/shares/
comments, click-thrus
Social media
Unique visitors, average
time on blog, average
pageviews/visit, referral
sources, traffic flow
(after exiting blog),
blog engagement
(commenting, sharing)
Blog
Click-thru rate,
cost-per-click or
cost-per-impression,
referral sources
Advertising
+
Measuring lead generation
total # of leads generated
(aka Marketing Qualified
Leads or MQLs)=
+
Unique visitors, average
time on page, form
submissions (and/or other
call-to-action responses),
referral sources
Landing pages
# of attendees,
referral sources
Webinars
# of downloads,
referral sources
Downloadable
content
# of attendees,
referral sources
Events
# of responses,
referral sources
Call-to-action
responses
Metrics to Measure Your Content’s Effectiveness

23. 22
=
Page likes/follows, post
likes/shares/comments,
click-thrus
Social media
Visits, pageviews, time
on blog, traffic flow, blog
engagement
Blog
# of attendees
Webinars
# of downloads
Downloadable content
# of attendees
Events
Open rate,
click-thru rate
Emails
# of sales calls,
# of meetings set
Phone calls
+
total # of leads nurtured through
sales cycle (aka Sales Qualified
Leads or SQL)
Visits, pageviews, time on
site, traffic flow
Website
Measuring lead nurturing
# of clients signed
# of SQL leads nurtured
lead-to-client
conversion rate=

24. 23
Measuring ROI
ROI=
For ongoing engagements,
this is monthly recurring
revenue × average length
of engagement
Estimated lifetime value
Cost of all client
acquisition-centric sales
and marketing activities
Cost of acquisition
Metrics to Measure Your Content’s Effectiveness

25. 24
“The price of
light is less than
the cost of
darkness.”
”Arthur C. Nielsen,
Market Researcher &
Founder of ACNielsen

26. 25
IO builds the data center of the future – a software-defined modular
data center optimized for security, reliability, sustainability, and agility.
Among a range of content that Castelazo Content develops for the
company – including social media, blog posts, use cases, landing
pages, and articles – we also create white papers, which the company
uses as register-to-download lead generation tools.
Aligning the value that IO delivers with what people are talking about
We were tasked with developing a white paper on the topic of
security; we recommended writing about data sovereignty. That
subject aligned what people were talking about in the marketplace
(this was about a year after the Snowden revelations) with the value
that IO’s solutions provide.
Getting more “bang for the buck”
To leverage the white paper content to its fullest extent, IO’s public
relations team secured spots in relevant publications – both trade
(e.g., Data Center Journal) and mainstream (e.g., Forbes). We wrote
the articles drawing from the white paper but with each publication’s
particular audience in mind. Each article included a subtle call-to-
action and link to the white paper on IO’s website, where visitors fill out
a registration form to receive the white paper.
C-Suite Primer on Data Sovereignty & Data Custody: What You Need to Know 1
14.0618
1.866.437.4518
io.com
info@io.com
@ioDataCenters
Intelligent Control™
C-Suite Primer on
Data Sovereignty & Data Custody:
What You Need to Know
Executive Summary 1
Data Sovereignty & Data Custody: What They Mean for the Enterprise 3
The Issues 4
The Solution: See and Control Your Data – Where It Is and Who Has Access to It 7
The Bottom Line 11
Executive Summary
It has been almost a year since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released a trove of documents
revealing the large-scale collection, analysis, and storage of personal data on U.S. citizens and foreigners –
much of it out of the data centers of telecommunications, Internet, and cloud service providers. In the year
since, you most likely have heard about the concepts of “data sovereignty” and “data custody.” You might have
heard them in your boardroom.
Data sovereignty is the question of which sovereign’s (i.e., country’s) laws govern your data. The concept is
often taken to mean that your data is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located, but that may not
be the case; data sovereignty may instead mean that the data is subject to the laws of the country in which it
originated, or the laws of the country in which the cloud provider is headquartered. In the cloud, data sovereignty
transmission of data within their borders. Data custody is about who controls your data; essentially, who has the
right – or the obligation – to hand it over if the government comes knocking.
This whitepaper details what data sovereignty and data custody mean for the C-level enterprise executive.
Whether your focus is on growing the business, or keeping it secure, or managing IT, it is imperative to understand
the key issues addressed in this whitepaper. Here’s why: If you don’t know where your data is, and if you don’t know
who controls it, you’re putting the security of your enterprise data, and your customers’ data, at risk.
If you don’t know where the servers that hold your data are, you don’t know whose rules you might be beholden
to. And if you don’t know (or can’t control) whose rules you might be beholden to, you can’t know whether the
jurisdictional laws in that location are in sync with your corporate policies (and your own sovereign’s data laws).
You’re risking non-compliance, or worse.
Yet if your data is in the typical public cloud, the likelihood is very small that you even know where your data is,
much less have control of it.
Content in Action:
LEAD GENERATION

27. 26
“It was incredibly difficult to find someone
who can really understand what we do and
then explain it in a way that is engaging,
relatable, and relevant to our prospects. On
that Castelazo Content really delivers. They can
interview a subject matter expert for an hour
and then go off and create a white paper that
not only really engages the reader, but is also
true to the SME’s insight. That is a rare skill.”
Jason Ferrara, VP of
Global Marketing and Communications
IO
Generating more leads
• 18.4% increase in form submissions
• 19.7% increase in downloads
= more engaged prospects and more leads
into the sales funnel

28. 27
A burdensome review and approval process. For both
external and internal content teams, the review and approval
process can be a significant challenge, sometimes even a
full-on barrier to the efficient production and publication
of content. Sometimes that is because the company is
huge and bureaucratic and getting anything done requires
cutting through a lot of red tape. Other times it is because
the company is small and the thought leaders are working 25
hours a day to grow the business. In both cases, we’ve been
able to overcome the challenges. Here’s how:
Organization. And process.
They’re our best friends,
because being organized
according to pre-defined
processes allows us flexibility
where it matters – like turning
around a blog post to
respond to a huge market
development in 2 hours.
Regular communication.
Not for the sake of
communication, but
targeted, concise, and
purposeful communication.
Via email, phone, in-
person, web conference,
carrier pigeon, and every
combination thereof,
however the client prefers.
Technology (novel idea!) –
specifically, a Software-as-a-
Service content management
and editorial calendar solution
that makes managing the
approval loop relatively painless.
3Content Challenges – OVERCOME!
1

29. 28
No one can explain what you do. If we had a nickel for every
time a prospective client told us, “We just haven’t been able to
find someone who can explain what we do,” we’d be, well…
Let’s just say, we’ve been told that a lot, and it’s the reason
the clients who hire us do. Because while you need a writer
who can understand the language you speak, you also need
that person to be able to speak the language your target
audience speaks. How do we deliver that? We approach our
engagement like journalists. A good journalist is not the subject
matter expert, but she knows her subject matter. And more
than anything: a good journalist listens, and while she listens,
takes incredibly thorough notes that she can refer to later when
she’s translating your thoughts into insights that your target
audience can understand.
Not having enough fodder. If we were raising livestock, that would be a problem. Since we’re not – since
we’re taking your thought leadership (that something about your product or service that enables you
to solve your customers’ needs better than your competitors do) and using that to create engaging,
compelling, actionable content that generates and converts leads – then we can take a little to make a
lot. Some call it drafting, others call it newsjacking, but the principle is that we take a little of your thought
leadership and mix it in with a big dose of commentary on whatever everyone else is talking about at the
moment. That allows us to produce more with less, but it also keeps you relevant in the current conversation.
If you want to see some great examples of drafting in action, check out this content (how ‘bout them
apples!) at castelazocontent.com/drafting.
2
3

30. 29
“The mantra should change
from ‘Always Be Closing’ to
‘Always Be Helping.’
”
David Hahn, LinkedIn

31. 30
Notes:

32. Castelazo Content
castelazocontent.com
@cmmarketing
content@castelazocontent.com
480.987.7958
Copyright 2014 Castelazo Marketing Ltd. All rights reserved.