This document provides an overview and agenda for Debbie Williams' 2017 Content Marketing Workshop. It begins with introductions of Debbie Williams and her background in content marketing. It then outlines the workshop agenda which includes discussions on content marketing strategy, buyer personas, editorial SEO, content ideas, content distribution, and a Q&A. It also includes exercises for participants to apply the concepts and pre-event and post-event surveys to understand participants' goals and takeaways. The overall goal is to help participants improve their content marketing efforts through strategic planning, creation of relevant content, and effective distribution.

1. Debbie Williams
Co-Founder/Chief Content Officer
Content
Marketing
Workshop
Learn to grow your business
and customer relationships
through content marketing.
@debwilliams23
@sproutcontent
#contentmarketing

2. Who Am I?
• 20 years experience in strategic, creative
content, helping companies create their
voice & positioning:
• 12 years as senior copywriter for
global consumer brands in NYC
• 8 years as content marketing/inbound
marketing agency owner: SPROUT
Content, Platinum Level HubSpot
Partner
• Content Marketing Author
• 11 years on Gulf Coast
• NJ/NYC area Native
Debbie Williams
Co-Founder/ Chief Content
Officer
SPROUT Content
@debwilliams23

3. Who are you?
2017 Content Marketing Workshop

4. Pre-Event Survey
Q1: Which of the following best describes your job role? (please choose only
one.)

5. Pre-Event Survey
Q2: Do you have a documented content marketing strategy?

6. Pre-Event Survey
Some of your greatest content marketing
challenges:
❏ Staying current with SEO and site traffic.
❏ Understanding what is most effective.
❏ What content to develop and who will develop it.
❏ How to share your expertise.
❏ How to create a custom marketing plan.
❏ Frequent, consistent dynamic content.
❏ Reaching and engaging an audience that is not
opted in.

7. Pre-Event Survey
Top things you hope to take away:
❏ Improve buyer journey
❏ Develop engaging content
❏ Expand content reach
❏ New ideas, and effective strategies
❏ Metrics, tools and tactics
❏ Content marketing strategy
❏ Creating and using buyer personas
❏ Understanding SEO and increasing site
traffic

8. AGENDA
.
● Content Marketing Overview
● Content Marketing Strategy
● Buyer Personas
● Editorial SEO
○ Keyword Exercise
● Content Ideas
○ Editorial Calendar Exercise
● Content Distribution
● Q&A

9. What is Content Marketing?
“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.”

10. Content Marketing Overview
You are your own media company.
Every company, in any size and industry, can create and distribute
educational information and build trusted audiences.

11. Content Marketing Overview
Your Readers don’t just want “CONTENT”
they want solutions to problems.

12. Content Marketing Overview
The Ultimate Goal
Become the trusted, expert resource in your industry,
where your customers are looking for information online -
so they FIND YOU and CHOOSE YOU.

13. Content Marketing Overview: WHY?
THE WORLD HAS
CHANGED.
HOW PEOPLE SEEK OUT
INFORMATION AND MAKE
BUYING DECISIONS HAS
CHANGED FOREVER.

14. Content Marketing Overview
In 2011 (6 years ago!), Google
released the Zero Moment of Truth
(ZMOT)
Whether we're shopping for corn flakes,
concert tickets or a honeymoon in Paris, the
Internet has changed how we decide what to
buy. At Google, we call this online decision-
making moment the Zero Moment of Truth —
or simply ZMOT.
81% of buyers research before they buy, consulting an average
of 10.4 sources. (in both personal and business decisions)

15. Content Marketing Overview
Decision making: The HARD STATS
● 94% of buyers conduct online research at some
point in the buying process.
● The average buyer progresses nearly 60% of the
way through the purchase decision-making
process before engaging with a person at your
company.
● People turn to the internet and social media first.
If they are looking for your products/services – what
are they finding?

16. Content Marketing Overview

17. Content Marketing Methodology
ATTRACT CONVERT CLOSE DELIGHT!
Strangers Visitors Leads Customers Promoters
Blog
Social Media
Keywords
Influencer
eBooks
Social Ads
CTAs
Landing Pages
Forms
Contacts
Infographics
Webinars
Video Testimonials
Email
Workflows
Lead Scoring
Sales Intelligence
Foundational Strategy
● Buyer Personas
● Content Audit/Inventory
● Competitive Analysis
● Content Style Guide
● SEO Strategy
● Social Media Strategy
● Content Mapping
● Influencer Marketing
Strategy
Social Media
Email
Workflows
Influencer
Surveys
Promotions

18. Gilmore Services has an almost
equal grade in the HubSpot
marketing grader than national
leader Iron Mountain
Content Marketing Levels the Playing Field

19. Content Marketing Levels the Playing Field
Gilmore Services has PAGE ONE rankings for their top
keyword, in between two of the biggest national
competitors.
The meta
descriptions for all
three companies
are similar and
include the same
keyword phrases.

20. SPROUT CONTENT
Page 1 of national search
results for content
marketing agency
Content Marketing Levels the Playing Field

21. Content Marketing Strategy
CONTENT MARKETING
STRATEGY

22. Content Marketing Strategy
How many of you have
a documented
content strategy?

23. Content Marketing Strategy

24. Content Marketing Strategy
Essential Factors to Content Marketing
Success:
1. Company wide buy-in from the top down
(marketing is no longer a department)
2. Alignment between marketing and sales
3. Documented content strategy aligned to
GOALS
4. Content resources and accountability

25. Content Marketing Strategy
Essential Factors to Content Marketing
Success:
4. Content resources and accountability
5. Content mapped to your buyer’s journey
6. Consistency (in voice/brand and publishing
cadence)
7. Content distribution strategy
8. Measurement and Tracking

26. Content Marketing Strategy: Test
EXERCISE:
The Content Marketing
Test

27. Content Marketing Test: (1 pt for each Yes)
Best Practice YES NO
Company wide buy-in from the top down
Alignment between marketing and sales
Documented content strategy aligned to GOALS
Content resources and accountability
Content mapped to your buyer’s journey
Consistency
Content distribution strategy
Measurement and Tracking
Content Marketing Strategy:Test

28. Content Marketing Strategy

29. The biggest content marketing
mistakes companies make:
0 PLAN + 0 GOALS + 0
MEASUREMENT =
Content Marketing Strategy

30. 0 results found.
Content Marketing Strategy

31. Content Marketing Mistakes
@SPROUTContent

32. Pre-Work:
SET MEASURABLE GOALS AND BENCHMARKS
Content Marketing Strategy

33. 1: Outline content marketing goals.
Clearly outline your goals before you start
anything else.
● What do you want to achieve? (site traffic,
thought leadership, leads?)
● What metrics will you use to track success?
● Is this feasible?
Content Marketing Strategy

34. Content Marketing Strategy

35. 2: Establish KPIs(Key Performance Indicators)
Determine the KPIs you will evaluate to determine whether
your content is successful.
Content Marketing Strategy

36. 3: Measure Success
What tools will you use to measure performance?
Content Marketing Strategy

37. Content Marketing Strategy

38. Buyer Personas
BUYER PERSONAS

39. KNOW AND DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE
Buyer Personas

40. Buyer Personas
What is a buyer persona?
Buyer Personas are: “fictional,
generalized representations of
your ideal customers.
They help you understand your
customers (and prospective
customers) better, and make it
easier for you to tailor content to
the specific needs, behaviors,
and concerns of different
groups.”

41. Buyer Personas
@SPROUTContent
While 64% of the C-suite have final say in decisions, so do 24%
of the non-C-suite, 81% of which have a say in purchase
decisions. If you’re marketing to only the highest level executives,
you’re not reaching those who are looking for you first.

42. Buyer Personas
Each persona uncovers the most important messages to
be included in the content you publish and provides insight
on how to lead your target audience down the sales funnel.

43. Buyer Personas: SAMPLE
Financial Decider Diane
Goals
• Creating value for shareholders
• Increasing stock price
• Delivering predictable performance
• Recognition from CEO, BODs
• Building personal ‘street cred’
Challenges
• Maintaining/increasing top- and bottom-line revenue
• Staying aware of planned/proposed SEC reg changes
• Keeping financial data secure
• Exceeding shareholder expectations (stock price, EPS, EBITDA, etc.)
• Keeping Finance team engaged/motivated
What we can do
• Help team collaborate more easily
• Provide regulatory expertise and filing support
• Mitigate external market risk with accurate, timely reporting to SEC
• Save time for team to focus on other company/dept. objectives
• Help them rest easy; make them look smart
SAMPLE

44. Buyer Personas: Exercise
EXERCISE:
● WHO is the persona?
● WHAT do they do? What does their day look
like?
● WHERE is the gap in their needs/wants?
● WHEN do they need to close this gap?
● WHY do they care about us?

45. Buyer Personas: Exercise
PERSONA NAME: (based on role not Title)
ROLE IN DECISION MAKING:
•Who reports to/direct reports
•Researcher/middle/final/financial
GOALS:
•Persona’s primary goal
•Persona’s secondary goal
CHALLENGES:
•Primary challenge to persona’s success
•Secondary challenge to persona’s success
HOW WE HELP:
•How you solve your persona’s challenges
•How you help your persona achieve goals

46. Buyer Personas
How to create buyer personas:
1. Identify the important decision makers throughout every
stage of the sales cycle, from research to financial
qualifier to decision maker.
2. Develop strategic questions to reveal who they are, their
core responsibilities, pain points and challenges, and
decision criteria.
3. Conduct interviews (with real people).
4. Use social media for additional insights.
5. Develop content ideas inspired by real insights into what
your buyers need to know from you.

47. Buyer Personas
For more information on developing buyer
personas:
http://www.sproutcontent.com/buyer-personas-marketing-through-
the-voice-of-your-buyer

48. Editorial SEO
SEO

49. Editorial SEO
Develop Your SEO Plan

50. SEO SIMPLIFIED
SEO is all about content and vice versa.
Editorial SEO

51. Search
Engine
Optimization
Optimize content so PEOPLE and SEARCH
ENGINES (Google, Bing, etc.) can find you.
Editorial SEO

52. WHAT DOES OPTIMIZING YOUR CONTENT
MEAN?
● Search engines need content to deliver
results.
● Content marketing is content.
● Creating QUALITY relevant content helps
Google, and people, FIND YOU.
Editorial SEO

53. A SIMPLE SEO PLAN - YOUR CHECKLIST.
❏ Develop buyer personas.
❏ Conduct keyword research.
❏ Determine the most common phrases your buyers are using to
find you.
❏ Create a content plan mapped to your personas and keywords.
❏ Create QUALITY content.
❏Ensure proper meta descriptions (back end of content), internal
Editorial SEO

54. Start with Keyword Research.
Using a tool like Google Adwords Keyword planner,
HubSpot, SEM Rush or MOZ, start a list of the top words and
phrases people (your customers/personas, not you) would use
to find solutions to their challenges.
Word Current Rank Monthly Searches Difficulty
CPC
Editorial SEO

55. EXERCISE:
WRITE DOWN THE TOP 10-15 KEYWORD PHRASES YOU
WANT TO BE RANKED FOR - AND THAT YOUR AUDIENCE
MIGHT USE TO FIND YOU.
Editorial SEO

56. HOMEWORK THIS WEEK:
Go to: https://moz.com/free-seo-tools and
analyze the top 5 words you’ve listed. This is a
starting point for your research.
Editorial SEO

57. Use a tool or spreadsheet to analyze results
and choose your top keyword opportunities.
Editorial SEO

58. Create a content roadmap for each persona that addresses
their major pain points while executing the SEO strategy.
This is accomplished with a content funnel strategy targeting
each stage of the buyer’s journey (Awareness, Consideration,
Decision) with relevant topics and keyword phrases.
Editorial SEO

59. How does it all come
together?

60. Content curation team for Venue, not
necessarily for AD
Lacking structured creation and
distribution schedule
Reactionary
Lacking measurable goals
Not created for specific personas
Become viewed as a thought leader
Be found online organically
Establish a regular content creation and
distribution schedule
Create content for personas
Financial Decider Diane
Search Engine
Optimization
Keywords are available for Venue and
AD (a more extensive list is available
for AD)
Initial and current rankings per keyword
are unavailable
Competitive analysis conducted by
Sprout
Take stock of previously
established foundational
research, analyze current goals
and processes, and create
Phase 1 of Content Strategy
based on available information,
to identify and meet attainable
goals.
Phase 1 of Content Strategy
Establish a blog editorial calendar
and production process to:
● Ease current gaps and
frustrations in the content
production process
● Create high quality content,
regularly, in order to
increase SEO and organic
search results, and increase
reputation as industry
thought leader
● Match content to specific
personas, and their buyer’s
journeys
● Build ABC brand reputation
and recognition as a thought
leader
Buyer Personas
Current content
creation process
Current content
goals
PHASE 1:
INITIAL STEPS
AIM
GOALSAVAILABLE INFORMATION
SAMPLE

61. Content Mapping

62. Use what you’ve learned about your
buyer’s journey to plan your content
editorial calendar mapped to
keywords, personas, buying stage.
Editorial Calendar

63. Content Editorial Ideas
EDITORIAL CONTENT

64. Content Editorial Ideas
HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH SO
MANY INTERESTING TOPICS???

65. Content Editorial Ideas
IDEAS ARE ALL AROUND YOU!
Google Trends helps you identify trending topics and see the
popularity of various search queries over time.

66. Content Editorial Ideas
Google AdWords Keyword Planner gives you insight into the
searches your customers are performing, including linguistic
opportunities you may not have otherwise uncovered.

67. Content Editorial Ideas
BuzzSumo lets you research specific topics and see what articles
about those topics have performed well, giving you insight into how
your content may perform.

68. Content Editorial Ideas
Your own data, such as website and social media analytics, can
give you a wealth of insight into your audience and content
performance.

69. Content Editorial Ideas
Interview your internal subject matter experts.
● Sales Team
● IT
● Product Specialists
● Customer Support
Content marketing needs to be a company-wide collaboration.

70. Content Editorial Ideas
Set Up Google Alerts alerts.google.com
- Find Relevant Content to share
- Listen for Story Ideas
- Build Your Influencer List
- Monitor keywords and industry news

71. Content Editorial Ideas

72. Content Editorial Ideas
www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

73. Content Editorial Ideas: Advanced Tip!
HubSpot’s built-in content cluster tool helps you find and build-
out the most relevant topics based on what your audience is
searching for.

74. Create “How-To Guides” and longer form
educational content.
Content Editorial Ideas
Don’t be afraid to give away your knowledge.

75. Listen in social media
● Monitor keywords and hashtags to find relevant
content and conversations
● Use tools to help manage lists such as HubSpot,
Twitter Lists, Tweepi, Sprout Social
Content Editorial Ideas

76. Content Editorial Ideas
- the buyer’s journey
EXERCISE:
Take five minutes and write down the top
questions your customers and prospects
ask you on a regular basis.

77. Content Editorial Ideas
HOMEWORK THIS WEEK:
Talk to your sales team.
● Find out the top questions they receive over and over (if
one person has the question, others do too)
● What are the concerns people have to choosing your
company/product/service? Why are they NOT buying from
you?

78. Content Distribution
CONTENT
DISTRIBUTION

79. Content Distribution
60% of Marketers
Distribute at Least One
Piece of Content Every
Day - eMarketer

80. Content Distribution
Don’t just publish and forget it!
Focus 20% on NEW content development and 80% on content
distribution.
● Targeted/themed emails with a series of content topics (yours and
curated)
● Social Media (80% educational content from all sources / 20%
promotional or sales related).
● LinkedIn Pulse blog - republish blog posts in full
● Create a Medium blog or publication
● Research Blog syndication opportunities in your industry
● Review Quora and Reddit opportunities to link to your content
authentically

81. Content Distribution
Slice and Dice your content.
One content idea should be repurposed in many forms.
SocialMediaToday

82. RECAP - Who are you?
Some of your greatest content marketing
challenges:
● Staying Current with SEO and site traffic
● Understanding what is most effective
● What content to develop and who will develop
it?
● How to share your expertise.
● How to create a custom marketing plan.
● Frequent, consistent dynamic content.
● Reaching and engaging your audience that are
not opted in

83. RECAP - Who are you?
Top things you hope to take away:
● Improve buyer journey
● Develop engaging content
● Expand content reach
● New ideas, and effective strategies
● Metrics, tools and tactics
● Content marketing strategy
● Creating and using buyer personas
● Understanding SEO and increasing site traffic

84. QUESTIONS?
Q&A

85. Are you ready to take your content
marketing to the next level and learn to
be more transparent?
Learn more in our book:
Brands in Glass Houses
www.sproutcontent.com info@sproutcontent.com
Available at

86. THANK YOU
@sproutcontent
@debwilliams23
#contentmarketing
#inboundmarketing
www.sproutcontent.com
debbie@sproutcontent.com