The document discusses key elements of an effective content marketing strategy, including understanding goals, creating a mission statement, and metrics. It emphasizes that content should support specific goals like lead generation or customer retention. A mission statement should outline the target audience, what value will be delivered, and desired outcomes. Various metrics are also discussed to measure success, such as social shares, engagement time, leads generated, click-through rates, and retention.

1. UNDERSTANDING
CONTENT FOR LEAD
GENERATION
B E N TAY L O R : D I R E C TO R O F M A R K E T I N G
@ B A M B A M S L L C B E N : @ B E N TAY L O R A C T U A L

2. CONTENT MARKETING
ACCORDING TO BEN
“Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and
distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a
clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer
action.” –The Content Marketing Institute

3. THE FIRST 2 STEPS
In my opinion there are two essential elements to any successful content
marketing program.
1. A True Understanding of your goals.
2. A Mission Statement. More importantly a mission statement that focuses
on being genuine, being transparent, that has a strong focus on your target
audience, and doesn’t ignore your basic foundation and principles as a
business.

4. UNDERSTANDING YOUR GOALS
Content should never be created just to create content. It absolutely must
support at least one core marketing or business goal.Whether that be branding,
lead generation, or audience awareness, it must support a goal. For instance:
– Do you need to raise awareness for your brand?
– Do you need to build your email list?
– Do you need to nurture prospects further down the funnel?
– Do you need to convert your audience to paying customers?
– Do you need to retain customers and/or increase their purchases (up-sell/cross-sell)?
– Do you need to convert customers to evangelists?
Source: CMI

5. CREATING A MISSION STATEMENT
A mission statement is really pretty obvious. It outlines a company’s reason for existing
— and the priorities and perspectives it upholds in pursuit of that mission. As such, it
should speak to three components of any successful marketing endeavor:
• The core target audience: The type of person you can help most with your
content (Create your personas and insights)
• What will be delivered to the audience: The types of information you will
provide through your content (ex:Top 5Ways to Increase Customer Retention Using
Promo Products)
• The desired outcome for the audience: Things your audience will be able to do
once they have consumed your content (ex: growing their brand by utilizing promotional
products)

6. UNDERSTANDING METRICS
Understanding the metrics of what you’re currently doing will help you identify
your KPI’s to develop your new content marketing strategy.

7. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
SOCIAL SHARES
Social Shares: The number of social shares your content garners is a metric
you should be tracking for every piece of content you produce as part of your
content marketing strategy. it’s not that definitive on its own, but it is a strong
indicator of relevancy for your audience.

8. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
ENGAGED TIME
EngagedTime (time beyond page): A good metric for tracking the success
or effectiveness of your content is how long it captures the attention of your
audience.You can get a general idea of this with Google Analytics’ “time on page”
metric.

9. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
TOTAL LEAD ATTRIBUTION
Total Lead Attribution: You should be tracking the metrics for every stage of
your sales funnel, especially where leads are concerned.The leads you generate
are the lifeblood of your business, and they’re likely the primary reason for your
content marketing.Track this metric by looking at the number of leads generated
from form completions, such as offer opt-ins, email signups and blog subscribers.

10. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
CLICK-THROUGH RATES
CTR (Click -Through Rates): Measuring lead attribution and how leads
close is an important part of your content marketing and sales process, but it’s
not easy to know where to make changes without some additional data. If
you’re looking at ways to improve lead closure and conversion rates, step
backward in your funnel process to determine if you need to start by
improving your calls to action.

11. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
DIRECT POST ENGAGEMENT
Direct Post Engagement: Ideally, you want each piece of content to be
gateway to a vibrant and growing community, so compare the comment section
and direct post engagement of your content with others published alongside it.
Qualitative metrics can help you understand what your audience dislikes, what
they love, or what kind of content sparks the best discussions.
Source: CMI Qualitative Research

12. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
CONTENT TRAFFIC
ContentTraffic: Measure the number of unique visitors to your site and keep
an eye on this metric over time.This way, you can determine whether or not
your content strategy is working, as well as how individual pieces of content are
performing as part of that strategy to bring you new eyeballs.

13. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
RETENTION METRICS
Retention Metrics: Retention metrics show how well you’re holding the
attention of your audience. This can be seen in the percentage of returning
visitors to your site and individual content pieces.You also want to monitor the
frequency of returns, as this gives insight into the relationships you’re developing
and how well your audience sees you (and your content) as a trusted authority
and quality source.
Let’s have a look at this data in Google Analytics.

15. UNDERSTANDING METRICS: REFERRAL
LINKS & NATURAL INBOUND LINKS
Referral links or All Referral sources aren’t necessarily a metric to live or die
by when you’re monitoring the performance of your campaigns. Not all of your
content is going to garner a large volume of outside links, but those that do can
reveal opportunities for future content campaigns.
Watching referral paths can reveal guest blogging and content curation
opportunities, as well as help you discover networking opportunities with other
influencers in your industry.

17. UNDERSTANDING METRICS:
COST METRICS
Cost Metrics:You should always calculate your return on investment (ROI) for
your content marketing.Take into account the cost of production and
distribution for each piece of content, and know the value of each lead once they
close so you can distribute the revenue earned/value across each piece of
content they consumed before closing.

18. QUESTIONS?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!
I want to thank all of you for participating today. I am available for questions and
working directly with each of you.You can reach me at bentaylor@bambams.com to
to set up a time to speak!
You can also download a copy of this presentation at
www.bambams.com/info/understanding-content-marketing