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The Utah DMC Blog

September Recap: Content Marketing Principles to Live By

Wednesday night was packed with actionable content marketing strategy - if you weren't there you seriously missed out! If I left anything important out of the recap below, feel free to add to my recap in the comments.

First Up: David Malmborg, Right Intel - Content Marketing World Recap

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@davidmalmborg David gave an actionable-insight-packed recap of Content Marketing World, which felt to me like free access to the best insights of CMW just one week behind the actual conference. Very cool. David's slides are linked below, and here are the highlights you’ll want to pay attention to:

  • Look at the sales funnel from 1885 - that’s not a typo. Did you know there were diagrams for the sales pipeline from 1885?
  • Then take a look at Andrew Davis’s funnel highlighting the Consumer Journey, adapted from McKinsey Co.
  • “People don’t buy a 1/4 drill bit, they buy a 1/4 hole” - Ted Leavitt. Don’t try to force the product as the thing consumers are buying - talk about the benefits and the problem(s) it solves.
  • DAVID’s Hierarchy of Content Marketing Needs: Need for Content -> Need to be current -> Need to be relevant -> Need to be a leader -> Become a destination
  • The metaphor of the Big Rock and the Turkey Slices - Jason A Miller shows a case study where creating one large, quality piece of content (an E-Book) resulted in many opportunities for smaller pieces. By “large,” he means your masterpiece, your symphony. For example, each chapter of the E-Book was adapted into a Podcast, infographics from the E-Book were published around the web, blog post recaps were written, and it was even printed and sold as a book.
  • Matthew Sweezey’s slides on nurturing content through 4 sales stages will give you a lot of ideas for fitting content into your strategy that will speak to your audience as they move from one stage to the next.

Check out David's presentation on SlideShare.net.

Final Speaker: Shante Schroeder, 97th Floor - Elevating Brands We Believe In

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@shanteschroeder Shante blew us away with impressive case studies and extremely interesting anecdotal examples of winning content strategies from her own work at 97th Floor. First off, she stressed the importance of focusing on a company’s bottom line as a core KPI. She explained that as an agency, her job is to create awareness, but in a way that ultimately drives leads, revenue and business for her clients.
“Everyone is looking to buy, but no one wants to be sold” Customers, she pointed out, can spot a sales pitch from a mile away. But they don’t want to be sold.
The key to a great content marketing campaign, then, is to fill the gap with content that answers their questions, curiosities, and concerns in order to win the sale.

3 Principles

Shante explained that she approaches her marketing strategies with these principles - here are the highlights:
Principle 1: First comes the campaign

  • “Content marketing is only as successful as the campaign it supports”
  • Content shouldn't run in a silo - it should support larger business needs.

Principle 2: Keep a communications angle

  1. “Become the media global+local angle” - think from a communications perspective, and try to understand the global and local angles.
  2. Instead of thinking of yourself as a marketer, think of yourself as the media.

Principle 3: Always think atomization: “Reimagine content, don’t just recycle” 

  • Content needs a point and a purpose.
  • Things can be beautifully remade into something else, but unless it serves the overall campaign or purpose, what’s the point of doing it?

Case Study Gold

Shante illustrated some impressive tactics and results that embody her 3 principles in a case study for her client OC Tanner, where her primary objective was to increase traffic. They compiled a landing page highlighting the “Top 10 Companies to Work for in Austin,” hoping to make OC Tanner a destination for relevant traffic, and not just a page view. Her team started reaching out to companies asking for collaboration but were seeing a very low response rate for email, so they took it up a notch by picking up the phone, and found a lot of success contacting individuals directly on the phone. Not only that - they were building real relationships and even received a lot of creative feedback and ideas for future content pieces!
Ego Bait = Amplification That single piece of content turned into at least 10 more as the companies promoted it and fed traffic through their content circles!
What They Learned

  • Evergreen content is where it’s at.
  • Series-driven content is magical.
  • Co-created content makes it better.
  • Marketing WITH influencers amplifies content to heights it would never see without them.

Taking the Case Study Farther - Experimenting with New Media Shante found further success with (of all things) Podcasting. After securing a host for an interview-style format, they started creating content that would be interesting to OC Tanner’s target audience, and then distributing it on iTunes and other Podcasting channels. The Podcast turned out to be a hit, and ended up on some iTunes featured lists which grew the listener base much more quickly than they could have expected.
What They Learned

  • New platforms = less competition.
  • Refresh your blog voice with diversity in media.
  • True partnerships = ongoing opportunities.

Content Checklist  Shante also shared the following (very useful) checklist to produce winning content:

  • Does it captivate?
  • Is it  compelling?
  • Is it  tweakable?
  • Is it scaleable?
  • Is it  results driven?
  • There was one more that I didn't type fast enough to capture - can I look at anyone else's notes?
Topics: Blog Event Recaps