Content leverage

Content leverage is using every  piece of content  in multiple ways to get the highest return on investment from each piece of content. Obviously, content is not valuable unless buyers are aware of it and are engaged with the material.  This requires marketers to deliver the content in new, interactive ways and channels. Borrowing from Newton’s first law, content in motion will tend to stay in motion and be more effective as a result.

Let’s track the life of a single blog article to bring these practices to life and show how a marketer can leverage content to its best use.

Developing content derivatives

An executive writes a compelling blog article based on new research from a survey of customers and prospects. The blog post explains how the research findings uncover an important buyer issue, validates the market need for the vendor’s solution, and highlights that solutions exist to address the issues identified in the research.

A research-focused post helps in the early stages of the buying cycle to inform  buyers that  solutions are available  to  make improvements.  In this scenario, marketers can develop content derivatives such as:

1) Research White Paper: The marketing team develops additional content based on the original blog post to create a white paper. However, keep in mind that research indicates buyers prefer shorter white papers; the recommended length is four to six pages.

2) Infographic: Research and best practices recommend converting content into an infographic to illustrate data that can be  quickly understood and enhance a call to action.  The elements of an infographic can be weaved into the white paper and other materials to make the data “come to life.”

3) PowerPoint: The presentation is an overview of the research findings on the market opportunity, a summary of the white paper and the executive’s best practice recommendations, which can be uploaded on Slideshare.

4) Live and On-Demand Webinar: The executive leverages the PowerPoint to present a live webinar, which is also recorded for on-demand playback.

5) Video and Podcast: The executive is interviewed in Q&A form to create a series of short and compelling videos and podcasts. Creating transcripts of each interview can provide additional content leverage.

To improve the connection and engagement of today’s busy buyers, more marketers are moving beyond traditional options to leverage interactive media such as:

1) Microsites: The marketing team develops and publishes a collection of related research and advice to a best practices microsite, providing buyers with a single resource to facilitate each step through the buyer’s journey.

2) eBook: The team  converts the key white paper content and PowerPoint into a visually compelling eBook, an interactive overview of the research, and key points  that an executive can quickly read  to understand main concepts and recommendations.

3) Mobile Content / Applications: The team converts the research into content optimized for mobile devices and creates a “Solution Finder” application to help users find the right solution  based on which piece of the research matches customers’  specific priorities / pain points.

4) Multi-media White Papers: The team enhances the white paper presentation with embedded video and podcast recordings, helping buyers feel more connected to the executive.

5) Interactive White Papers: Today’s buyers demand content be more relevant and concise. To deliver a personalized white paper, the marketing team should consider assembling and customizing the content for each buyer. This content customization can be developed on pivot points, which matches content to the buyer’s industry, location, size, role in buying cycles and pain points. The content is put into an interactive software application to survey the buyer on his profile. From there, a customized white paper is delivered with content precisely matching the buyer’s profile.

6) Interactive Diagnostic Assessments: Most buyers struggle to understand whether research issues are  relevant or applicable to them and whether addressing the issues should be priority.  The marketing team may consider a diagnostic assessment to gather and benchmark the prospect’s opportunities against industry peers and leaders. This can illustrate to buyers the competitive costs of maintaining the status quo versus the competitive advantages of adopting new solutions that can address priority issues.

7) Benefit Calculator: Without a business case, today’s economic-focused buyers are hard pressed to allocate budget and pull the trigger on an investment. The marketing team can tap the research to create a customized, interactive benefits calculator that will quantify potential benefits for prospects.

Putting the content in motion

The traditional ways to connect and engage buyers with valuable decision-support content is evolving to incorporate more channels and social sharing.

Traditional channels use promotions, excerpts, and links to the content in order to increase awareness and engage buyers.

Some of the traditional channels that the marketing team leverages to promote content include:

1) Website(s): Promote and link to the content from the main company website and microsites, not forgetting to promote the content via portals in support of sales / channel enablement.

2) eNewsletters: Include excerpts and links in regular newsletters as value-added content.

3) Banner Advertising: Use banners to promote the content as a call to action for users.

4) Paid Search: Use targeted keywords and content as a call to action.

5) Traditional Advertising: Place promotions and links from traditional advertising to the online content.

The one issue with these traditional channels is that they are paid advertisements and have a low trust rating.  However, social content placement is often earned and is trusted more than traditional advertising  by today’s skeptical buyers.

Using social media-focused channels, marketers connect and engage with influencers and the buyers’ communities via:

1) Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Posts and Links – Beyond just links to promote the content, marketers post key excerpts of compelling findings and advice. These posts are liked and forwarded by other members.

2) YouTube & Slideshare Posts: Based on the type of content, the marketing team leverages specific social channels for sharing content such as YouTube for videos and Slideshare for PPTs and PDFs.

3) LinkedIn Discussion Groups and Quora: Marketers determine what key questions would be compelling to discussion groups  to attract group members’ comments on the research and findings as well as to  collaborate on additional opportunities, best practices and solutions..

4) Influencer Links: Marketers make influencers aware of the content and findings / advice, prompting several influencers to write about the content and pass along excerpts / links.

5) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engines prioritize links to content that are seen as  timely, relevant and valuable to the community. To optimize SEO, marketers still need to be sure that content is tagged properly and contains important keywords. Additionally, marketers must ensure that content is back-linked,  liked, promoted and linked to/from other independent and influential sites.

6) Article Syndication: Marketers convert the blog post and other content into article form, and get digital and print publishers to feature / promote the article because they feel it will help their readers.

The bottom line

When an author develops a blog article or other  piece of marketing content, it’s key that the marketing team leverage the content in multiple ways by creating derivatives to put the content in motion. This strategy should include creating multiple traditional and new interactive media derivatives that engage buyers with content through traditional and social channels.

This graphic illustration of  a single piece of content from a research oriented blog post can be used to derive multiple pieces of content to connect and engage buyers via multiple channels  and facilitate the buyer’s journey that can help drive content marketing effectiveness.

Have you tried this approach? Anything you would add to the graphic above?

Microsites may be small, but they sure are mighty!

Microsites are particularly well-suited to content marketing endeavors. Three reasons:

• A microsite focuses tightly on a narrowly-defined topic. The concentration of information is a boon for people and search engines alike.
• Microsites tend to attract thought leaders and influencers who are passionate about a particular topic.
• The smaller scale of a microsite lends itself to shorter development and launch timetables.

Software design firm PTC understood the benefits of creating a specialized microsite. In CMI’s case study, “Going Micro for a Macro Idea”, you’ll learn how they built and leveraged a microsite to build community and industry awareness prior to the launch of CREO, a new software suite.

Here’s an overview of primary steps PTC used to build an effective microsite for content marketing purposes.

Narrowly and clearly define the boundaries of your topic

PTC’s CREO microsite focuses on the CAD design technology industry as a whole. It also provides a behind-the-scenes look at the development process of CREO, their soon-to-be-released software.

Create educational content that invites contributor involvement

The CREO microsite is filled with commentary from CAD experts and specialized engineers. This bookends content contributed by CAD designers, software developers, and other passionate laypeople.

Ensure the content is easily shareable

Passionate people are great ambassadors for other like-minded people. PTC makes it easy for their content to be shared in social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

The results

The CREO microsite was launched under a tight deadline, but the results have been impressive. The site quickly crossed over 100,000 visitors with over 70% new to PTC. The team continues to add new content to the site on a daily basis.

Want more details?

Read the in-depth case study of how PTC, a software design firm, successfully created a niche micro-site to market the launch of a new product line. You’ll learn the specifics of the program as well as details on what they are glad they did.

So, the main difference between a microsite and just content on your website is that the microsite actually has its own brand. Think of it like a magazine.  For example, our magazine is produced by CMI, but the magazine title is Chief Content Officer.

If you are thinking about developing a microsite as part of your content marketing program, check out these examples.

Home Made Simple

Home Made Simple is one of the superstar examples of microsites.  With well over six million opt-in members at this point (we are unsure of the exact figures), Home Made Simple continues to develop fresh and relevant content, recipes and tips to keep homeowners organized.  The site was developed over six years ago by Proctor & Gamble (P&G). After starting with just web and enewsletter content, Home Made Simple has grown into a TV channel, social media integration and a ton of great content.

BeingGirl

BeingGirl is another P&G microsite:

“Being a girl is like being part of a club where everyone knows what you’re going through…at least on some level. Girls have fun. Girls have opinions. Girls have a lot of questions about stuff like PMS, dating, their bodies and even serious subjects like addiction and abuse – just about anything you can think of that has to do with being a girl.”

A nice content mission.  In a study performed by Forrester Research, P&G found that a microsite like BeingGirl.com was four times more effective than a traditional marketing campaign.  Not too bad.

Out-Law.com

OutLaw, from UK law-firm Pinsent Masons, is THE place to get answers on your IT and ecommerce legal issues.  The site now has over 10,000 educational articles on important legal issues, and serves as Pinsent’s main marketing activity, where they have two full-time people manning the site.  There is no doubt that one of the reasons Pinsent is considered a leader is because of their consistent thought-leadership content that attracts and retains customers.

CMO.com

CMO.com, originally a traditionally media property, was purchased by Omniture (now a part of Adobe) and revamped into the new CMO.com.  Upon first launch in 2009, the site was basically a content aggregation site about news relevant to marketing executives. Since that time, CMO.com has developed an interesting series of original interviews with executives while continuing to fine-tune the site.

OpenView Venture Partners

Who would ever view a VC as a trusted source for information?  Well, in the case of OpenView Venture Partners (a CMI benefactor), it’s true.  After launching a successful employee blog last year, OpenView Labs is a treasure trove of articles, posts and videos (over 700 by last count) about how expansion-stage technology companies can grow their business.

In a recent conversation with CEO Scott Maxwell about the performance of the microsite, Scott simply said, “We don’t have to explain the value we bring to the table anymore. All they have to do is go to the Labs site and see for themselves.”

Some final thoughts to consider if you are developing a microsite:

• Focus on your key buyer persona. Each one of the sites above have a clear idea who they are targeting.
• Content is about the customer, not the brand.  This may seem small but it is probably the single, most important reason these sites are successful.  So many brands start with content focused on their product or service.  For a microsite to be successful, that can’t happen.
• Consistent content. You’ll notice that each site is constantly updated.  Remember, a microsite is a content promise to your customers.

What other microsites do you think work well and why?