VIRTUAL DEMO: Successful Content Marketing Execution

A Sample from the MARKETING WORLD 2015 Executive MindXchange Chronicles:

MODERATOR
Katherine Burns
Senior Director
Frost & Sullivan

PRESENTERS

Lisa Goldson Armstrong
Vice President
Global Marketing & Sales Excellence
Pentair

Galyn Burke
Product Marketing Manager
Pinterest

SESSION

Today's marketers have their eye on content marketing as a vehicle to deepen customer engagement. What makes it a success? This session enabled participants to experience the content marketing strategy of two progressive organizations-Pentair and Pinterest—and to experience the journey as if you were a real world customer. Audience participation was encouraged as part of the presentation.

TAKE-AWAY

• Blueprint of a successful content marketing strategy
• What works, and what doesn’t, drawn from real world experience
• New insight and creative ideas

BEST PRACTICES

ROI-what's your philosophy? Data can be easy to drown in it, how do you use metrics?

Galyn Burke: There’s tons of data out there. You can test things and you will see data move quickly.

The most effective approach to measuring ROI is to have a baseline understanding of what marketing impacts are affecting your business. Know where sales are, average CPA, etc.

• Develop a baseline metric, and from that measure the incremental value of the platform and its lifetime value
• Use database marketing and marketing automation to test small groups, and measure their behaviors based of different campaigns
• Filter content, internally, through a central team to maintain consistency of message and optimize its value
• Continually evaluate content delivery based on technological advances and market variables
• To maintain engagement, modify content based on where individual customers are in the cycle.
• Best marketers will decide if building creative is worth it and determine lifetime value of customers

Content is different based on length of purchase cycle. How is content marketing different when you need to engage with a customer for an extended period of time?

Lisa Armstrong: Used to traditionally spend a lot of time at trade shows, but 70% of content is online now. Find ways to modify the type of content in front of purchaser. Cater to where they are in the buying/research process.

ACTION ITEM

• Brainstorm creative ideas on what content would benefit your customers
• Encourage enthusiastic employees to get involved with content creation

TAKE-AWAY FROM GALYN:
With built-in marketing tools, you need to have reciprocal capability; unless you make it as easy as possible to evaluate platform, you won't get customers to invest. Always think about it from the perspective of the marketer: how do I draw interest and how do I convert?

• Pinterest looks forward, Pinterest users are about planning for the future-- it's what you want to do some day
• Pinning is personal, the difference is you connect with people you admire and have things in common with
• 96% of pinners say they research and gather information on the platform = search is huge on Pinterest
• 73% of pinners agree Pinterest helps them discover new things = search is working
• Your brand is welcome & essential -- 2/3 of content comes from brands and products
• 87% of active pinners say they've actually purchased something with the help of Pinterest
• Back to the full funnel--how to connect the right pinners with the right content and drive business
• The full funnel aligns partner solutions to pinner activity

Put into three buckets: Awareness, Intent, Action

Bank of America--One of their most successful clients

• Focused on awareness
• They said, figure out what type of savings pinners want, what they're planning to save for
• They beat all the competition with engagement
• Used creative best practices, like vertical image, long descriptions are fine

Petplan Insurance

• Focused on intent
• Researched all pet topics on Pinterest and realized they had the content people were looking for (what kind of dog should I buy, how do I know my pet has cancer, etc.)

Adore Me--A jewelry company

• Focused on action
• When they implemented pins they had promoted on Pinterest, they saw that Pinterest referred new customers and high value customers
• Took methodical approach in testing a platform and scaling it after confirming success
• A great idea can come from anywhere and people close to customers, don't kill the excitement. Let everyone know where the central marketing team is to relay content to. Use central team to optimize distribution of content and value.

TAKE-AWAY FROM LISA:
B2B customers are people
So what does this mean for content? You can’t build a content base on B2B segmentation alone - that is not built around the people. Articulating your value proposition isn't enough, we need to connect our value proposition to the personal side of our customers

From her experience, Lisa has developed a set of common B2B overall customer archetypes: Each of these archetypes have varying content needs

• The status quo: Buyers who prefer not to switch, may have regulations to follow, they need content that explains “why” they should switch
• The risk averse: Even more of a challenge, because they want to see value proposition, testimonials, research,  this means more work on content creation
• The innovative/early adopter: This user is more about the placement and timing of your content, these are also potential partner to develop shared content with (helps both brands)
• The follower: They'll find your content through organic search
• Environmentalist capitalist: These people want to do something good for company but also good for the environment, third party content and references from non-corporate partners help

Connecting our brand and developing content foundation

• We wanted to focus on brand message of “inspired solutions for a changing world” which provides the world with safe water, abundant energy, and affordable food

Focus is on the archetype: ”Environmentalist capitalist” and therefore content is built around showing how our solutions impact and help our customers. “Profit, people and the planet.”  Compile a base set of foundational content that is approved by legal and then cascaded and shared with all marketing personnel as a basis to build additional content from.

Shared vision & shared content

• Showed videos as an example of client's impact on environment For example, https://vimeo.com/117178639 Content framed as endorsement of a cause and focus on impact
• You need to make sure to know where all your content is and know it exists. Ownership of content is difficult and so is getting people to share ownership

FINAL THOUGHT
Give your customers the information they want, and encourage anyone looking to contribute within your company to do so.