Monday, November 21, 2016

Keep Your Content Marketing Grounded in the Essentials




Paramita Bhattacharya
Director, Integrated Marketing,
Content and Digital Marketing, Demand Generation
Hitachi Data Systems







More than a few thousand content, digital and brand professionals convened at an industry event not too long ago. As they explored and exchanged insights, it became clear to me that it is ever so important to not forget the fundamentals that are pivotal to content marketing.

We are encountering increasing sophistication of marketing automation and content platforms and constantly challenged by fast moving changes in advertising, search and syndication. In the face of this, it’s easy to lose sight of the essentials of content marketing and adversely impact the customer experience.

Here is what I consider the key pillars of Content Marketing:

Pillar #1 Content Strategy: Start with a clear articulation of your business objectives and campaign goals. Highlight content themes based on core messaging around your product, solutions and brand propositions. Hopefully, at this point, you already have your customer-buying journey defined along with buyer personas. Doing this will help your content strategy deliver valuable content to your prospects and customers in each stage of their buying/purchase journey.

Pillar #2 Content Plan: Design a content map across your customer’s buying journey and define objectives for each content asset. Identify suitable formats based on your desired story to tell. Here, create an optimum mix of multiple media, short and long forms, and a combination of original and third party/expert content. As this plan starts to take shape, focus on content re-use and customization to address various audience needs. Draw in your best internal and external design, copy, UX, UI and video resources to build the best content - striving for efficiency, quality and effectiveness.

Pillar #3 Content Promotion: Promoting and distributing content is the game changer. This is where your content meets your channels in a distinct, unique manner – to delight and engage your prospects and customers. Map and plot your content into a matrix of paid, owned and earned media. Connect your various content interactions into a coherent customer experience - across web pages, PR articles, text and display advertising, along with blogs and social media posts. The more you match your media footprint with your prospects and customers, the better your engagement and value.

Pillar #4 Content Measurement: Gathering insights into what’s working and what’s not begins with measurement. It’s often helpful to measure incremental success or micro conversions - along the path to the final success criteria whatever that maybe for you (driving qualified leads, increasing the pipeline, or generating actual sales etc.). These micro-conversions can be content usage, consumption, shares, likes, impressions, views etc. and is primarily based on the channel. Even though they are sometimes dismissed as vanity metrics, they can be a leading indicator of the potential success of your content campaign and help you test and optimize accordingly. Plus these help establish credibility, relevance and engagement with your prospects and customers.

I hope you found this helpful in formulating an end-to-end content life cycle that is designed to engage new prospects and play a leading role in converting them to customers.

What, in your opinion, is critical to building a successful content marketing campaign? Let me know your comments.

Paramita Bhattacharya leads the development of content marketing strategy and the digital campaign content calendar for IoT, Cloud, Converged Infrastructure, Virtualization, Flash Storage & Mobility offerings at Hitachi Data Systems. She was previously a Group Manager at Adobe where she drove customer engagement and revenue through strategic content, integrated digital campaigns, multi-touch programs and digital platforms leveraging inbound & outbound tactics, and partnered with multiple disciplines. She is a member of the Frost & Sullivan Digital Marketing Advisory Board.

Content Alone is NOT the End Game




Jacob Baldwin
Global Manager, Digital Marketing
Emerson Climate Technologies







We’ve all heard it–maybe even used it–time and time again. It’s the ever-popular idiom that’s thrown around like mud on the walls in a brainstorming session–Content is King. But what does that really mean? Sure, with the proliferation of conversational search, Hummingbird, even content marketing–content has become the golden child upon which many a strategy hangs, and with good reason. But just as the title of this post implies, content alone is not enough.

What is Content, Anyway?

Ask this question to a room full of marketers and 9 times out of 10, you’ll get a cookie cutter answer: “Webpages, white papers, blog posts, press releases, social media posts”…on and on and on and on. I have a different opinion–to me, content is an articulation of expertise, communicated through the aforementioned channels (blogs, white papers, webpages, etc…). A good way to think about it is to imagine a white paper that has no subject, no words, it’s just a shell–we marketers fill in the shell with expertise that our target market is [ideally] looking for. This is where the other members of the team come into play.

Content and Search

Different studies have varying percentages, but directionally, they’re all telling the same story–businesses and consumers alike are increasingly flocking to search engines to start their research for buying decisions. Some studies show nearly 90% of consumers and more than 70% of businesses start their purchasing research with search engines. Ensuring that your content–your expertise–can be found via search is essential. I am not going to harp on best practices of SEO; resources are plentiful if you take a look. Instead, I am going to focus on how your content marketing and search campaigns can form a symbiotic relationship, helping each other soar to new heights.

The essence of search optimization (paid and organic) is traffic acquisition. We marketers want to attract people who have problems that we can solve, and turn them into leads. It is insane how many marketers write or commission a white paper to be written without selecting target keywords to use throughout the article. Keyword research/strategy is the cornerstone to any solid search marketing program. With the correct keywords selected and infused into your processes from the beginning, the contextual qualifiers and variations of your targeted keyword will manifest organically. And this is huge, considering the latest Google updates. One of the most important aspects to organic search optimization is building earned editorial links. It is essential that you build links into your content to reference pages from your digital properties (and others, if appropriate, but NOT competitors) that have resources for users to dig deeper into a concept, product, or service if they want to. The symbiotic relationship comes in this form: optimization for search helps the content get discovered. Engagement with that content helps drive organic ranking, further helping that content get in front of users’ eyes. It’s a beautiful cycle.

Content, CRO, and Analytics

When considering how content marketing and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) play together, for many organizations, access to some content comes at a price–whether it’s an email address and first name or the completion of a full-fledged business profile. CRO is one of my favorite topics in digital marketing. Great practitioners understand that CRO is where psychology, design, messaging, and UX intersect. Billions can (and have) been made and lost as a direct result of CRO testing. To me, CRO in the simplest terms is the management of the perceived cost to perceived value ratio. If the elements on your page work to effectively communicate your value proposition, and generate interest while reducing friction and anxiety, you’re on the road to success…and a promotion. Oftentimes, this is not the case. Legacy data fields and dependencies on IT are often roadblocks to getting rid of extraneous elements in conversion processes. It is a battle you’ll have to fight. And win.

The Great Machine

Weaving strategies together for content marketing, search optimization, and CRO will pay off in dividends. Each piece, if effectively done, works to bolster the performance of each of the other elements. Content that’s optimized for search, and content portals that are optimized for conversion, will effectively deliver significant gains in return ratios to your marketing efforts. In conclusion, let’s hit on a few key points that we covered today:

  • Let’s be careful not to confuse content with content mediums
  • Optimizing your content for the correct keyword selections from the beginning will help contextual content qualifiers and keyword variations manifest organically within the content
  • A strategic and scientific testing methodology will work to tilt the perceived cost to perceived value ratio in your favor. Achieve this by first ensuring your value proposition clearly articulates the exclusive benefits your product/service offers, then work to add factors supporting the credibility behind these claims. Next, work to remove unnecessary friction from conversion processes. This, in conjunction with your efforts to inspire interest in your offer, will work to reduce the amount of anxiety your users experience in your conversion funnels

Jacob Baldwin is the Global Manager of Digital Marketing at Emerson Climate Technologies. Previously, he was Digital Marketing Manager at One Call Now. Over the past several years, he has been recognized as an emerging expert in the field of digital marketing, speaking at multiple national industry conferences and contributing to numerous notable industry publications. Feel free to reach out to him via Twitter @jacobaldwin, or find him on LinkedIn.

Content Marketing: What B2B Marketers Can Learn from B2C




Mona Baset
Assistant Vice President of Advertising, 
Digital & Brand Management 
Carolinas HealthCare System






I’ve spent my career in both the B2B and B2C worlds, and I’ve never understood why there has traditionally been such a sharp distinction between marketing to businesses and marketing to consumers. Aren’t we all consumers? Once you start seeing everyone as a consumer, something magical happens. You bring humanity into the marketing process, which is the key to engagement with your brand.

Be interesting

Taking a human-centered approach to content for B2B marketing means that no matter what role someone plays in their company, they still want to read interesting things. Business people are people, too! Think about how interesting good fiction is. The reader can’t wait to get to the next page. Why can’t all content take this approach? Offer up questions that people HAVE to get answered. Use visuals. Be the click bait that actually delivers. We wrote a piece about one of our patients who went into sudden cardiac arrest at 25. Our headline could have read, “Carolinas HealthCare System’s Experienced Doctors Save Young Man’s Life.” Instead, our headline was “Omar and the Unstoppable Heart.” It was just as interesting as fiction, starring a real-life character. The content was promoted on our website and social media, pitched to media and influencers, and boosted in social, paid search, native and display. We also did a stop motion video that could live on its own. Omar’s story was one of our most successful, and so many more people were able to engage with our brand.

If you can’t be interesting, be helpful

Any topic can be interesting if positioned the right way, but if you’re struggling, take the pressure off and think about being helpful instead. During the panic around the Zika virus this summer, there was a lot of information out there from many different sources. How did people know whom to trust? Your positioning of the content can differentiate you from information already out there. As a healthcare system, we had the credibility to communicate with our communities and beyond, and packaged it in a way that would be most helpful. We used Google AdWords to understand what people were searching for, and constructed our communications to address those very questions. We also addressed the specific situations that could prompt a search in the first place. A parent might be trying to protect their child at camp or themselves while hiking in the mountains. Overlaying specific circumstances adds contextual relevance to the information, making it more relatable. Our headlines included, “Zika Virus: Your Top Questions Answered” and “Traveling? Preparation Can Lessen Zika Fears.” And all articles featured our doctors, reinforcing that credibility. 

Tap into what people want

Google AdWords is a great place to start to understand trends around what people are searching for. But alone, it won’t get you to the deep insights you need to connect in a compelling way with your consumers. Reading trending content on the subject, using online tools can help you to identify content gaps for differentiation. Combing through your consumer surveys will give you another view, but still isn’t enough. Take a design thinking approach as well. Talk to your consumers – or potential consumers – about how they go about their day doing the things that might align with your product. If you are selling a marketing management tool, ask them to walk you through how they manage their projects today. Listen and watch closely. Have them show you what they need – rather than expecting them to tell you. Understand what their pain points are and what motivates them. You can take this information back to improve your products and speak to potential customers in the right way. More people will connect with your brand in a more meaningful way.

And give it to them where they want it

Knowing where your readers are searching for the information, in what format, and when, is critical in reaching your consumers. Consider that in a world of never-ending meetings, many B2B decision makers conduct research after hours. Many subscribe to leading publications and industry journals to stay ahead – that content is often of the highest authority to your readers. Sponsoring content on those domains gives you greater visibility and authority to readers who matter. Also, use your client use cases to tell your story. It’s a less self-promoting way of talking about the value of your products; the brands tell your story for you. An integrated approach to content distribution and a targeted approach to promotion is essential for content marketing success. 

Content marketing is where you can differentiate your business on a very crowded playing field. By taking a human-centered approach, you can increase your chances for success. Be interesting, be helpful, and tap into what people want and where they want it. 

Mona Baset is Assistant Vice President of Advertising, Digital & Brand Management for Carolinas HealthCare System. She leads advertising and media activities, management of the Carolinas HealthCare System brand, consumer digital channels, creative design and content, and marketing operations management. Carolinas HealthCare System is one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare organizations in the country, with 60,000 employees and 900 locations in North and South Carolina.