Last week we joined Digital Megaphone’s Social Media Masters Summit to learn some cutting edge strategies from top brand marketers. We especially loved Andy Crestodina’s Content Marketing 201 presentation – so we thought we’d share some key insights from the session with our fellow content marketers.
Crestodina discussed a number of advanced tactics to help content marketers understand how they can optimize their content to drive traffic and conversions online. After all, according to Crestodina, “Traffic x Conversions = Success” in content marketing. But what we found especially interesting was that as he presented, three themes emerged that content marketers would do well to keep in mind as we create and promote our material.
Content marketing revolves around:
- Help
- Empathy
- Credibility
“Advertising Is the Hype, and Content Marketing Is the Help.”
We’ve seen this number before, but it’s significant and we want to reinforce it again: 60% of buying decisions are made by customers before they even contact a sales rep. While this figure could haunt our dreams, it actually gives content marketers a unique opportunity to impact the customer’s decision-making process. While advertising gives your brand hype, content marketing is what helps nurture the relationship and build trust with your customers.
“I’m beginning to think people don’t care as much about brands anymore,” Crestodina boldly claimed. “Whoever can help them solve their problems the best will win.” People are looking for solutions that work, regardless of where they have to go to get it, and it’s up to content marketers to fill the role of a partner and educator. Competition is high and content marketers play a pivotal role in shaping our customers’ opinions.
“You Need to Earn Your Market.”
Above we mentioned that content marketing is the help, but that doesn’t mean our content will automatically be considered valuable. “Empathy is the greatest web marketing skill,” Crestodina argued. “Whoever does the best job of putting themselves in the mind, the heart, and the shoes of their audience is the one that is going to win.”
In order to do this, content marketers need to think as the market versus of the market. And until we take a step back to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes we will only ever push our content onto our customers. Taking a look at Crestodina’s periodic table of content is a helpful guide to segment our content and understand where each piece fits in a broader content marketing strategy:
“Google Is like the Mean Girl in High School. You Can Get Her to like You, but Not Directly.”
Crestodina continued, “Once you get everybody else to like you first, only then will the mean girl like you.” Credibility is built in two distinct ways: first, in that your online presence must encompass link credibility and be optimized for keywords, phrases, and even your subscribers; second, in a more intangible way, in the credibility we hold with our audiences.
In order to build credibility online and with our audiences, content marketers must consider the following:
- Topics: There is a plethora of tools available to help us understand what our customers need. Use Google AdWords, Yahoo! Answers, Quora, and simply listen to our sales and customer service teams.
- Links: The right balance of both outgoing and incoming links to our website and content is necessary to drive traffic. Even linking our old blog posts to new blog posts can help boost link credibility.
- Keyword phrases: Determine what content has ranking potential for you on your website. Make sure you are not only including keyword phrases in your content (your H1 tag, body copy, SEO title, meta description, etc.) but also to check that they are phrases that you can win for in search.
- Testimonials: Crestodina contends that we should scrap our testimonials page, instead putting the proof next to the claim. Incorporate your testimonials throughout your website, directly next to the products and services they are certifying.
Your website is the mousetrap, and your content is the cheese.
We’ll leave you with the above quote. At the end of the day, it is the content on our website that people are attracted to. It’s up to us to use empathy to first create content that will help them, and then merge the conversion champions with traffic champions to effectively promote it. After all: Traffic x Conversions = Success.
If you’re interested in learning about the ways you can generate more leads from your content and improve your content marketing ROI, check out our white paper, Marketer’s Guide to Proving (and Improving) Content Marketing ROI.
