൮g tactics brands use to improve conversions. library...for the marketing teams who use our iapps...
TRANSCRIPT
6 CONTENT MARKETING TACTICS BRANDS USE FOR CONVERSIONS
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Presentation Notes
Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining us today for our webinar presented by Bridgeline Digital on 6 Content Marketing Tactics Brands use to improve conversions.
Today’s Presenters
Alex KombosSVP of Marketing & [email protected] LinkedIn: akombos
Karl CrodesVP of Business [email protected] LinkedIn: karlcordes
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alex Kombos, SVP of Marketing and Growth at Bridgeline Digital. I’ll be hosting today’s webinar alongside Karl Cordes our VP of Business development here at Bridgeline Digital. Karl: Thanks Alex, we have a lot of exciting content to cover today. I’d like to remind everyone, if you have questions throughout the presentation please enter them into the question box and we will address them at the very end. With that said… Alex let’s kick it off.
agenda
6CONTNET MARKETING TACTICS
THAT CONVERT
» Bridgeline Introduction
» Tactics Micro-moment Mapping Retention Content Real-Time Content Real-life Stories A/B Testing Generalists Vs Specialists
» Tools
» Technology Foundation
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Alex: So here’s a look at look at the topics that we’ll be covering today. First we’ll dive into the 6 tactic one by one and give specific examples of how companies are implementing them. Then we’ll cover what tools are critical to plan and execute a strategy, without getting too much into the weeds. With any tools you use you need the proper foundation and we’ll cover how we have successfully implemented these for multiple clients. Lastly, we’ll leave you with some key takeaways, before we finish up with Q/A.
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Alex: I’ll kick it off with real life examples of content from various services, products, and companies. “We believe our vision and values just as strongly today as we did the first time…bla bla bla “We put marketing first in everything we do” Recognized by Gartner and Forrester etc . I wont go on as you get the idea….
What’s wrong with these examples?
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Karl: So Alex….there is something wrong with these examples?
It’s all about them!
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Alex: It’s all about them! – right? “We believe… “We put marketing first….
…..and that’s not interesting
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Alex: And that not interesting. Karl: You know… now that you mention it – you’re right. Before putting this webinar together folks I never realized this, I always took it at face value.
“Behind every piece of bad content is an executive
who asked for it.”
True? / False?
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Alex: They say Behind every piece of bad content is an executive who asked for it. That might not be entirely true…. How we consume content and more importantly how we react to it is changing rapidly. This leaves marketing departments scrambling to catch up. Karl: Sometimes It seems outdated and bad…but most importantly it doesn’t trigger an action. Alex: That’s what we’ll be covering today… the 6 tactics brands use to convert with content marketing.
Mapping Micro-moments
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Karl: For those of you who are not familiar with Bridgeline Digital, Bridgeline provides web content management, eCommerce and marketing automation solutions. Marketers use our tools to build sites, stores, workflows, at scale without engineering support. For the Marketing teams who use our iAPPS solutions they are able unlock new levels of productivity, engagement & growth. Most if not all of these teams use our iAPPS solutions for Content Marketing. And they have proven FANTASTIC results. So let’s check them out one by one…. first tactic.. Is the concept of Mapping micro-moments.
Why Content?
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Alex: For many businesses content marketing is still the #1 way to improve traffic, gain leads, and drive sales. There's more content in more places, with more topics than ever and its multiplying every year.
The Challenge
Know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for.
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Success with content requires a series of micro conversions that lead to ultimate customer conversions. (karl: that what we all wants – right?) Some examples are Webinar registrations, Email subscriptions, Social shares etc. The Solution is simple? - Know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for.
Manage the Customer Experience across all Channels
Call center Direct
Indirect
DigitalPhysical
DigitalPhysical
Company website
E-Kiosks/ATM
Brand shops
Kiosk
Shop-in-shop
Mobile site
Iphone app.
Affiliates
Internet TV
Agents
VARs
Catalogues
Integrators
Magazines Flyers
Dealers
Franchisers
Consultants
Retailers
Door-to-door
Home shopping channels
Online retailers
Online auctions
Classified adds sites
XML/EDI
Social network sites
Twitter IM
Home advisors
Flagship stores
Outlets
Comparison sites
The Experience
Resellers
Sales reps
Sales force
TabletsOnline chat
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Welcome to the age of the connected customer. No longer limited to single, traditional channels, the connected customer interacts with your brand across many touchpoints—online, in the store, and on the go. Each of these interactions is a micro moment and this is where it all begins. Micro-moments are critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends
Manage the Customer Experience across all Channels
Call center Direct
Indirect
DigitalPhysical
DigitalPhysical
Company website
E-Kiosks/ATM
Brand shops
Kiosk
Shop-in-shop
Mobile site
Iphone app.
Affiliates
Internet TV
Agents
VARs
Catalogues
Integrators
Magazines Flyers
Dealers
Franchisers
Consultants
Retailers
Door-to-door
Home shopping channels
Online retailers
Online auctions
Classified adds sites
XML/EDI
Social network sites
Twitter IM
Home advisors
Flagship stores
Outlets
Comparison sites
The Experience
Resellers
Sales reps
Sales force
TabletsOnline chat
Micro-moments are critical touch points in the customer journey…
…and when added together, they determine how that journey ends
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Alex: Traditional marketing funnels are fading. That’s because customer experiences aren’t measured in pieces of a funnel. Customer experiences are created in micro-moments captured in a unified customer experience
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Karl: These moments are comprised by countless interactions, like texting a spouse with a carpool update, replying to a quick work email while waiting in the ATM line, or posting a Caribbean vacation photo to make friends jealous. These types of moments are a part of everyday life, but they’re not moments when we’re necessarily looking to engage with brands. And if a brand tries to butt in with a distracting or irrelevant message? We just Swipe. But in other moments, we’re very open to the influence of brands. These are the moments when we want help informing our choices or making decisions. For marketers, these moments are an open invitation to engage. And they’re the moments you have to be ready for.
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To understand how to reach customers in the right place, at the right time, you need to map users’ micro-moments, from start to finish. These I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy, and I-want-to-do moments are loaded with intent, context, and immediacy. They’re the moments when we turn to a device—often a smartphone—to take action on whatever we need or want right now.
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These moments are sequential and triggered by curiosity and needs. Our digital lives connect us to our physical world. That consumer journey looks a lot different than it did in 2007 or in 2012. And it’s not just a story of more mobile usage. Karl: Since we can take action on any need or curiosity at any time the consumer, decision journey has been fractured into hundreds of tiny decision-making moments at every stage of the “funnel”—from inspiring vacation plans to buying a new blender to learning how to install that new shelf. A good guiding principle is this: be there across all stages of the consumer journey, not just when someone is ready to buy.
Be There Be Useful Be Quick
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To accomplish this, consider these four key moment types that represent the full range of user needs. Be there: You’ve got to anticipate the micro-moments for users in your industry and then commit to being there to help when those moments occur Be useful: You’ve got to be relevant to consumers’ needs in the moment and connect people to the answers they’re looking for. Be Quick: They’re called micro-moments for a reason. Users want to know, go, and buy swiftly. Your user experience has to be fast and frictionless.
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Let’s talk about an real life example: Red Roof Inn mastered all three strategies in one simple campaign. When the company realized that flight cancellations were leaving 90,000 passengers stranded every day, its marketing team developed a way to track flight delays in real time and trigger targeted search ads for the Red Roof Inns near airports. Ads that said, in essence, “Stranded at the airport? Come stay with us!” They committed to those “I-need- a-hotel-ASAP” moments and delivered with relevance on what people needed. The result - ? a remarkable increase in bookings across non-branded search campaigns Karl: Alex, What a power example of an innovative way to connect with someone in the “I want moment” I can totally understand how that would influence some one’s action in a moment of frustration or need.
Content for Current Customers
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Karl : So now lets take a look at our second tactic, Content for Customer Retention.
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Karl : 40% of existing B2B business comes from existing customers, yet only 2% of budgets are allocated to keeping those customers. As you can see New customer acquisition is expensive, so it would make sense to do everything you can to retain your current customers. Customer service can’t be treated as a necessary evil it must be intentional and well done. By supporting excellent customer services with proper content for customer retention you can win more often
expect a reply in
The average response time from businesses is
60mins
5hours
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Karl: Today we live in an immediate gratification culture. 40% of customers who complain on social media. expect a reply within the hour, but the average response time is 5+ hours. About 1/3 of complaints are NEVER answered, most of them in social media. Social platforms are even catching on to in-channel customer service. For some companies Facebook users can now chat with brands directly through Messenger. However, many don’t use the private contact methods for customer service, and all of it can have a financial impact on acquisition and retention
should be listening to their customers and creating
retention-focused content.
Every content marketer
Create Content that Retains not just Attracts
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Alex: That’s right Karl - Every content marketer in 2017 should be listening to their customers and creating retention-focused content. Create content that retains, not just attracts.
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Karl: Alex, how are marketers using this tactic? Alex: The Starbucks success story is not surprising; they have done an outstanding job at creating a brand and experience that is more than just coffee. It’s this intense brand loyalty that may be helping to stave off competitors, Why are Starbucks’ content marketing programs and mobile apps so effective at increasing customer retention? An easy way to increase customer retention is to hang out where your customers hang out – for Starbucks, that was on mobile through a mobile app. They take into consideration the time of day, location and weather and deliver it at the right time. And it works. We’re talking about the content that’s delivered not the priced incentives or bonus points. This is a big differentiator because ti. doesn’t have an internal cost associated with the recommendation.
Real Time Content
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Karl: so active listening on Social Media can be a critical component to customer service, Alex, lets talk about Real time Content.
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Alex: that’s right Karl – and that leads up into the 3rd tactic. With real-time marketing, time is a luxury we can’t afford. That means branded content can no longer be crafted to glossy advertising perfection. For that you need to Be a good listener. & Set realistic goals. The best way to ensure a strategy for real-time marketing is to add it into your existing plan. Real-time marketing can take on many forms, including: Quick response to mainstream events Dynamic Personalized Content Timely location based messages Brand Event Promotion
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However Creating content quickly is very different than Creating content poorly. Today its much easier to adapt, by building in-app storytelling and editing capabilities. This includes Native slideshows, videos, text overlays, music, filters and more. All marketers need to create high-quality, on-the-fly content. All it needs is a mobile device (or two) and some know-how
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Karl: So Alex, we found a couple of cool examples for us to review here: Oreo uses power failure during the Super Bowl as opportunity to express its humorous and clever side. This also generated an enormous amount of residual press mention, brand awareness and outsized exposure. It’s seem so simple but for organizations to do this on the fly they need to give a great deal of autonomy to the social media team. This Requires a team always on standby that thinks creatively and has some photoshop skills.
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Alex: This concept can be applied beyond digital. Check out BMW’s reaction to what would otherwise be a confident Audi ad. Audi’s ad attacks BMW in a certain category and model. BMW responds on a very different level. BMW looks like the smart choice because of its incidentally ingenious and a real-time ‘comeback.’
“Real Life Stories” Storytelling
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Karl: Alex so the bottom line is really about Our 4th Tactic - Real life stories – Storytelling.
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Alex: Businesses are obsessed with storytelling. Even WE talk about it all the time.
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Alex: Most of the stories brands use are fictional. Unfortunately, some brand stories are just too perfect. Just look at these 2 examples of a Dating site for Farmers. Which one do you think is more realistic? Karl: Customers don’t want to be sold to. They want to buy in on their own.
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Alex: Consumers are getting savvier about spotting marketing wolves in sheep’s clothing. Storytelling will make a shift to non-fiction, whether they want to or not. Take a look at this Martha Stewart post about an easy recipe from her book that would only take 30 minutes to prepare and cook. Karl: Wow! Appetizing…..
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Alex: This is how it came out. It took more than 90 minutes to prepare and cook and tasted awful. This was one of many posts by her followers. The impact this has is tremendous – because you risk losing this user / customer/ follower forever. You might also lose more if this goes viral. Karl: People don’t want to be sold to. They want to buy in on their own. Now that live video is becoming the new social media standard, brands need to embrace unfiltered, documentary-style communication…it can be scary, but also so worth it.
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Alex: The best way to dive into this is with a success story: Southwest Airlines experienced a massive technology failure, rendering huge portions of their computer systems inoperable for more than 12 hours. To get back on track, the airline cancelled nearly 2,000 flights causing a four-day tsunami of customer frustration. The magnitude of the issues were unprecedented causing huge inconsistencies in what passengers were told, and how they were treated. Some passengers got hotel vouchers, others did not. Some passengers were kept informed, others were left to fend for themselves. It was BAD. From the very beginning, the Southwest online reps took complete ownership of the crisis, and apologized (with evident sincerity) to customers at every turn, both in social media and in explanatory content. Southwest took an innovative and effective approach to humanization through the use of Facebook Live video to keep customers informed and to underscore apologies. They were praised by everyone including the media.
A/B Test your Content
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Karl: This story illustrates one of the reasons’ the Southwest brand is so powerful, they don’t seem to take themselves to seriously are willing to admit when they made a mistake, and they communicate consistently during a crisis which is a little more than United Airline can say this week. So time to move on to Tactic number 5: Testing your content
A/B Testing
Multivariate Test
+50%
-20%Paid spend
More conversions
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Karl: Testing helps everyone slow down and see what’s working. Everyone knows that. "If you’re not ‘all in’ with your content marketing program, don’t do it . In order to be “all in,” you have to know what works. To know what works, you have to test content. Its that simple.
A/B Testing
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Karl : When it comes to determining what landing pages and messaging converts more prospects and customers - A/B Testing Works And is an effective strategy. While testing allows for you to consider many different elements of the page, testing the actual content needs to be part of it as well.
Content
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Alex: A great way to measure and refine your strategy is by analyzing the effectiveness of your topics. The content intelligence company, Concured, has an interesting take on the subject. The metrics most marketers track to evaluate performance including page views, social shares and reach are a great way of seeing WHAT’S working, but understanding the WHY is just as vital. Essentially when you’re able to attribute success at the topic level, you can continuously maximize engagement through the creation of compelling content pieces.
Tag Content
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Alex; There are many different types of content tagging mechanisms today. Some require manual tagging and some enable you to automatically tag your assets. Just make sure that you’re tagging content appropriately based on what the content is about.
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Karl: Lets take another example. Kissmetrics wanted to test which content works better with this landing page. The controlled version is direct and talk about the value, where as the variant is more descriptive and talks about the results.
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Karl: After testing both versions the variant showed more than 500% increase in demo requests. That is HUGE! Back up your decisions with content testing, they you can choose to go big, or get out.
Marketing Generalist vs. Specialist
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Alex: Our sixth and final Tactic is – Specialization or not?
I’m an email marketer.
I’m an SEOstrategist.
I’m a social media specialist.
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Alex: One of the most profound trends of the last decade is the specialization of the marketing workforce. The growth of digital channels, it seems, has created a huge demand for experts who are deep in the smallest of niches. Ad Age reported recently that agency employment is at its highest level since 2001. This is an indication of how the agency business is successfully navigating marketing's transition to digital. That said, there are now several major ecosystem challenges that loom large. And these are impacting how content is discovered, consumed and monetized and will make marketing even more difficult. Specifically, these trends include: Media proliferation: infinite content, yet finite attention. Social personalization: content flowing via the lens of friends. Advertising frustration: ad blocking, viewability and bot fraud.
I’m anemail marketer, but I
don’t code.
I’m anSEO strategist, but I
don’t create content.
I’m a social media specialist, but I don’t
design.
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Karl: Historically, marketers defined themselves by their specialty. These days, there are so many subsets of marketing, it is difficult to even wrap your head around them all. We have social media marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing, search engine marketing, email marketing, direct marketing, usability, conversion optimization, paid media marketing, branding, web design, etc. The list goes on and on. Alex: Defining ourselves by siloed, vertical titles has led to siloed, vertical work. Specialists Serve in Individual Areas.
Investment in and access to new tools has enhanced
marketers’ skills.
Investment in and access to new tools has enhanced
marketers’ skills.
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Karl: Technology has leveled the playing field and we’re seeing marketing teams hiring more generalists. Access to new tools has enhanced marketers’ skills and in return access to new tools has enhanced marketers’ skills. Taken together, this will make it harder and harder for brands to get their message across. And it creates a need for a new class of marketing jedis -- those who will thrive as generalists.
I’m an email marketer,
AND I know HTML.
I’m anSEO strategist, AND
I help create branded content.
I’m a social media specialist, AND I know photoshop.
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Karl: Moving forward….the best marketers will know just enough outside their specialty to be dangerous. Generalists Can Contribute to Different Parts of the Business. At the same time Generalists Need some Specialty skills. It’s less complicated than it sounds
I’m a marketer I’m a marketer I’m a marketer
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Alex: Soon, it will be acceptable to simply say: “I am a marketer”
Conclusion
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Alex: So - In summary, these 6 content marketing tactics will Increase the visibility of your brand. Develop lasting relationships with your audience. Improve brand awareness and recognition. Create loyalty and trust, with both your current customers and prospects. Help you to build authority and credibility. This should be a top priority for any organization.
Choosing the right Tools
The full customer journey, managed in one place, with one tool.
Marketers use our tools to build sites, stores, workflows, at scale without engineering support.
Attract, Engage, Nurture & Convert
Build attractive web sites & storesTarget website visitors and send them relevant content & offers
Execute entire marketing campaigns repeatedly & automated
Our customers build empowering experiences thatunlock new levels of engagement & growth with their customer experience
HOW WE DO IT
MARKETING Lead capturePersonalize
Nurture
WEB PLATFORMSearch Optimize
Fresh ContentMobile
COMMERCECatalog
Shopping cartShipping
SOCIALSchedulePublishMonitor
FRANCHISELocal sites
Central brandingShare content
BETTER
FASTER Zero Integrations: Automation + CMS + Commerce Fast Go-to-Market: Rapid, pre-built interfaces Day to Day Efficiency : Flexible modules to Publish – Automate - Sell
COST EFFICIENT
Financial Benefit: Better, Faster and Technology is cheaper Improving Efficiencies: Zero or minimal redundant systems & costs Opportunity Cost: Current Solution vs. your Competition
Functionality: Born from CMS vs CRM Customer Experience: Unified experience across all channels Scalability: Enterprise grade features
WHY
powering digital experiences
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