The Science of Content Marketing

@TylerJewell

About Me

125,000 USERSOver 55 countries25 of the Fortune 100Largest day: 4000 concurrent developersMost users acquired through word of mouthWe rarely tweet or post socially

CAREERPartner @ Toba CapitalBOD: Sauce Labs, WSO2, Exo Platform, ShiftInvest: JRebel, Cloudant, AppHarbor, InfoQCOO: TMC, publishers of TheServerSide.comBEA: Chief Evangelist

COMPANYCodenvy Founder: 2012HQ: San Francisco, CA50 Employees, based in 3 countries

CONTENT15 Courses, 7000 hours of ILT for JavaAuthor: 3 Books (Oreilly, Wrox) on JavaBEA Blog: 200K monthly visitors

What is:

CONTENT?Valuable and Relevant Information for an Audience

Valuable Relevant

CurrentTopicalRelated

Audience

PurchaserInfluencerUserInvestorCompetitor

InformativeReusableQuotableEducational

Content Types% of Usage by Business

C o n t e n t M a r k e t i n g I n s t i t u t e , 2 0 1 3

Functions that Produce

Content

Content Marketing

Communications / AR / PR

LOGO Product MarketingPurpose: Resources for Sales, Prospects and Customers.

Justification: Cost of doing business.

What: Demos, White Papers, Data Sheet, Overview Presentation, ROI Calculator, Infographic, Case Studies

Purpose: Branding; Defining the Market; Setting Competitive Battle Lines.

Justification: Increase Addressable Market.

What: PR, Product Releases, Partner Marketing, Vision, Boilerplate, Investor & Customer Annual Update

Purpose: Attract, acquire and retain a targeted audience.

Justification: Increase leads, lower the CAC, and reduce churn rate.

What: Blogs, articles, videos, webinars, podcasting, Q&A sites, ebooks, forums, infographics, surveys, email

What is:

CONTENT MARKETING?A marketing discipline for creating & distributing content to attract, acquire, and retain a targeted audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Lowers the CAC (Awareness)

Increases LTV(Training)Increases initial deal sizeReduces churn rate

Increases # of leadsImprove conversion rates

Why Companies Use Content Marketing

Max Consumption of

CONTENT

1 Piece of Content Going ViralEmotional

Brilliant, Funny, EntertainingTimed to a Current TrendInjected into a Dialogue

Library of Layered ContentSystematicPredictable

New Content Increases Value of Old

There is a quality vs. quantity trade off.

Content Frequency

But most professionals say 1-3x / week of relevant content is better.http://www.iwantclarity.com/over-blogging/

Thematic Relevance

Con ten t 1 Con ten t 2

CROSS-LINK VALUE

Content that is thematically related increases value of all content.

Cycle of Production

METHODOLODY

Content Content

Recurring processes around content increase its value.

Content Effectiveness

Concentrate on the types of high impact content that comes easy to you.

Content Cycle

Editorial Committee

E d i t o r Author Graphics + Web

1Content Authoring2

5

Graphics3ImagesTables / DataIconography

Track & Optimize6

Most effort goes to the content cycle process, not the authoring.

Net: Content reuse of a single asset is the lowest hanging fruit for lead gen.

Asset Creation4WebVideoPDF

Editorial Reviews3Outside ExpertsGrammar CheckTechnical Verify

PromotionContent DistributionLink BuildingSEO

Distribute Through Channels

Distribute through different channels at different times for highest impact.

Develop a Channel Plan

The Path toContent

Marketing

Set ObjectivesClearly define measurable goals of what your company wants to accomplish with content marketing.

1

Define the AudienceWhat is your audience interested in? What do they READ, WATCH, ATTEND and LISTEN to?

2

Create a Content PlanAssess and leverage existing materials. Review competitors to see what they are saying. Determine manpower. Create a CONTENT CALENDAR.

Define Tactics & Create ContentChoose your content types, distribution channels, and promotion strategy.

Test & AnalyzeAlways TRACK & REVIEW ANALYTICS to measure your response, then refine your content based on findings.

3

4

5

Some Great Content

Stories

Cloudant

Rebel Labs, a Division of ZeroTurnaround

C4Media, Publishers of InfoQ, QConPurpose: Facilitate the spread of knowledge and innovation in professional software development

Audience: Senior technology leaders and practitioners, architects, and agile coaches

Content Types: Articles, Editorialized News, Videos, Presentations, eBooks, Research

Model: Started with $150K, all editorial is contracted, contractors gain a share of revenues, now with 1M monthly uniques

Purpose: Drive awareness of ZT and create inbound activity for lead and opportunity generation

Audience: JVM developers, senior architects, team leads, and project managers

Content Types: Weekly Blogs, Bi-monthly Reports (free HTML + gated PDFs) and Annual Surveys (HTML + gated PDFs)

Model: 80% of traffic organic, search or direct! Started in 2013, now 55% of company traffic. 10K+ subscribers.