ISSUE TWO
NOVEMBER 2015
Overcoming Content Marketing’s Legal Problem Grow Your Business with Pinterest The Road to Google Adword Nirvana WWW.MARKETINGONLINE.CO.NZ
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T I ED IAL OR Like the Internet itself, the content marketing space is a bit like a Wild West gold rush at the moment, with everybody getting in on the act.
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t’s every man and woman for themselves, each one claiming that ‘yes, we can do that…’ and then making it up as they go.
But to extend the Wild West analogy a bit further; the law is a bit slow in coming to town, but it will eventually show up. In the United Kingdom, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) has already released guidelines following concerns over digital transparency (see our Did You Know snippet ‘UK releases guidelines for native advertising’). Closer to home, the powers that be – particularly Government and the Advertising Standards Authority – are beginning to take notice. It is important that those of us who believe that brands can act with integrity – and create content that compares editorially with anything the media outlets can produce
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– prepare a foundation that leaves those authorities with no cause for concern. Our feature piece on content marketing and the legal bottlenecks marketers are struggling with is a good start. By and large, brands and companies are the experts and, as a result, should be in a position to give better advice than any journalist. An economist can write with more insight than a journalist interpreting his comments, but companies are commercial entities so a balance must be found between commercial imperatives and objectivity. The sooner legal advisers and marketers start talking, the better.
Colin
10. C ONVERSION OPTIMISATION How to build your conversion optimisation programme from scratch. 14. SOCIAL MEDIA Boost your business with Pinterest. 16. GOOGLE ADWORDS Avoiding short circuits along the path to search marketing nirvana. 20. C ONTENT MARKETING Content to conversion: A simple New Zealand case study. 22. MARKETING AUTOMATION How should marketers use RSS? 24. WEBSITES What’s the number one question your website homepage should answer? 28. DID YOU KNOW?
ABOUT / Short and sharp, Marketing Online is a free eMagazine delivering thought provoking and enlightening articles, and industry news and information to forward-thinking marketing people. EDITOR / Colin Kennedy ART DIRECTOR / Jodi Olsson
CONTENTS
4. Overcoming the legal challenge to content marketing
CONTENT ENQUIRIES / Phone Colin on 027 2456060 or email colin@espiremedia.com ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES / Phone Jennifer on 09 522 7257 or email jenniferl@espiremedia.com ADDRESS / Marketing Online, C/- Espire Media, PO Box 99758, Newmarket, Auckland 1151, New Zealand WEBSITE / www.marketingonline.co.nz
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OVERCOMING THE LEGAL CHALLENGE TO CONTENT MARKETING How to get your content through legal faster BY COLIN KENNEDY
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he marketing director of a large Australasian multi-national told us recently that she had given up on content marketing. “We just can’t get anything through legal,” she said. “They either bottleneck to the extent we miss our deadlines, or it goes into the ‘too hard basket’ and never sees the light of day.” Similar experiences are becoming commonplace in the corporate environment, but is legal really the problem? Talk to digital agency staff and the marketing and digital departments in most corporate companies about ‘legal’ vetting content and you’ll most likely get a grimace. At first blush, it seems like legal, unable to understand the bright new world of ‘content marketing’, are becoming the fly in the ointment. But a closer looks suggests that things may not be all they appear. Regardless of who might or might not be to blame for the bottlenecks, or drastically altered pieces of content and missed deadlines, the legal challenge to content marketing in New Zealand is a very real issue that is, and will increasingly, impact the ability of brands to engage their customers.
MARKETING HAS A PROBLEM Customers hate ads; they don’t like being sold but still love to shop – that means giving them information that helps them make better decisions rather than trying to overtly persuade them to choose your brand. Recent studies show that Internet users are using ad-blocking software in increasing numbers.
The editor of Netherlands-based technology news site Guru3D.com , discovered recently that ad blocking has eaten into 50 percent of their ad revenue, in spite of their growing audience. This kind of thing is hurting publishers, but it’s hurting marketers more as achieving ‘cut through’ becomes steadily more difficult. In other areas, Apple’s new iOS9 operating system allows ad-blocking for mobiles. iOS adblocking apps now top the most downloaded charts, and not to be left out, Google is working on its own ad-blocking service. The upshot is that brands have to become publishers. They have to start thinking and behaving like journalists because consumers want to be informed, educated, inspired and entertained; not sold too. That makes content marketing – done properly – possibly the most powerful strategy for building brand profile and trust. The marketing world it seems has come to recognise this. Marketing and digital departments, even brand managers, are keen to embrace content marketing in ever growing numbers. That’s why content marketing was recently voted the most important digital marketing trend three years in a row. It seems that some legal departments, however, may still be playing catch-up when it comes to recognising the shift in the way we market to customers. On the other hand, marketing may have to play catch up on the legal side of things.
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LEGAL HAS A PROBLEM Objective, value added content notwithstanding, content marketing is a trading activity that promotes goods and services, even if indirectly. As such, it’s subject to laws like The Fair Trading Act 1986, and potentially Advertising Codes of Practice. Then there are sector-specific laws like the Financial Advisers Act 2008. But that’s not all. When brands begin acting like publishers, they’re also more likely to be dipping their toes into issues like copyright law and even the Harmful Digital Communications Bills (among others). Simpson Grierson media and communications lawyer Tracey Walker, tells us that content marketers need to be wary of making claims without the same rigour applied to marketing compliance. “If you make a claim about your product or service, for instance, you should be able to substantiate it. If you are going down the editorial road, best practice is to pay attention to [the] fundamental tenets of good journalism – such as declaring conflicts of interest, transparency and making clear what is fact and what is comment. These are things that brands should be taking into account when publishing content.” Legal departments within corporates recognise that they have legal responsibilities, particularly around commercial laws like The Fair Trading Act 1986. Few have recognised the trend towards content marketing, and may even be a bit slow in realising the need to get across laws pertaining to media and copyright, for instance.
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“There’s no question that in-house legal teams are going to have to brush up on and take into account aspects of media and copyright law as content marketing becomes more prevalent,” says Ms Walker. That, in a nutshell, seems to be a large part of the problem. Marketing knows content marketing is important but is unaware that rules still apply. Legal might not be across the necessary shift to content marketing, but they know that rules apply, somewhere – they just don’t know exactly which rules and where they apply.
CONTENT DIVERSITY A ROADBLOCK A major stumbling block for all is the diversity of content and overnight proliferation of content providers. “Corporate publishing can range from ‘very editorial’ through to advertorial and then to native advertising ,” says Ms Walker. “There are different considerations requiring mowre nuanced consideration; part of the challenge is deciding where on the spectrum a piece of content sits.” Ms Walker raises a very important point. The nature of a company, which is to make a profit, means that it may be producing all types of so-called content, from advertisements to opinion articles to ‘how to videos’ – and legal departments are suddenly faced with the challenges of recognising the nuances in each and applying the appropriate slide rule. This diversity of content may be one of the things stymying legal advisers.
Part of the problem will be with the broad adoption of the word content to apply to anything that is produced – movies, advertisements, opinion pieces, blogs, advertorials but few of those things are actual content marketing by definition. Content marketing is defined as: “The marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” The keywords here are ‘valuable’ and ‘relevant’ – advertising and advertorials are not necessarily relevant and most certainly not valuable to the consumer. We can assume from this that advertisement campaigns like Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’, do not fit the definition of content marketing. “The more content leans towards editorial, the better shielded the company may be from falling foul of the law,” says Ms Walker. “However, the definition of advertising applied by bodies such as the Advertising Standards Authority is incredibly broad, embracing advertising in any form, even that which advocates ideas or beliefs. I think the ASA will take an interest in many forms of content marketing dressed up as editorial content. “The key to my mind is to act with integrity, with an eye to ethical standards applying to real journalism and you will find there is a degree of symmetry; you earn trust for the brand and will avoid legal problems. For example, declare any conflict of interest, be transparent and value accuracy.”
PICK HORSES FOR COURSES WHEN IT COMES TO CONTENT It seems sound advice for companies to clarify what they mean by content marketing, to define a strategy and to ensure that their content providers understand the nuanced differences between, for example, a press release, an opinion piece and an advertorial. For example, companies might be better off relying on qualified journalists to create editorial content like articles, blogs and white papers, than on an advertising agency. Because not only do journalists put first the interests of the customers (which is the essence of good content marketing), but they will most likely have a better understanding of media and copyright rules. (Disclosure of Conflict of Interest: Espire Media is both a publisher and a content marketing agency firmly in the editorial school of thought.)
When it comes to advertising and making representations that are more commercial in nature, then obviously advertising agencies are best qualified to work in that area. Advertising agencies and public relations companies’ work well together, and there’s no reason content agencies can’t enjoy a similar relationship. What muddies the waters, however, is when one tries to be everything to everyone.
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FINDING A WAY FORWARD The best way forward through what are essentially uncharted and untested waters is for the marketing department and legal departments to leave the silos behind and begin talking.
Some steps to consider taking to reduce bottlenecks: • Clearly define and silo your marketing initiatives e.g. understand and document the difference between content marketing, advertising, public relations and advertorial as they apply to your organisation
• Work with your legal department to establish compliance checklists so that you can produce content that has a better chance of getting through, as well as the legal department’s understanding of what rules apply where
• Define the content marketing strategy for your company e.g. ‘how to’ advice, ‘thought leadership’. Understand what you are trying to achieve with your content marketing
• Consider using ‘disclosure statements’ and other indemnifying statements e.g. “the opinions expressed are the opinions of the writers” etc. • Work with suppliers who understand the law and the differences in marketing tactics to ensure you keep your initiatives clearly defined and the waters un-muddied
Ms Walker says the conversation should be about managing corporate reputation. “The legal advisers have to work hand-inhand to enable content to be published, rather than as an obstacle. They need to show the way it can be done while managing the legal risk. Yes, those legal
risks are a very grey area, but they can be managed by being very clear about the ethical or integrity standards that need to underpin content marketing. “If everybody is clear on that, the likelihood is that legal risk is avoided. It is a discussion that has to be had.” ▼
Marketing Online Editor Colin Kennedy is a journalist, content marketing strategist and a professional speaker. With more than 20 years experience in journalism, public relations and marketing, his previous roles include newspaper and magazine editor, CEO of New Zealand Agritech Inc. and marketing director for BNI New Zealand. His guise to creating compelling content for a New Zealand audience can be found here.
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IS THE LAW DIFFERENT FOR MEDIA CONTENT AS OPPOSED TO CORPORATE CONTENT? BY Colin Kennedy
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ew Zealand media law expert and journalism lecturer, Professor Ursula Cheer from the School of Law at the University of Canterbury, says there is not too much difference between a media publisher and a company that acts as a publisher. “The media have some limited allowances that companies might not enjoy – for example, source privilege under the Evidence Act – but a company may, for example, claim as a defence to a defamation claim that the content was in the public interest, as a journalist would, and they would not be disadvantaged overly much compared to mainstream media.” Regarding copyright laws, journalists will often quote from published works, and it would seem that a company can often safely do the same. “There are two main defences around copyright,” says Professor Cheer. “One is fair dealing for the purposes of reporting current events. A company can claim to be a specialist publisher in an area like finance, and be reporting current financial events, for example. This defence does not apply to using photographs in print media, however. In that case, use of the photograph must be paid for, or at least be consented to. “The main thing for media and corporate publishers alike is not to take too much, not the substantive part, of the copyrighted work – don’t overuse it. Otherwise, there is no fair dealing.
“The second copyright defence is fair dealing for the purposes of reviewing or criticising something. These defences also require attachment of a sufficient acknowledgement, which means the work must be identified by its title or other description and the author of the work must also be identified.” Professor Cheer says another area of interest is that a company could turn around and say that they trusted their agency to be the experts in the area of the content that is being published. “The company could enter into a contract with the agency that says the agency must not supply them with copy that causes them to, for example, defame someone and that they must accept responsibility for inaccuracies in the copy. It would be a form of indemnification, but it’s only useful in so far as the agency has the wherewithal to back the indemnity.” The perils of instant content creation and social media extend to the media as well. “Even mainstream media are wrestling with some of these problems,” says Professor Cheer. “Journalists are having to produce content very quickly and constantly, and the chain of editor and sub-editor has been broken, so it is important that the writers of the content are trusted to have a clear understanding of the law.” Producing content quickly and spontaneously looks set to become another area of consideration for companies who employ social media agencies. People not trained in media law, but who are regularly posting content to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn… ▼
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CONVERSIONOPTIMISATION
HOW TO BUILD YOUR CONVERSION OPTIMISATION PROGRAMME FROM SCRATCH Six steps to get you off to an optimal start BY Cornelius Boertjens
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It includes the following considerations:
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owadays businesses are aware of the undeniable benefits of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), which includes A/B testing, Multivariate Testing and Personalisation. However, very often businesses are stuck in the decision-making process about starting CRO seriously because they are unsure which tool to use, or where to start. In many cases, a tool is bought without a plan about what to do with it, or an understanding of whether it fits in the business technologically and culturally. Let me tell you right now that the tool decision is the last decision you should make even software vendors tell you otherwise! The biggest trap with buying the tool first is that you start paying a license fee before you know what you want to do with it. It’s at least three months of wasted money that you could spend on training, for example. I highly recommend before you embark on CRO that you take time to go through the following six steps before you buy any software:
Step #1: Calculate your TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) First and foremost, you need to know how much money can be spent on CRO in year one. This is about more than buying a software tool. It is important to assess the capability and readiness of your business.
• Do you have the right people in the business or do you need to ask consultants for help? • Do you have to hire? What is the availability of talent? • How much money do you need to allocate for training? • What is your internal cost for IT to deploy and test? • What integrations will you need – e.g. with analytics or marketing automation? • You will find that this can be substantial but it will help you to define your breakeven point and the project ROI you need to achieve
Step #2: What are your CRO objectives? The question of what you want to achieve with your tests is very important right from the start. You have to tie your testing effort to revenue targets and work out with your colleagues from product, marketing and sales what the priorities are. They need to be on board with you to ensure timely sign-offs on variations and support of your effort. Make sure that overall CRO is in line with the business KPIs. Otherwise, you operate in vain. Your business will not support a project that is not in line with the goals – which are ALWAYS about money.
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Step #3: IT support
Step #5: Dealing with software vendors
Very often the process is stalled by IT whose task it is to deploy the code. Usually, you need to submit a business case for why your project is important, and it has to be prioritised over something else. IT is the engine room of your organisation. They have to make sure they protect the business from cyber attacks. They have a responsibility to ensure your site is available 24/7 and that pages load quickly. Give them an early warning and inform them about what you are doing and what tools are part of your consideration. That gives the IT team the time to assess the tools on a technical level as well as estimate the effort to deploy. Make IT your friend and a part of the team!
Step #4: Governance Make sure you know before you start what the legal framework is you have to stay within. Understand what must be included on a page (PDS, T&C, etc.) and where they have to be positioned to be visible to a consumer. Make sure you understand all aspects of privacy and compliance within your industry. The legal team will sign off quicker if they have confidence you have a risk mitigation strategy. By now you should know your use-cases, priorities, test ideas, people capabilities, deployment times and risk mitigation as well as possible integration points. Only now are you ready to talk to software vendors. WWW.CATCHI.CO.NZ
The key to an informed decision is an apple-to-apple comparison of tools. Every vendor will tell you that their tool is best and that it creates ROI and does everything except flying you to the moon and back. However, you know by now that you need ROI on the total cost of ownership and not just the license. Prepare a simple document outlining your plans for the first year. Let the vendors come back with a reply about how their tool solves your use-cases. Ask for the cost of training. Find out your SLA around support and if you deal with persons in Australia or offshore. Ask your IT department to include their questions around ease of integrations, security and APIs.
Step #6: Get buy-in from the business CRO needs an on-going commitment from the team and business. Doing one test here or there will not create ROI. Find a project sponsor in the executive team who is convinced that CRO is important. He/she will help you to communicate upwards and unlock budget. Suggest that you will deliver numbers for executive or board reporting. Once the rubber hits the road, create a buzz in your business by communicating the test results publically, either on your intranet or in the cafeteria. Allow people to vote on the variations they think will win and announce the winner. Have an idea competition to ensure you have enough in your test pipeline. CRO is most successful when it is part of the DNA of the organisation, something that is done as Business As Usual (BAU) that is fun! If you show success and talk about it, the budget will be allocated, and your team will grow. ▼
Cornelius Boertjens is a highly skilled Digital Marketing Strategist with over 14 years of experience in this field. He is the MD at Catchi , Australasia’s leading specialist in Website Conversion Optimisation, with offices in Auckland and Sydney. Cornelius is one of the Course Directors of the MA’s Certificate of Digital Marketing, and guest lecturer at Auckland University School of Business on Digital Marketing.
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GOT A PRODUCT, SERVICE OR BUSINESS WORTH TALKING ABOUT? Want to grow brand awareness in a more effective and useful way? TALK TO ESPIRE MEDIA ABOUT OUR CONTENT MARKETING SERVICES We offer a range of ways to attract and retain customers, by creating and curating relevant and valuable content to engage and add value to your audience. BENEFITS: • Expand your digital footprint • Grow brand awareness • Increase traffic to your website • Thought leadership • Media exposure • Attract new customers • And... grow SALES!
Get in touch with Jennifer now to discuss our options. +64 9 522 7257 (NZT) | jenniferl@espiremedia.com | www.espiremedia.com
Check out our blog for content marketing advice, tips and ideas, plus a free copy of our content marketing guide The Content Creation Cookbook!
▼ SOCIALMEDIA
BOOST YOUR BUSINESS WITH PINTEREST Marketing online with photographs BY Linda Coles
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f your business is something that ‘photographs well’, you’ll probably have heard of and be using Pinterest. Launched in 2010 with an estimated 100 million users, it’s the online version of scrapbooking, a place where you can ‘pin’ images that interest you and save them on ‘boards’ to discover and save creative ideas to. You can add colleagues to boards and collaborate with them on projects or keep a board totally private. Pinterest has oodles of images, so if your business is food, or clothing or travel or something that generates great photo opportunities, you need to take a closer look at what the site can do for you. Think clothing, food or bike porn, to put it bluntly, with images to dream over and aspire to. It could be your favourite dish, your next adventure or shoes to dream about. Most Pinterest members are female. Eighty-five percent, to be precise, with many following bridal, fashion and other beautiful product boards. They share or ‘re-pin’ what they find, and it’s that re-pinning that gives a product more exposure and ultimately the much-needed cash register activity that businesses crave. While females may be the main users, there is plenty to look at and pin for the males too. Whatever you click on, it takes you right back to the original site it was pinned from, no matter how many have re-pinned it or passed it on. That means if you pin a picture of your latest design from your website, and
someone re-pins it, and someone else repins it later, the original trail stays intact. If it’s been re-pinned twenty times and someone sees it and wants to purchase it, they can click back to the original source to purchase – your website. Making it even easier for browsers to buy your products, Buyable Pins are now trialling in the United States. Buyable Pins allow someone to buy directly from the pin and checkout on Pinterest – all very easy. Promoted Pins, which follow much the same process as Facebook or LinkedIn ads, are also available in the US at present, but I see them going worldwide if the beta is successful; a natural progression. In the meantime, there are Rich Pins – something that takes a bit of technical help – but allows you to share even more information on a pin. For example, the Whole Foods Market regularly share recipes via Rich Pins, enabling the browser to see the ingredients they need and then buy them at their local store or online. For Jamie Oliver, his recipes are back on his website where he wants you to go for more information and so he doesn’t need to use Rich Pins. Similar food ideas but with different desired outcomes. If you haven’t discovered Pinterest yet, take a good luck around and see how it can work for you. With great photography and a great product, you have the makings of a successful pin campaign. Now go and generate your audience. ▼
Linda Coles is a professional speaker, author and trainer in social media and building relationships at Blue Banana She is one of only 500 LinkedIn influencers worldwide, with a following of over 300,000. She has written three books published by Wiley; her latest, ‘Marketing with Social Media’, is out now.
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GOOGLEADWORDS
AVOIDING SHORT CIRCUITS ALONG THE PATH TO SEARCH MARKETING NIRVANA BY Chris Price
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ick of looking longingly at those top search placings hoping your website will magically appear? Want to try and jump to the top of the queue and open a paid advertising account with Google? They make it easy. You can go from nothing SHORT CIRCUIT #2 Failing to track the to having them debit your credit card for transformation of clicker to customer Okay, so you have read the guide, and work clicks in a matter of hours, but… is underway. However, you want results To allow this speedy entry into the land of NOW. So the logic goes something like this: search advertising, their setup system needs “I will let Google deduct $500 from my to take a few shortcuts. Some are valid; credit card each month for clicks. In return, others are I think more a short circuit then I will get more than this in new business.” and short cut. My job here is to highlight Sounds simple enough. those I think are important.
SHORT CIRCUIT #1: Not knowing why this type of advertising is required in the first place So your website is not showing up in the rankings but do you know why this is the case? Other than the most senior search programmer in Google, there are few others who will know in exact detail all the thousands of ranking factors that determine why one website is above another. Nevertheless, there are some wellunderstood themes of optimisation you should be aware of and be working to fix (Google shares these in their guide to Search Engine Optimisation, which you can find here . And unless you want to be paying your “Google click tax” for the rest of the life, then you should be steadily working on making changes where you should.
However, at its core it relies on you being able to track where each click went and if any decided to buy any of your products or complete a contact request for your sales people to talk to them. To achieve this, you need to track those clicking. And Google doesn’t force you to set this up BEFORE you buy your first click. They will let you spend as much as you want without ensuring you know where every cent went. This could require you installing Google Analytics on your website, configuring it to track and measure all you need and then ensuring your paid advertising account correctly linked and passing your click data through. Nope, I know it’s a bit of an overhead. However, the old adage of only being able to manage what you can measure is as true here as it is in any other part of business.
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Don’t go for hundreds of leads or thousands of dollars. Just look for the first conversion for a small group of search terms. Pick a few search terms that you think are a ‘dead cert’. Bid on these, send them to the most relevant page on your website and see what happens. Prove to yourself that you can spend that $1 with Google and produce $5 in prospective revenue back. 18
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SHORT CIRCUIT #3: Wanting to make a million when the first dollar is more important Zappos is a multi-million dollar online retailing business now owned by Amazon. They were one of the first to sell shoes online. In the beginning, they had to prove to themselves that people would actually buy this way. So they built a website and began. When someone purchased, they would buy from the normal shoe retailer and then deliver them to their customer. A complete disaster when it comes to transaction profitability, BUT a great way to create just enough of the system required to prove that customers would transact this way. You can apply the same logic to your campaign strategy. Don’t go for hundreds of leads or thousands of dollars. Just look for the first conversion for a small group of search terms. Pick a few search terms that you think are a ‘dead cert’. Bid on these, send them to the most relevant page on your website and see what happens. Prove to yourself that you can spend that $1 with Google and produce $5 in prospective revenue back.
Avoid all these short circuits and you are closer to achieving the nirvana of search marketing. That is; to build an advertising system that links the growth of your business to the growth of Google, so that as more people search, more people click – and for you – more people convert at a cost that makes you smile. SHORT CIRCUIT #4: Missing out on the research you can gather along the way Do you know everything you can about your by having one advert per keyword group, prospect audience? I certainly don’t, and not tracking your clickers and avoiding your many of those whom we work with would ‘Search Terms’ report in Google, but then admit the same. Therefore, every additional you would be missing out on all the fun snippet of research you can grab along the wouldn’t you? way is worthwhile. Avoid all these short circuits and you are Details like: Which text advert my prospects prefer between those I present them? Or the page on my website that, of the two we send clickers to, proves to be by far the worst place ever for them to land on. And finally: What search terms are prospects using on Google before they click my ad?
closer to achieving the nirvana of search marketing. That is; to build an advertising system that links the growth of your business to the growth of Google, so that as more people search, more people click – and for you – more people convert at a cost that makes you smile.
Now you can avoid gathering all this data
Sound like a plan? ▼
WWW.ARKADVANCE.COM
Chris Price owns Ark Advance, a web optimisation business that specialises in online marketing, and offers customised support services for a wide range of service based companies who want to grow their effectiveness online. Ark Advance also offer a free monthly email newsletter focused on helping business owners grow their services online – sign up for free at www.arkadvance.com
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CONTENTMARKETING
CONTENT TO CONVERSION: A SIMPLE NEW ZEALAND CASE STUDY How to combine social media and content for results BY Richard Liew
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any marketers and business owners understand the importance of content in terms of attracting or earning the attention of potential leads, customers and fans, as opposed to hijacking it through interruption marketing. But inevitably there comes a point where all newcomers to content marketing ask: “So how do I measure conversions? Come to think of it, what is a conversion when it comes to content marketing?” And fair enough too – if you’re investing your company or client’s money, you need to be able to justify your decision to the powers that be. In this respect, pay-perclick ads are a marketing manager’s dream. It’s easy to demonstrate the metrics/ROI because the whole pricing system is based on those metrics. Even the crustiest of financial controllers could understand and, therefore, buy into pay-per-click campaigns because there is a direct correlation between the amount you spend and the number of interactions you get. No clicks, no spend. Case closed. Thanks for coming.
has been unable to keep up with the increase in your desired keyword bid rates, or you’ve heard that Google is now offering its own ad blocking service…). What do you measure and how can you show that it helps achieve some part of your marketing objectives? Firstly, let’s be clear that ‘sales’ is not something you should be trying to measure. That’s not to say that content marketing won’t help you get more sales, rather that content comes to the fore in a different part of the buying cycle. It’s usually the beginning (or before the buying cycle has even begun), whereas a sale is the very last part of the buying cycle, the end result of all the other parts done well.
In practical terms, what I am saying is the purpose of content is not to make a direct sale. That’s called an ad, and we’ve all cringed at what happens when marketers try to make their articles sell. You get what can be viewed as the bastard child of content and advertising, that is the dreaded advertorial. So as any good sales manager knows, we need to apply measurement But let’s say you’ve heard that content metrics relevant to the appropriate stage in marketing is where it’s at (perhaps your budget the sales/buying cycle.
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The primary purpose of content marketing is to attract potential new customers into your marketing programme, and then keep and nurture them in your marketing programme until they are ready to buy. If you can’t buy their attention, you need to earn their attention- to entice them into your web, so to speak. In this regard, lead generation is a much more appropriate measure to apply to
your investment in content. So what does a lead mean to you? A click through to your website? A request for a value-added whitepaper? A sign-up to your email list? Here’s a quick example of a campaign we did recently which illustrates how we used one piece of content to generate over 150 new email signups. It was for one of our digital titles, NZ Photographer, but the principle and mechanics of the process can be applied to any media asset, business or organisation.
CASE STUDY CLIENT: NZ PHOTOGRAPHER GOAL: Create a piece of content to drive new subscribers to our email list. METHOD: 1. We wrote a thoughtful article on a subject our target audience is interested in 2. We posted the article on our website, alongside a simple email sign up box 3. We did a post on Facebook linking to the article and boosted it for $30 over three days. You’ll find the Facebook post and link to the article in question on our wall here (October 19, 2015) RESULTS: The Facebook post achieved a 9300 reach, 430 post clicks, 25 post likes, 18 likes of our Facebook page and seven post shares.
Pretty lame. But that’s OK because we didn’t create the content for Facebook likes. What mattered is that we also generated 150+ new email subscribers over those three days as a result. Cost per lead = $30/150 = $0.20 CONCLUSIONS: 1. The results of content marketing, right down to specific pieces of content, can be measured. As long as you measure the right things. 2. A good piece of content and a good opt-in device or call to action can work very well together. 3. Content marketing levels the playing field. Small companies can compete with big companies. You don’t need big budgets, and you don’t need fancy ideas. You just need to know what your audience cares about and to add value to them by creating a piece of content that talks to those needs. ▼
WWW.TWITTER.COM/ESPIREMEDIA
Richard Liew is an Auckland based entrepreneur and the founder of Espire Media, NZ Sales Manager, and NZ Entrepreneur magazines. He tweets irregularly at www.twitter.com/espiremedia
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MARKETINGAUTOMATION
Distribute content and monitor competitors with RSS BY Rebecca Caroe
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s simplifying your marketing a dream? Can you remain authentic while talking to your community with automated content creation? Should modern marketers be ‘real time’ using a newsroom to stay on top of current affairs? Step back and take a good long look at the reality of your brand, your business: • Where and how do your customers and prospects engage with your brand? • Are you front of mind daily, or are you an occasional, regular or impulse buy? • Do you have a clear time of year, time of the week or month where people buy or is it random?
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There are easy ways to automate your marketing message distribution using RSS. Cross-posting from a blog to social is an easy start. Most brands have customers and prospects in a range of channels and so sending messages in appropriate formats to each channel is a good way to repurpose content. IFTTT.com is one tool that facilitates this style of sharing. It enables you to cross-post images to Pinterest and Instagram while sending full blog posts onto LinkedIn, Facebook and Tumblr with short messages on Twitter. But standardisation of message distribution shows up to the discerning reader. If your brand needs to engage with readers in social channels every day, this should only form part of your tactical plan.
CONTENT MARKETING IS NOT THE ONLY WAY Using the functionality of social media to distribute marketing messages is smart, cheap and easy to do. Having an intelligent and responsive relationship with your audience cannot be automated. It can be planned and managed. And that’s where RSS comes in. In our earlier article we reviewed RSS to email as a specific content distribution tool for marketers. Today I want to look at a range of tactics that can support different marketing objectives.
3. Competitor analysis with an RSS feed gets you updates on when a competitor’s website changes. You can use Feedreader.com to find feeds on websites. For many marketers you don’t have time to check out competitors daily, this allows you to focus on them only when there’s something new to review. 4. Publish and share audio and video using a unique RSS feed. Audio and video are leading brand engagement tools and with careful planning, you can create an MP4 and then strip out an MP3 and use that on a different channel. Both can feed to your blog as well as publishing to subscribers in SoundCloud or iTunes.
1. Get RSS to distribute your blog content. But split your content into streams for different customer groups and have several feeds targeted to TREAT DIFFERENT CUSTOMERS DIFFERENTLY each prospect type. Stuff.co.nz sends Can you split your marketing a range of news articles out to custom communications and content creation audiences, all powered with RSS. into different streams for your different 2. Content discovery uses RSS to get audiences? Then this is your chance to alerts – Rowperfect.co.uk uses this simplify your marketing communications to find new products to sell in their and content distribution, while maintaining store. They have a search that delivers a your core, original publishing on the blog. weekly summary by email and the team Overall, a careful mix of automated and checks each one to find new websites, uniquely created content will help you products and bloggers in their niche. to spend your time appropriately in the An outbound sales email is sent, the channels that deliver engagement and sales prospect added to a database and the for your brand. ▼ sales team sweeps into action. WWW.CREATIVEAGENCYSECRETS.COM Rebecca Caroe is CEO of marketing execution specialists Creative Agency Secrets
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WEBSITES
WHAT’S THE NUMBER ONE QUESTION YOUR WEBSITE HOMEPAGE SHOULD ANSWER? BY Emily Wilson, Zeald
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hen a visitor arrives at your website, the first thing they will often ask themselves is “what does this business offer me?” or simply “what is this?”. You need to assure your website visitor within three seconds of them landing on
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your homepage that they have indeed landed in the right place. We often refer to this as ‘a clear UVP (unique value proposition)’ or a USP (unique selling proposition). This lets your visitor know what sets you apart and what you can offer them.
Some examples include:
MAINLAND Mainland let the visitor know quickly that they are about heavy vehicle licensing, through the use of images and text. They also are very specific about what location where they provide their service.
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EXCELSO COFFEE ROASTERS Beyond just text, Excelso uses a range of images to convey their message: they are about coffee.
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DURAFENCE Here the visitor can tell what sets Durafence apart from other fencing solutions. Perhaps they even solve a problem the visitor didn’t realise they had. If they were looking for a fence, they might not have realised that they ordinarily come with unwanted maintenance.
EXCAVEYOR Finally a solution for that excavation issue.
WWW.ZEALD.COM Zeald is a full-service website design company, passionate about designing and developing websites that are easy to manage, grow with your business, and generate results. The company has designed and developed websites for thousands of small to medium businesses since 2001; its team are specialists in innovative website design and eCommerce websites.
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DID YOU KNOW? THE UK RELEASES GUIDELINES FOR NATIVE ADVERTISING
Two of the key guidelines for content-based advertising are:
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) has released a set of guidelines to help the marketing industry there provide more transparency to consumers around digital advertorials.
• Provide consumers with prominently visible visual cues enabling them to understand immediately that they are engaging with marketing content (e.g. brand logos or names at the beginning of the content) • It must be labelled using wording that demonstrates a commercial arrangement is in place (e.g. ‘paid promotion’ or ‘brought to you by’). Find out more here .▼
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