8 Steps to Win at Search, Social, and Content Marketing

8 STEPS TO WIN AT SEARCH, SOCIAL, AND CONTENT MARKETING

Presented by Arnie Kuenn, CEO of Vertical Measures, @ArnieK

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

About Your Presenter…

•Vertical Measures is a 50 person PPC &

content marketing agency in Phoenix, AZ

• Instructor for the Content Marketing Institute

& Online Marketing Institute

•Columnist for Marketing Land, Chief Content

Officer & LinkedIn

•Co-authored the brand new content marketing

book: Content Marketing Works

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

“Content Marketing”

Google Trends

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

What is Content Marketing?

• Content marketing is the art of providing relevant, useful content to your customers without selling or interrupting them.

• Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your customers more informed before they buy.

• If you deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to your customers, they ultimately reward you with their business and loyalty.

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

This is not a 30 day R.O.I.

But The Long-Term Payoffs

Can Be Huge

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Courtesy of The Sales Lion

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

How Important Is Search?

of all consumers use search

prior to making a purchase

Source: GroupM

of searchers conduct non-

branded queries

of buyers click on organic

links vs. the sponsored ads

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Achieving Success Is A Continuous Process

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Develop Your Strategy - Summary

Note: Strategy will evolve through the whole process

• Why are you creating the content you are creating?

• Who is your audience?

• Who are you? – Determine your “voice”

• What types of content will you create?

• How will you develop your content?

• When will you develop your content?

• What does success look like?

• What is different a year from now?

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Buyers are searching for

information that helps them

make an informed decision.

Businesses that provide

that information - will win.

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

ASK YOUR

STAFF!

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Research Tools

Google Keyword

Suggest

Related

Searches

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

More Research Tools

YouTube Related

Searches

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

KeywordTool.io

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

More than 410

questions about

More than 3,400

using broad match!

“visit the grand canyon”

(exact match)

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

List All Content Ideas In A Spreadsheet

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Longer Search String = More Clicks

Source: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/keyword-stats.html - 9/01/2013

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Put Together An Editorial Calendar

VerticalMeasures.com/calendar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Create Useful Content

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Address Pricing / Cost

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Comparisons

Showcase your product or service then compare and contrast to others.

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Resource pages

38 links to this page

111 links to this page

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Interviews – Help Make You the Expert

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Curation or Aggregation

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Let’s Not Forget Product Pages

• Optimized Title

• Detailed Description

• Statistics

• Images & Video

• Product Comparisons

• User Generated Content

• Zappos, Amazon are great examples

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Free Guides, Case Studies & White Papers

- Lead generator- Link attractor- Long life span

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Core Elements To Optimization

Web Pages, Images or Videos

1. Links pointing to your content (Internal too)

2. Core Architecture

3. Titles & title tags (viewed in results)

4. Description meta tag (viewed in results)

5. Image alt text tags

6. H1 Tag (headline tag – only one!)

7. Page load times

8. Freshness of content

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Most Common Problems We Find?

• Unintentional duplicate content

• Duplicate title tags

• Blocked pages or site

• No image optimization

• Over optimization of anchor text in

backlinks and footer

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Advertising!

Pay Per Click (PPC) and Native Advertising

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Sharing New Content Can Be Very Simple

@ArnieK #VMWebinarPress Releases

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Distribute or Repurpose Your Content

Source: CMI & MarketingProfs

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

E-mail Campaigns

• Essential Elements– Visually appealing and branded

– Incorporate into editorial calendar: plan frequency

– Segmenting: targeted messaging

– Plan out segmented drip or follow up campaigns

– Stay brief: Read More, Get More Details

– Great subject line!

• Distribution Services:– Exact Target

– Constant Contact

– Vertical Response

– Mail Chimp

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

47% Of Emails Are Opened

On A Mobile Device

SOURCE: LITMUS

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

80% Delete Emails That Do

Not “Look Good” On Mobile

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Measure!

• Measure for successes… and

failures

• Check your rankings, traffic,

conversions and other key metrics

• Focus on the strategies that are

providing the best ROI and keep

rolling out the content

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Ways to Measure your Success

• How many people visited your website this month

compared to the previous months

• How many viewed a particular blog post so you can easily

see what type of content is most interesting to your readers

• How many people filled out a form to download a piece of

content you provided

• How many new subscribers to your blog

• How many people opened your emails and actually clicked

through them

• How many qualified leads you’ve gained

• How much has your revenue increased

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

All 8 Steps Are Important!

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

Courtesy of The Sales Lion

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

The Results…

• Yale’s traffic has grown from 40,000 visitors to 150,000 annually

• Leads have grown from 800 to 2,300 monthly!

• Revenue is up by 40% since starting their content marketing program.

• And according their president Steve Sheinkopf: “Profitability is up way more than that, because we eliminated marketing expense.”

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

This is not a 30 day R.O.I.

But The Long-Term Payoffs

Can Be Huge

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

“Arnie, I just can’t get our

management to see the potential

in this. Getting buy-in seems to

be impossible…”

The most common thing we hear after

our workshops…

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

It Takes Courage…

• It takes courage to give away something of value without the expectation of immediate return

• It takes courage to trust that your customers and prospective customers will reward you with attention and sales and loyalty at some point in the future

• It takes courage to play the long game, not the short game

Hat tip to Jay Baer of Convince and Covert

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

What if we never used these words again:

• Blogging

• FAQ’s

• Content Marketing

• Inbound Marketing

• Social Media Marketing

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

• Learning Center

• Helping

• Listening

• Teaching

• Communicating

Instead we said things like:

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

“When prospects visit our website, do

we help solve their problems better

than anyone else in the world?”

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

The companies that truly

understand these principles

are the ones doing incredible

things online.

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

We can bring our

content

marketing

workshop to you.

@ArnieK #VMWebinar

vert.ms/cmworks

Tweet: @ArnieK’s brand NEW content marketing book is free at vert.ms/cmworks #vmwebinar

QUESTIONS?

NEXT WEBINAR…

The 2020 Content Marketing

Strategy

Learn about:

• Top 5 challenges keeping content marketers up at night.

• Real approaches to challenges so that you’re better prepared

for this year - and the next 5.

• Actual steps you can take to make content marketing a

successful function in your business.

8Jan

11am PST

2pm EST

Robert Rose

Chief Strategy Officer, Content Marketing

Institute

Register: www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars