Using the Digital Marketing Discovery Process to Maximize Your Content

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1 Using the Digital Marketing Discovery Process to Maximize Your Content A Well Rounded Inbound Marketing Strategy is Vital to Your Company s Digital

2 USING THE DIGITAL MARKETING DISCOVERY PROCESS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR CONTENT As we discussed in our previous whitepaper How the Digital Marketing Discovery Process Delivers the Mother Lode the discovery process is an important first step when establishing a relationship with a digital marketing agency and developing a strategy. Your agency should complete a discovery process before they start to work on your account. The discovery process can properly situate you in the marketplace and help develop your strategy going forward by pointing out where your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Throughout the discovery process, there are three main areas that should be analyzed: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Content and Social Media Marketing Inbound Marketing Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and Reporting This whitepaper will address the discovery process for content, , and social media marketing; an integral part of inbound marketing. To fully evaluate how your company s content marketing efforts compare to your competition s, four marketing areas must be evaluated: CONTENT MARKETING : Evaluating current content marketing efforts, the content marketing efforts of your competitors, and any opportunities. CONTENT DISTRIBUTION : Evaluating opportunities for distributing original content to 3rd party partners and any potential partnerships. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING : At Main Path Marketing, we have developed an in-depth discovery process that we believe is a leading model for the digital marketing industry. Our discovery process covers ten unique areas, each focused on creating an overall picture of what your business needs to improve, and what it is already doing well. We have completed a series of three white papers that outline the many different pieces of the discovery process, why each is essential, and how completion of each can benefit your business. Page 1 Evaluating current social media efforts, platforms used, and any opportunities. MARKETING : Evaluating current marketing efforts, the marketing efforts of your competitors, and how to grow an engaged list. Let s take a deeper dive into the four assessments required to fully complete the discovery process for Inbound Marketing.

3 CONTENT MARKETING 81% of U.S. consumers go online FIRST to research products. - Marketing Research leader Rothstein Tauber survey of 3,220 consumers Within the last decade, technology has changed the way that customers and businesses interact. Consumers gained the power to skip past commercials and get information via the Internet rather than ad-infused newspapers and magazines. Companies were forced to adapt, and instead realized that they could be the source of valuable information for their customers. Well done, original content amplifies SEO efforts by taking a keyword and building an entire article, video, or infographic around it. Content also amplifies a business by establishing its expertise, passion, and dedication to customer service. Content is the helpful, entertaining, and educational information that consumers need to make informed decisions about what products or services they will invest in. Following the new every brand a publisher mantra, Red Bull used content to turn itself into an extreme sports publisher that happens to sell energy drinks. Similarly, Van Winkle s presents itself as a sleep health publisher where you can also order a mattress if you like. If you re sending out an newsletter with interesting information in it, you re creating content. Your video about how to clean a window air conditioning unit is content. Content lives in your company blog, your newsletter, your YouTube, and social media channels. Good content marketers make sure you have all areas coordinated so that one piece of content can exist in many forms. The content marketing discovery process involves looking for adequate, original, and unique information on each website page, as well as throughout the blog, newsletter, and social media channels. Page 2 COMMON CONTENT MARKETING MISTAKES Many new to content marketing think it s a stream of press releases talking only about what s going on at the business. The focus must switch from soapbox to service, from bragging to helping. Craft breweries that know the holidays are coming up could create content about how to serve the lowest ABV (alcohol by volume) beers in the first courses to keep everyone friendly and awake throughout the dinner. Similarly, divorce attorneys facing the holidays should discuss healthy co-parenting during these sensitive times, rather than the recent award they won from the local bar association. CONTENT MARKETING IMPROVEMENT POTENTIAL When digital content (and even social media) was just getting started, old-school marketing pundits declared that no one would subscribe to a brand s blog or social page. They wouldn t willingly agree to be marketed to regularly. They did... in droves. People derive identity from the brands they love. It was the consumers who pushed brands into the content space by paying a lot of attention (liking, sharing, commenting) to helpful, entertaining, and educational pieces rather than the sales messages. Natural selection took over, quieting the loud sales messages and amplifying the unique knowledge the brand created and shared. Indeed, it was a shock to many businesses to learn that consumers really did want to learn the difference between HVAC units or the steps to tying a tie. Content makes your website bigger so that Google perceives it as more established. It s SEO efforts draw in consumers, ready to buy, who were simply

4 surfing the web. Content provides the material your newsletter and social media channels link to. It builds authority, humanizes your business, and gets your special offers to your followers and fans. The content that lives on your website can be found forever. One recent study found that while a new blog post does get the most attention in the first week, those analyzing its reach over two years should multiply the first week s reach by 1.4. In other words, if 1,000 people read the post in the first week, its long term readership will be 1,400. The blog post you write in three hours could bring in business for you for years to come. CONTENT DISTRIBUTION You can learn how to write great content, but if nobody reads it or links to it, there s no point in putting it out there. - Crazy Egg and QuickSprout founder Neil Patel Content s first duty is to attract potential clients to a website by using well-researched keyword terms and original information. It s a key player in search engine optimization efforts. Getting traffic to a new website takes time and investment. While the content on a client website will drive traffic (when a company creates an awesome blog post) it is often worthwhile to submit it to a more established, older website enjoying regular robust traffic. The link in that blog post will send some traffic back to your website. During a discovery content distribution analysis, opportunities for guest posts are identified and existing guest posting relationships are evaluated. We ll also look at a client s competitors to see where they are publishing their content. Page 3 COMMON CONTENT DISTRIBUTION MISTAKES The biggest content distribution mistake is to not distribute content at all. Also, distributed content should always be original don t try to send your partners posts that you have already shared on your site! POTENTIAL IMPROVEMENT The increased traffic to a website, as a result of content syndication, can raise its rankings, bring in leads, and increase conversions. Content distribution can help you build a reputation as a thought leader in your industry a trusted expert source for those interested in what you do. SOCIAL MEDIA Social media is the ultimate equalizer. It gives a voice and a platform to anyone willing to engage. Digital Royalty CEO Amy Jo Martin With so many websites out there, chasing customers over the Internet to get their attention proved impossible. Then Facebook hit, the newspaper of everyone s friends and family, an irresistible social event people can (and do) access several times each day. Marketers know to go where the customers are. During the discovery process, your social media marketing efforts are studied to see if you are reaching your customers via the channels you ve chosen. Your past efforts will reveal whether customers really dwell in the social spaces you think they do or not. Depending on your industry and target demographic, you may be on the wrong platforms, or ignoring a platform that would be

5 perfect for your product. The discovery process explores whether you re making the connections you think you are. COMMON SOCIAL MEDIA MISTAKES Because social media platforms change so often, it s almost impossible for anyone but a dedicated expert to keep up with the latest and greatest in social media. Most businesses don t have the expertise to monitor whether their posts are bringing much traffic to the website let alone sales. Therefore, businesses are shooting in the dark the majority of the time. Another common mistake businesses make on their social media channels is talking too much about themselves instead of their industry and what may be of interest to their customers. SOCIAL MEDIA POTENTIAL IMPROVEMENT If you have the right business to succeed on social media, your channel can help you build your newsletter, get traffic back to your website, and provide credibility. One of the local search ranking factors is social media involvement. Social logos on your website linking back to your channels reassure both Google and website visitors that your business is active and willing to make itself open to the criticism clients can leave in comments. Getting on a social channel that isn t as heavily trafficked (Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube) gets you out in front of your competitors. More, some of these channels aren t charging yet to reach entire audiences. Page 4 MARKETING US marketing executives believe that alone drives the same amount of revenue as their social media, website and display ad efforts combined. emarketer How Much Revenue Does Drive? Where social media marketing keeps you connected to your fans and potential clients, you only connect when those clients make the effort to go to Facebook, Instagram, etc. Newsletters go right to your customer s inbox, alongside important work-related and personal s. Newsletters from businesses have existed for decades. Despite marketing pundits declaring their demise, marketing wins the best return on investment year over year, close to what organic search efforts can bring. The good news is that the newsletter can consist of four teaser sentences of the month s blog posts with links back to the website. You can even choose to send out an newsletter for each blog post you write. The blog post amplifies the SEO efforts and the newsletters get more readers to the blog posts. Using several digital marketing tactics improves results. During the discovery process, your past marketing efforts are evaluated, including which were most successful and which fell short. If you aren t using marketing, we examine your company s assets to find the unique content that could build out an newsletter and how can benefit your business. COMMON MARKETING MISTAKES can work if the er understands the importance of the headline, how to get recipients to open the newsletter, and how to track results. Also, businesses!

6 running their own newsletter tend to skip it for a month or more when swamped with other priorities. The potential income the newsletter can create should NOT be ignored. Consistency is critical the longer you take between newsletters, the more likely your subscribers are to unsubscribe. MARKETING POTENTIAL IMPROVEMENT emarketer s September 2015 post How Much Revenue Does Drive? cited The Relevancy Group s study of hundreds of top marketers. These findings make clear how important the newsletter is. Specifically: 23% of marketers reported marketing drove at least 25% of the overall business revenues. 42% of respondents said drove between 10% and 25% of all revenues. Here is more data from The Relevancy Group s study: Percent of Overall Revenue Attributed to vs. other Digital Marketing Initiatives According to Us Marketing Executives, April 2015 % of respondents Note: n=300; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; *social, display, website Source: The Relevancy Group, The Relevancy Ring: Agency 5% Buyer s Guide 2015, Aug 24, % When strategized as a useful, entertaining, or educational tool, the newsletter can elicit 16% goodwill in your client base. Reliant on the information you provide to support your products 15% won t and services, customers understand that they be alone in utilizing them. As a powerful relationship-building tool, the newsletter increases the odds for retention, word of mouth marketing, and repeat business. Page 5 CONCLUSION Properly evaluating your inbound marketing efforts is one of the best ways to see opportunities for success. Many businesses who are working with a digital marketing agency for the first time will have made many of the mistakes listed above, and they may not know how to fix them. Identifying these problems early on in a business relationship sets the foundation for a successful digital marketing campaign and a successful web presence. Inbound marketing is one of your site traffic s biggest drivers, it s also a great way to engage with and entertain your customer base. A well-executed suite of inbound marketing efforts including content marketing, marketing, and social media marketing will encourage trust for your brand, build your brand s reputation, and increase your search engine rankings. Stay tuned to Main Path for the final whitepaper in our Discovery Series, focusing on Conversion Rate Optimization and Reporting!

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