Content Marketing for Associations and Non-Profits

Editor's Notes

• #7: Our goal today is to be the trusted expert for our customers. That’s how we will grow our businesses.
• #8: We have to focus on what would make us interesting to our customers. Clearly, not our products and services (for the most part). In order to create a magnet to attract customers and prospects to us, we have to market differently than we have in the past.
• #30: Really think about this. What, if you employ content marketing with your social media, do you have to see different in 12 months?
• #39: OK…back to the worksheet. Rough out some specific things you’d like to see different. If now, or later, we need to put specific numbers to these. We also make sure we benchmark now so we can see improvement.
• #40: Who exactly is our target buyer? Get a mental picture for who they are. What information do you have? What do you need to get?
• #41: So… developing our Buyer Personas…. Now, before we get started here just know that there’s not just one way to skin this cat… There are a number of great methodologies out there for developing buyer or target personas… I’m going to show you one quick way to do this today – but there are others out there as well…. Just find what works for you… So, let’s start by understanding that You need one persona for every group you are marketing to.  For instance, and just to keep this simple… Let’s stay with our WIMPY Technology solution…. We’re the marketing manager in charge of marketing for a technology company – oh and by the way our WIMPY solution stands for Widget-Integration-Management-Program (or WIMP)…. That acronym was there when you joined the company…. So… okay the Solution is marketed to the Director of IT and the CFO at financial service companies, you would have two WIMP buyer personas: a Director of IT at a Regional Bank, and the CFO at that bank. Of course as I’ve said, if you have multiple products or more personas you would identify them separately…. To keep things simple for this lesson we’ll keep it to one product with two buyer personas…
• #42: We have Two Buyer personas here – our Director of IT and The CFO at Financial Services companies… We want to really understand these people… Let’s draw a bit of a personality profile… You can do this by interviewing customers… Or, by interviewing sales people, or talking with prospective customers – or usually some combination of all of that…. So, through that process we might determine that: Our Director of IT – his name is Jeremy – and he’s young (mid 30’s) and he works at an Insurance company. He comes in every day and supports the organization through desktop support – working on their computers and he’s the typical geeky IT guy… Responds well to Email, but not so much on the phone… He’s frustrated because he can’t tie all his office computers together into one dashboard… With his company growing so quickly – he seems to continually be chasing his tail and behind in fixing computers… So, he could see BEFORE a computer crashes that it’s going to crash… That’s where your WIMP solution comes in…. If he could just have that – he’d know BEFORE there were problems and could fix or replace broken computers… So, what’s the GAP with Jeremy – well he doesn’t really know how to build a business case for this. He’s not a business guy – and while he’s seen the Web site for the WIMP solution – he doesn’t really know much about it. So, the USP (or our Unique Selling Proposition) to Jeremy is that our WIMP solution will uniquely enable him to save more than 10 hours per week in saved calls, repair time and waiting for replacement parts. That means we can make Jeremy look like a rock star (his personal win) to his colleagues while we enable him to be 25% more effective at his job…
• #43: Okay, that’s quick – but you get the idea… What we’re identifying in building a Persona is the following… And the way I do it is to remember my old Journalism rules of Who What where When and WHY WHO is the persona – let’s get emotionally attached by giving him a name and making him real. WHAT does he do. What does his day look like – W hat is his normal routine WHERE is his Insight Gap – in other word where’s the gap with our target with and without our solution. How would our solution close that gap WHEN does he he need to close this gap… Is this immediate or is this not a critical piece to what he needs to live his life…. WHY does he care… This is the USP to this target. What can we uniquely to help this person out.
• #44: For the sake of time, I won’t go through the details of our other persona – the CFO – but her name is Cheryl – and our main value proposition is that we’re going to save the entire organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars through the implementation of the WIMP solution. This is a solution that pays for itself in less than 6 months. So, to sum up – what we’ll end up with is a profile of each buyer persona….. And really the key with developing buyer personas is detail…. The more emotionally attached and real you can make these people – the more value they will provide…. Beyond their buying process – understand what’s in it for them... I recommend naming them, personally, and finding a picture to even represent what they look like. This is a great exercise – it’s certainly a fun exercise and the profiles go way beyond just content marketing – they extend well into your other messaging programs as well… Okay… let’s move on now to Understanding our Buying cycle…
• #45: Back to the Worksheet.
• #46: What are the pain points and informational needs of our target. How do we find this out if we don’t know.
• #48: Google Alerts is a free tool. The first thing you need to do is create a gmail (or google mail account), which is also free. Once you have a Gmail account, go to www.google.com/alerts. Then, just type in your keywords. In this screen, you can see I typed in content marketing, which will search for the words content and marketing being in close proximity of one another, and send you an alert as google picks it up, once a day or once a week. You can set up as many words as you want.
• #50: Survey your customers with the email addresses you have. Or better yet, talk to your customers directly via phone and chat with your sales reps or dealer channel.
• #52: Leverage Twitter Search (search.twitter.com). Target your brand, your products and your keywords. You can set up RSS feeds on any one of these.
• #54: Back to the worksheet.
• #55: What is your secret sauce?
• #56: Develop out your secret sauce matrix.
• #57: Develop out your secret sauce matrix.
• #58: Back to the worksheet.
• #59: Okay, now that we know the informational needs and have the goals set, we need to see what’s working and what’s not in our company. Is there content happening right now in our organizations that we could be sharing and publishing?
• #61: So, this is a simple content inventory – and I’ve kept it simple on purpose… What you see there on the left is just the number to give us a count – then the title of the piece – and then the author – and then a Category (in this case it’s basically Corporate or Product or Marketing oriented – and then whether it’s a technical piece or not – and then what type it is… This is whether it’s a Whitepaper or a webinar or the blog or social media… This inventory gives me some flexibility for repackaging and means I don’t’ always have to remember…. Because if I’m only looking for marketing white papers authored by Jane – it should be pretty easy to just sort on those…. Now, your categories again may be much more complex and robust than this – or even much more simple… The key here is to get enough information so that it’s useful – but not SOOO much that this becomes an unending chore…. This can also be improved over time… And it’s about to get a whole lot more useful as I apply it to my Content Marketing segmentation strategy….
• #62: But now let’s look at the Buying Cycle – which is almost always more complex than the Sales funnel… And remember this is how our customers buy from us… What’s their process… For your product or service it might vary by product – or by Persona…. And we’ll talk about that in a minute… But here what you want to do is MAP out how your customers buy from you… And again just as an example and just to keep things simple, and again coming back to our WiMPY Widget company for an example… The customer’s buying cycle looks like this… I’ve represented here as a concentric venn diagram because it’s not necessarily linear – but their focus on what they want becomes more pronounced and what they’re looking at becomes more limited as they go through each phase… Awareness/Education - meaning they’re trying to just understand that there’s the existence of this thing… Information Search / Vendor Selection – Now they’re searching for information and finding solutions for this… this may be the first time you get a phone call RFI’s Pricing / Vendor Information – okay we’re identified – what makes us better… What is our pricing for this solution Purchase Decision – Now a purchase decision… See – in this case and this is a great lesson… Purchase decision making isn’t always the last step… Many times people will go through researchign a solution to their needs – and then decide to NOT make a purchase… But then once they have… they go BACK to vendors and do a Competitive / Alternative Searching – this usuallty ends up with a Short List – where the solutions are looked at very closely and then a contract for the sale… So – that’s our buying cycle mapped out…. Quickly I know – and I’m sure you can see how you could spend a lot of time on this… And how different buying cycles can exist with different products – or even different personas…. This will be up to you to know when to create separate maps for your content… But generally this is a great indicator… If you identify different buying cycles for yoru products – you can bet that you should have a different map to which to apply your content marketing… Okay… so, now let’s move on and talk about putting these things together…
• #63: So… what does it look like…. Well… you might remember our spreadsheet from the beginning….. So, as you can see – we’ve mapped in the Sales Funnel – there in blue withi Contact’s turning into leads and then being qualified and going to finalist – or short list…. And then under that we’ve mapped the buying cycle… Awareness and Education and so forth…. You’ll notice there’s overlap there’s some overlap with our Sales Funnel and the Buying CYCLE… There’s actually a lot more conversion rates – or decision points - through the buying cycle than in our sales funnel… But this gives us a way to start to get a common vocabulary and a common way to map out our content marketing strategy… If we all start talkinga bout building more Webinars to address Qualified Leads who are looking at Alternatives… Now we know… Or If we want to know which content pieces are best suited for those that are still just starting their Information and Vendor search… We have it… And we can target those Leads in our pipeline… And, as I mentioned in the beginning, you don’t have to go to this extent. If you want to map to just the sales funnel – that’s valuable. Or, if you want to map to just the Buying Cycle – that’s the second best… And if you want to go to this extent – you certainly can….
• #64: Okay…. It’s time to build your content segmentation grid. This is the meat of the exercize and really what we’re trying to accomplish…. So, we’ve learned We’re going to do this along two axes. The first axis is the personas, and the second is your sales funnel and buying cycle. So…. For the following example, we’re going back to our WIMPY solution and we’re going to assume that once a persona or prospective customer has given us Verbal – that we stop marketing to them… So, we’ll stop here at Verbal/Contract… But… We’ve got Jeremy and Cheryl our two personas listed here… And the sales stages across the top and the buying cycle under that… So, here’s our GRID… And what goes in the Cells? Well, that’s where you start identifying your inventory of content. So, going back to our WiMPY Widget company…. Let’s look at our current content marketing inventory…
• #65: And with our content inventory let’s build our content segmentation grid. Along the left we have our content inventory and we’ll just apply it into the appropriate cells within the Content Segmentation Grid… Relatively straightforward – and bound for a few fun debates about where content should belong. The key here is consistency. As we pluck each piece from our inventory and place it into our Content Marketing Map…. Don’t worry about holes just yet. Just know that having holes is definitely okay – and you’ll also almost assuredly have LOTS of top funnel stuff and probably more for one or two personas rather than others…. The key is just be hontest with yourselves and apply the content into the grid consistently…. So…. Okay, we’re almost here now…. Now we know what we’re doing and we’re building our Content Mapping and Segmentation strategy…. Now our next step…. Is to See how we’re going to fill those holes….
• #66: Fill in the Holes of Your Content Map Now of course, one of the conclusions you’ll have when you are starting (or continuing) to develop the wonderful content that will fill in the holes of your content marketing strategy is that you need to write more…. But in the mean time, don’t forget to leverage the content you already have. One of the things you’ll definitely notice is that some of your content produces LOTS of results – and some wont’ produce any.... And One of the benefits you have from doing the content inventory exercise is that you’ve got at least some idea of what you’ve got now… And you can re-package and re-use content in many cases for multiple purposes…. You’ll be surprised at how some poor performing content might really improve if it’s re-targeted to another persona or deeper in the funnel….
• #67: So for example let’s go back to our good friends at the WIMPY technology company… Remember that one of the White Papers we keep talking about was one focused on Efficiency and saving money… Since it had to do with dollars and cents – we plugged it into Cheryl’s persona – and we made it top of the funnel – where a CFO looking for a solution will probably come in and want to educate themselves… But here’s the thing… Remember, Jeremy’s path through the same buying process is a little different…. At some point a little deeper in the funnel, he’s going to have to go get permission from Cheryl (or somebody like Cheryl) to spend this money…. Jeremy may need to also build a business case… And that may be something we want to test… So, let’s just look at that white paper – make sure that we’ve got the content in an appropriate tone for Jeremy – and let’s just retitle it so that A) we know it’s different… And B) so that it’s appropriate for that persona… and, we can then simply plug it into the top Middle of the Funnel – in the Information search part of the buying cycle… We’re helping Jeremy to ultimately facilitate a purchase decision… So… Okay…. We’ve now learned how to build our grid and start filling in the content holes…. Now we need to measure what’s resonating and show our success…. Let’s take a look at that…
• #70: Where to find the great content?
• #71: Some idea for you Send sales reps with flip cams…talk to your customers. Ask them about their challenges and publish this. Do your execs or marketers give presentations? Share them through slideshare or YouTube. What tells your story better than sharing the expertise of your employees. Unlock them. Get them set up with social media. Get them a blog (more on that later). Teach them how to be successful.
• #72: And let ’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #79: Back to the worksheet.
• #80: Identify where your customers are hanging out at…
• #81: Besides blogs, where are they. Get your list together and figure out the five or so communities that you are going to be super active in.
• #82: Back to the worksheet.
• #83: Ok, now we can start to talk about content. Focus on two types of content.
• #87: Back to the worksheet.
• #88: http://mashable.com/2009/04/01/optimize-facebook-page/ You can spread updates out so that you carry on a persistent but unobtrusive dialog with your Fans. Post too often and your page updates will start being hidden, or you’ll lose fans. Too seldom and you’ll be forgotten. Try to mix up different update types – a status update, a Link, a Note, a Photo or video update. By creating a calendar, you can also schedule moderation periods for comments if you feel this is necessary for your brand. Most Interaction activity (including comments) will occur within 24 hours of an update before it drops out of Fans’ news feeds. By recording all activity on a schedule, it’s easier to map it against exported stats data from your page’s Insights. This can show you Total Interactions around different content types to gauge which gets the most traction/conversation, and track Removed Fans against certain update types.
• #90: Back to the worksheet.
• #91: Now that we have most of the plan done, we need to think about how to execute this. Who’s leading the program. Who’s the chief content officer? What can you do internally? Where do you need to find expert help? Do you outsource none, some or most of your program?
• #92: Here’s the key though…. The more you explore different analytics tools and apply it to your content the better… But All of the meaningful insight can be gathered separately… You don’t need a fancy analytics tools to look at your customers that you’re closing and determine which persona they fit in… Or talk to the sales people to determine what the customer’s buyign cycle was…. Understanding where your CUSTOMERS are coming from is what’s key… Also… and maybe most importantly… Segmenting the CONTENT.. And BUYING CYCLE… And then applying referral traffic to it to lay over your content mapping is what’s going to help direct your editorial efforts…. For example, you may find that you’re getting a TON of downloads for content directed at the top of the funnel, but none of the CFOs that you’re closing are finding any value lower in the funnel. Or, you may find that GOOGLE PPC ads are giving you a lead for someone who is much higher in the funnel (i.e. awareness), and organic search is giving you more “opportunities.”  How does that insight for helping you direct media dollars? Or, you may find that ALL your Directors of IT are coming into the middle of the funnel, and all that time you’ve been spending on education and awareness would be better spent on developing more valuable deep funnel content like demos, free trials and samples. This is a good way to start to think of it…. Your Content Marketing BECOMES YOUR CAMPAIGNS – so you can start to set up separate ad campaigns, SEO efforts and PPC campaigns directed toward the titles of your content… This in turn tells you which one turns in the leads… Remember our chart from the beginning of the course…. We can generate this chart because we can track leads… And we can tag leads with what campaign (which we see as an attribute of that piece of content). And in this case we know that our IT DIRECTOR WHICH WIMP Solution… Generates a LARGE number of leads…
• #106: Here are a few major takeaways that s of going through the content segmentation and mapping exercise: Develop Your Personas – but don’t belabor the personas…. Develop your persona profiles but get them done. Don’t worry about complete accuracy and every granular detail. If you skip though, make a commitment to improve them over time. So, either do the work up front or devote time every week/month to improve the accuracy. The buying cycle is very important – and understanding it from your consumer’s p.o.v. rather than what might be your sales stages is importanht. Bonus points for doing both, but understand this well. Getting this right will be hepful in both measurement – and improving your conversion rates. When you build out the content segmentation grid – resist the immediate temptation to throw your most valued piece of content marketing at every stage. Where does it REALLY belong. Better to have holes and know you have holes – rather than pretend you don’t. When filling those holes in your content map – the more you identify here the better. Everything goes in here including Educational content to case studies to your blog, to your email newsletters and your product pages on the Web site…. This process will also usually help identify a gaping hole in your Web site structure. Get ready to be surprised at the gaps in your content.
• #107: Back to the worksheet.
• #121: Paul, let’s start with you. Can you share a bit about your concept of the content factory?
• #123: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #124: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #129: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #134: Paul…let’s go to you. Give us the why and how’s of syndication.
• #135: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #137: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #150: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #153: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #159: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #172: The results: 43% of Deliver readers say it has increased their intention to spend more on direct marketing; 67% say it has increased their opinion of direct marketing; and more than 50% have taken action in the last year as a result of Deliver articles. There have been more than 70,000 downloads from the DeliverMagazine.com website, including more than 3,130 white papers. During the first six months of 2008, the website received more visits each month, with 9,347 visits in January and 43,036 in June. But the overall goal is not web site visits, it’s getting marketing decision makers to understand the value of direct mail and take the action to do more of it as part of their marketing program.
• #194: And let’s start by discussing how we help buyers make better purchasing decisions. Because before we can truly understand what we do for vendors like you, it’s critical to understand what we do for the buyer community.
• #198: Listen first…here are some great examples of listening…not only to gather information and research, but to truly show you are human beings. The comcast guy now has a book out.
• #200: Leveraging Tweetmeme
• #201: Don’t use Auto Directs