Blog

Building a content marketing campaign: Content strategy

January 23, 2019
All, IFA, MVPro

Content marketing strategy is a big term that’s used to describe everything across the content lifecycle, from idea to expiration and all the steps in between. But without a driver, your content will never get off the ground. Get to the why behind your content strategy. Here are some tips on where to start:

What do you want?

This may sound like a huge question, but content strategy in it’s most simple form is an extension of your marketing strategy, if you don’t have a marketing strategy, you’ll struggle to prove success in ANY activity.

The content strategy is the bridge you need between your marketing strategy and your tactics, which we’ll come onto in a minute.

With these objectives, you can start to set measurable metrics and KPIs to help you judge success and identify areas of improvement. We’ll cover this in a future blog post :).

Content Plan

Every good strategy needs action and implementation and that’s exactly what the perfect content plan brings you. It’s time for timelines, accountability and progress. Delegate the writing to your team and get different viewpoints on topics which also helps position your team as thought leaders and showcase your internal knowledge, which we’ll talk about a little later on.

Key Factors in Your Content Marketing Strategy

Your Audience

Who you are writing for is the most important factor in your content marketing strategy. What is their personality type and where do they spend their time? There are elements of their personality that you can pull on strings with humour and industry terms.

Experiment with content types

There may well be gaps in the industry for you to start a specific content type, a YouTube series, a Podcast, mini-infographics and snapshots. By researching the industry and identifying where the content gaps are you can build a content Kingdom.

In-house expertise

Building a content strategy is a great opportunity to showcase your internal thought leaders. They don’t have to write the content, just list out bullet points or do interviews from which you can craft into expert insights that you can transpose into your content strategy.

Your team need to see the value in your marketing efforts to get involved, and getting buy-in from a higher level is an absolute must. If your team are still against writing content for your organisation, consider sourcing an industry expert to pull together a short content series.

Content strategy is more than just tactics, and it feels like we’ve touched on it here, but to go a little deeper, talk to one of our industry experts on how to make content marketing work for you.

How to Follow up Leads After a Trade Show

January 16, 2019
MVPro, RoboPro

Most salespeople in their careers have at some point fallen victim to the sometimes false sense of security that a large pipeline can bring. However, without proper management, that potential business can forever remain as a perpetual pipeline without ever converting into actual sales.

If you’ve marketed your appearance at trade shows effectively, you will have spent most of your time there speaking to potential customers. You now have a mountain of sales leads to follow up on and a horde of competitors who are equally trying to secure businesses for themselves.

Striking a balance can be tricky. You want to keep the customer engaged and stay at the front of their minds, whilst also being aware of any scavenging competitors swooping in and stealing your sale at the last minute. At the same time, there are only so many times you can make a phone call or send an e-mail to your contact without seeming pushy or overbearing; No one likes having to deal with that kind of salesperson.

You can however influence a purchasing decision between each time that you directly reach out to your decision makers. Here are the top ways to follow up your trade show leads:

1. Phone them!

This is simple; reconnect with your lead through a telephone conversation to discuss your proposal in more detail. There is no substitute for a verbal conversation. Glean information from your lead about their needs to enable you to match up how your product/service can meet those needs.

2. Send emails.

Make a note of the conversation with your lead in order to summarise your conversation and outline the next steps to progress your discussion. Consider arranging a face-to-face meeting or if they’re remote, getting a skype meeting arranged, build rapport and utilise your personality.

3. Partnerships.

You can have an influence on your lead without contacting them yourself directly. A partnership with a media platform enables you to get your content in front of your lead or connect with new contacts.

4. Social Media.

Connect on LinkedIn, follow on Twitter, give their page a like on Facebook; it isn’t intrusive if you’ve already made that initial connection. Reach out to them on each social platform, where they might be more active and respond to your messages in a real-time environment.

There you have it, four quick ways to follow up on trade show leads. Let us know how you get on, and if you need to find the right partner for your machine vision or robotics trade shows, consider MVPro.

Social Media Advertising – What To Consider Before You Start

January 11, 2019
All, IFA, GBI, MVPro, RoboPro

Be Goal-Orientated (spending your budget in the right place)

“When you’re starting out, it’s hard to pinpoint one social platform to focus on, and a lot of the time the social platform you choose is just the tool that fits best into your overall objective. When focusing my social media advertising efforts, I always start by going back and reviewing the marketing campaign I’m running, and what its objective is. If it’s designed to increase brand awareness, it’s best to ask the question ‘how can I target my audience as effectively as possible?’.  As you progress along the sales/marketing funnel, you’ll start using social media advertising to answer a very different question: ‘how can I get visitors who didn’t convert back to my site?’.”

“It’s always worth looking at where your audience spends their time before deciding where to focus your social media advertising budget. When allocating budgets, I tend to prefer a linear model across all available options and analyze it every two days. Then I have the control to shift budget across social networks once I’ve calculated the ROI and success of each channel.”

Go Where Your Audience Is (maintaining reach in a shifting landscape)

“Users these days have more choice as to where they spend their time on social media. I know very few people who have the same social media preferences/behaviours. This directly impacts brands, as the need to analyze more competing social channels is making the whole process a bit more complicated. Two years ago, it felt like most people spent their social media time on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but as the social media user evolves, it’s only natural that advertising on social media will as well.”

“To use an example, LinkedIn groups used to be a go-to in any marketer’s social media armoury, but today the results this tactic generates are poor. The users that the brands were targeting in these groups haven’t disappeared, they’ve simply gone down different social media paths. Sure, some stick around, but with Reddit, chat apps, and Facebook groups, these quality conversations have moved. Brands will need to follow them.”

Think Like a User (anticipating audience reaction)

“As a marketer, I often look at a hyper-personalized social media ad and I think ‘that’s a clever advertising campaign’. However, I know plenty of people who find such tactics annoying and intrusive. When done right, personalized automation enables relevance; when it’s overly intrusive it can be detrimental to a brand.”

“For me, it comes down to two things:

  1. How do you feel about the ad you’re displaying?
    If you think it’s too intrusive, it probably is.
  2. What will your audience’s reaction be?
    If you are targeting a group who respect their data privacy and are compliance-focused, the likelihood is that they won’t respond well.”

“For me what’s interesting about this is the targeting falls onto the social platform, not just the brand. I rarely hear people say ‘Mercedes used my name on a personalized number plate, how creepy is that?’. Instead, it’s ‘Facebook showed me an ad the other day…’  and that tends to work in advertisers’ favour IMHO.”

Tags: Social Media, Paid Advertising

Building a Content Marketing Strategy: 5 Pillars of Distribution

November 26, 2018
All

Content marketing means a lot of things to a lot of people. And creating content is the first of many steps towards your marketing objectives. Once your content has been designed, the copy has been written and the content marketing strategy has taken shape, it’s time to start thinking about content distribution.

Around distribution, there are two core questions that you need to ask yourself before you get started:

  1. Who is my content aimed at
  2. How do I reach those people

Beyond the distribution strategy are the fundamentals; the five core distribution channels in marketing.

1. SEO / Organic Search Strategy

Optimising your content for search engines is easy, but how do you know what you want to rank for? The research goes alongside your content marketing strategy, answer questions you know people are asking for and keep a theme to your content.

Use a research platform to get search numbers and competition levels to find opportunity and spot the gaps in the content sphere. We personally like to use Moz, but there are plenty of other options out there.

2. Get Social

Sure, tweeting a content piece is great, but realistically you need to share that content weekly across a variety of social outlets to get users to interact with it. This helps increase recognition and continually drives website content.

Go beyond your regular channels and expand your reach. To make your content go even further, consider an influencer marketing strategy and utilise the power of your team’s social media accounts.

3. Email marketing

With GDPR ensuring your data opts in, now is the perfect time to email your engaged contacts with your fantastic piece of content. If you have no data, don’t panic. There are organisations that will include your copy in their email newsletters. Talk to the CML team now to find out how.

4. Paid Solutions

This may not always be right for you, but it’s always worth considering. How can you target people that are beyond your standard reach? With social media, you can target by keyword, followers of accounts, groups and by location, so it’s definitely worth looking at these paid options.

On Google, targeted keywords might not be right for a content marketing strategy, but banner ads work on industry-specific websites and YouTube pre-roll campaigns on specific channels both work. With banner advertising, some sites can be targeted through Google, others you need to contact for a quote directly.

Finally, remarketing options go across social media and banner advertising through Google. If your content is relevant to a specific section of the site, these campaigns can be tailored to individuals that visit your site but aren’t customers.

5. Referral and PR

Beyond your distribution, how can you get a new audience to read your content? Reach out to industry thought leaders and get your content in front of their audience.

These are the five pillars. What have you found to be the most effective methods of distributing content?

Getting Started With Audience Education

October 24, 2018
All

Content marketing has changed the fundamentals of marketing in recent years, with the most notable changes happening in the B2B hemisphere. Now, we as B2B marketers have gone beyond the traditional ‘Brand awareness straight to lead generation’ methodologies, and new stages have been introduced to the buying cycle. These stages go through the standards of audience education – getting individuals who can identify with your brand to know who it is you help, and to generate interest.

Previously in B2B this role was very much made with an introductory phone call by a sales representative, and where telemarketing can still be effective, the audience can now research your brand. As you need to control as much as you can, including what they read. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself before you start content marketing and how you can find the answers.

Who are they?

This is marketing 101. Who are your target audience? Once that’s identified, consider who the specific piece of content is aimed at. This will allow you to speak directly to them and start to plan your content distribution alongside that.

What do they know?

What do you communicate regularly and what opinions do you want to change? If you don’t know, trial a survey and get involved with a media partner to analyse their readership. once you’re able to identify this, you know what message you want to go out with.

What do they need to know?

There are two ways of playing this, the first is the PR route. Have you released a new product, are you going to an event or have you made a fantastic new appointment. You may want to communicate these, but you need value as well as news.

Where this value comes is in the why behind the content. Showcase your internal expertise, shjow the latest applications and how you’re changing the world. This content always lasts longer than the PR news bullshit, and has a shelf life.

How can you communicate it to them?

We’re talking mediums.

What ideas would be the best, and most effective. Then which are the most realistic. I’d love to be able to create a daily video, but you have to work up to it. Start with blogs, the occasional video. This to what content mediums are missing from your industry? That’s a good place to start.

Who else will you reach?

The idea with this content isn’t just to educate people who know about you, it’s to reach the wider community of people who don’t and educate them about your excellence. Consider distributing this content not only to your audience but the wider circle of media partners, through other blogging sites and media partners.

What are the next steps?

Make it clear what you want users to do next. Add a clear call to action about what you want users to do next.

These are the top level questions, each has a tier below where the answers get a lot more specific depending on industries and your own organisation. What do you find helps you when producing thought leadership content to educate your audience? I’d love to know.

7 Ways To Ensure You Master Trade Show Marketing

October 11, 2018
MVPro, RoboPro

It’s easy to say you’re going to go to a trade show. Put your name down. Turn up on the day. Go home.

But what makes a tradeshow successful? How can you ensure your tradeshow marketing is on point and makes the most out of every event that matters to you. I’ve pulled together these seven tips to master trade show marketing and make every event work.

1. Define your objectives

What are you hoping to get from the trade show? What does success look like? Ultimately you want to develop your business, meet new customers, give your company and brand exposure. What’s most important and how will you measure this?

You can put your trade show marketing plan down to one objective to give your team focus. This will ensure every action is results focused and you can start to calculate metrics to measure your trade show success on.

2. Plan your message

What makes your company, products or services unique? Why should a potential customer make the time to speak to you? Work out how to communicate this perfectly before they’ve even approached you, so that when they do you can grasp the opportunity.

Ensure in all your trade show marketing – before, during and after – communicates the same message, which leads me nicely onto the next point!

3. Consistency is key

What you communicate when you’re at the show has to match what you’ve communicated when promoting yourself in the build up to the show.

The more consistent your message, the more recognisable. Everyone knows the ‘just do it’ campaigns, but the branding, language and tone needs to be consistent in every communication you broadcast. This applies externally, but also within your team, if your team are overwhelmingly positive that will come across as your company employing happy, nice people.

4. Press and PR

Everyone who goes to a busy trade fair plans their time there in advance of the show starting. That’s true for exhibitors, visitors and potential customers. Make sure you give them a reason to prioritise visiting your booth for a conversation with you. Get a message out there.

Plan your PR strategy in advance of the show, you may integrate traditional PR opportunities with more modern technology. That said, your POR and press strategy needs to tie in to your event strategy. Where are your audience reading pre-show press and what do you want them to do at the show. For example, if you want to attract existing customers, offer a free upgrade on your existing product at your booth. This can be shared in your newsletter, or on your social channels.

As a second example, you may want to attract new visitors to introduce your service, this is an opportunity to look into partnerships with media companies to distribute your message to a new audience.

5. Grab the audience’s attention

At a busy trade fair, all exhibitors are competing for attention. Make sure your brand exposure is high. Visitors are more likely to visit companies that they recognize, they need to know how to find your booth and your salespeople need to be approachable.

This isn’t solely at the trade show, in person. Grab their attention before the show, by promoting your attendance and giving the benefits of visiting your booth. If potential visitors aren’t at the show, record the bits they missed in an In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) snapshot.

6. Before, During and Post event

Every exhibiting company will be planning well in advance of the show, ways to ensure that potential customers prioritise speaking to them over speaking to you. You have to be on the front foot in promoting your messages. No amount of exposure is too much, if you’re confident in your products and services, communicate that confidently.

Identify media partners whose audience is the demographic that you want to speak to. Make the most out of the show, start by booking meetings in advance. Lots of visitors may plan to speak to your company at the show and then be put off by the fact that your booth is busy every time they approach. Every meeting you book before the show starts is a guaranteed conversation with a potential customer.

Having achieved this at the show, don’t underestimate the fact that your potential customers have had meetings with several of you competitors and will have been exposed to lots of information. Target them with your communications after the show to re-engage them and make sure that your products stand out.

7. Following up

Prepare your plan for following up on the leads you’ve generated at the show. Timing is crucial, make sure you target the right people using the information you’ve gained to progress the sales cycle.

Going back a couple of points, ensure your post-event messaging is consistent with your event messaging. This will increase familiarity and your audience will start to identify your brand.

Let me know your thoughts on trade show marketing. I’d love to hear from you, connect with me on LinkedIn and let’s have a chat.

Tags: Event Marketing, Trade Show Marketing

How to Create Infographics People Will Actually Like

September 26, 2018
All, IFA, GBI, MVPro, RoboPro

Content strategies are an awesome idea, but implementing what you’ve put in place now needs to be followed. Any content strategy works on paper, but putting ideas into practice is where a lot of small businesses, and even elite corporates, can come up short.

Infographics are cool, hip and if they’re not implemented correctly insanely complicated. Turns out, you can make infographics like a boss with the right designer, researcher or if you’re feeling super talented, it’s something you might want to do yourself.

Where to start? Topics and themes

The age old question before you start any content venture. Why on earth would anyone want to read th?s. What problem are they trying to solve? If it doesn’t solve a problem, there’s probably no point writing it.

For example, I’m writing this about the problem in the industry currently. Most of the content currently produced by the industry is dull. And content distributed by our platforms performs best when it’s… not. So, our relationships with clients work best when their content performs well on our platform and continue to work with us.

Don’t make me do it… Research

“Oh no, not research” Yes. Research is king. Gather statistics and check sources. If you want to know emerging technology and trends, data from 2008 will be worthless. As Vic Reeves said 72% of statistics are made up on the spot, so check your sources.

After your research it’s important you look into variables and alternate metrics before you look into pulling out your own insights. I use this example a lot, but there is no link between Worldwide non-commercial space launches and sociology doctorates awarded (US) despite what the data tells us. Thank you tylervigen

Metrics, numbers and breakdowns

The next step is to find relevant numbers and charts to your topics, preferably those that b ack up your initial point. A good infographic will only need between 5 – 10, but if it’s not metrics you need and it’s more of a landscape it may be best to skip this part.

Design is essential to any content

It’s true. There are a lot of considerations with the design that are worth exploring, the layout, the structure, how you are going to communicate your story. The best infographics are clear and simple. They communicate the data in a way that is immediately apparent and eyecatching.

If design doesn’t come naturally to you, consider a template rather than starting from scratch. Try to avoid overloading your infographic with content. Keep it short and sweet

Share it with the world

The next step after you’ve created your beautiful infographic is to share it wherever you can. Send it to the industry press, share it on social media and embed it on your website.

Beyond that, upload it to Pinterest, or snippet the infographic into key chunks for easy reading.

If you have any other Infographic questions, let me know. You can reach me on Twitter @jj_stockwell.

4 Key Considerations to Measure Your Next Brand Awareness Campaign

September 12, 2018
All, IFA, GBI, MVPro, RoboPro

I’m currently rewatching Mad Men. Not for Don Draper’s attitude or for Elizabeth Moss’s transformation into one of the biggest actresses to date, but for the marketing. The show covers marketing in it’s most raw form. Utilising brand awareness campaigns to influence an audience into making a decision.

I feel like in this age of digital advertising we’re playing the same game, but with different tactics. Brand awareness campaigns are still about changing perceptions of organisations, but as brand awareness campaigns are so easy to set up we, as marketers, are guilty of rushing into them without thought, then blaming other parameters that we cannot control for their demise.

Here are the top considerations to make the most of a brand awareness campaign, that won’t take long and will make a difference.

1. What do your audience currently think of you?

You may or may not know this before the campaign. Well done if you do, but it’s definitely worth revisiting before EVERY brand awareness campaign. A goods way to get an idea is, quite simply, by asking people. Send out a survey, ask people who no longer use your service why they didn’t and incentivise them to tell you why. People may not be honest with you initially, but after open questions, they will become more honest with their feedback… this information will feed number two!

2. What perception do you want to change?

I could have phrased this better, but using the information from step one what do you want to change. Your brand awareness objective may be completely different. You might not need to change anything, but inform them about a new product or service you offer. In which case that’s what you need to communicate.

3. How are you going to measure it?

This is where Mad Men may fall a little short. Sure the marketing guys will say that their advertising campaign contributed to an increase in sales. But was it the build-up to Christmas that saw an increase in toy sales? Was it the end of the financial year that caused the IFAs to consider your investment fund? Measuring a brand awareness campaign can be a case of ‘What are the metrics! but every marketing campaign needs quality analysis (not necessarily metrics) as well as quantity.

4. What can we take out of it

“Did it work? Who knows. Let’s buy more impressions in the hope that it does.” – A painful conversation with a media buying agency.

Realistically, your brand awareness campaign won’t drive traffic to your website. It won’t generate thousands of product enquiries. What it will do is change your audience’s perception of your brand. All these steps will help you measure as long as you relate them to your overall campaign objective. Like the Mad Men of Madison Avenue, we need to focus on two things. Campaign objectives and our audience’s needs. That’s what will make your marketing cut the mustard in 2019.

Continue reading 4 Key Considerations to Measure Your Next Brand Awareness Campaign

Tags: Brand Awareness

Building a Content Marketing Campaign: Social Distribution Tactics

September 10, 2018
All, IFA, GBI, MVPro, RoboPro

All content marketing campaigns should start with a strategic, business process which focuses on distributing valuable and relevant content. Before you start with content distribution, stop and think about the wider context and your marketing goals; who are you targeting? What strategy objective are you achieving with this piece of content?

By sticking to your content strategy, you can ensure that you stay organised and give yourself the best chance of achieving your goals. Once you have outlined and identified your goals, you’ll want to make sure you distribute your content in effective ways.

How can content be distributed through social media?

Social Media is everywhere; with a phone in everyone’s hands, utilising social media is key to every marketer. Each social media platform will have its own strengths, depending on industries, target audience and objectives:

  • Facebook: marketers have the ability to place targeted ads and monitor content marketing campaigns. Facebook is also great for hosting and distributing videos and image advertisements. The targeting options on advertising are huge reasons why it’s still a popular content distribution tool.
  • Twitter: the use of hashtags will enable a marketer’s post to go further. Character limitations ensure that your headline is concise and eye-catching, whilst retweeting relevant posts will help you stay connected. Twitter also has features such as lists, moments and polls, where you can interact with your audience as well as solely use it to distribute content. This can help you gauge audience sentiment and get ideas for future content marketing campaigns.
  • LinkedIn: By sharing articles and posts in groups, a marketer’s post can engage with and subsequently connect with other professionals. Users frequently comment and interact on the content itself, and gives a personal feel behind each piece of content. LinkedIn Publisher posts are a great way to extend the reach of your content.
  • YouTube: video is becoming increasingly popular; YouTube is a very useful platform for marketers to share knowledge and insights about a brand in a captivating and easily consumable way. Add your content to playlists and embed it on your website and in blogs as a next step.
  • Instagram: starting to emerge as the ‘dark horse’ for B2B content marketing, Instagram is the social platform that users engage with most frequently. Although long form content isn’t as effective here, smaller snippets gain traction and interaction. Look at GE for example.
  • Soundcloud: maybe you don’t have the resource to design content, but you have the industry expertise to showcase internally. Podcasting through Soundcloud is a great way to communicate your leadership. All you need is a phone and a microphone to get started.

Distributing your content through these different channels will help you to effectively build brand awareness and give knowledge to your target audience. Successful content distribution will make your audience feel more empowered with the knowledge that you are giving them, making your marketing more customer centric, rather than sales centric, helping your audience to feel more connected and educated about your brand.

Continue reading Building a Content Marketing Campaign: Social Distribution Tactics

Design In Content Marketing

5 Top Tips For Design In Content Marketing

September 10, 2018
All, IFA, GBI, MVPro, RoboPro

Content design is often the forgotten element of content marketing. It infuriates me when we see a seven-page whitepaper some through from a client come through in an aged powerpoint, or worse… Microsoft Publisher. Seeing all that effort go in to the wording, the language, the tone, here are my five tips for getting the design right:

1. Give your brand an identity

Let your readers know who you are, what you do and why you do it. The first part of this is your logo. This is your visual identity, use it throughout all your content assets to help create consistency and brand recall.

2. Create and implement your brand guidelines

This is vital, readers need consistency of design in content marketing, so it is extremely important to have brand guidelines to give your organisation it’s individuality. This in turn will influence your visual presence across digital and print content. Some brand guidelines ‘musts’ include company colours, typefaces, terminology, icons, imagery, stationary and clothing.

3. Align creativity with strategy

Give your company a long-term creative strategy that aligns with your business strategy. This can be integrated through templates for content which again helps create further consistency and communicates your expert content effectively.

4. Engage with your customers with creative content to boost Brand awareness and promote growth

Use both print and digital to interact with your readers, make sure to utilise social media platforms to build relationships with your audience and communicate with your prospects.

5. Use your brand guidelines as guidelines not write of passage

Be creative. Keep your content engaging and varied. Keep up with the current trends and implement your own, and in turn, you will engage and excite your audience. Brand guidelines should be seen as enablers to your business, not a limiting factor. Use your fantastic content ideas and align them with your brand guidelines to create beautiful assets your audience will want to continually read.

I’m a big believer in consistency, and as long as your audience is able to identify your brand, the subject of the content and the tone of the document without even reading a word, the design would have been effective.

Tags: Content Marketing, Design