› Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing

› What is inbound marketing? Creating and sharing content specifically

designed to attract your ideal customer (a specific buyer persona)

› How is it different than outbound marketing? Inbound is about earning people’s interest, trust,

and loyalty by providing great, focused, and relevant content for your buyers

Outbound is about pushing your product or service onto customers who may not be interested or ready to convert. (i.e. billboards, mass emails, etc…) – It is usually untargeted

Blog posts Contributed articles Webinars Email newsletters* Drip campaigns* Social Media eBooks/whitepapers Visuals (infographics, videos, images)*both outbound & inbound

› You don’t just need content, because bad, irrelevant, or content that is out of context will not attract your buyers.

› You need contextual content, which depends heavily on research and is a result of your understanding of your target audiences

› Content can greatly increase your brand awareness, traffic, lead generation, etc

› It connects you to your buyers through a human voice

› It allows you to monitor and participate in conversations that you would otherwise be unaware of

› It strengthens and secures your brand identity (how you see yourself) and your image (how your constituencies see you)

› It establishes your brand as a thought leader in your niche industry

› It drives your target buyers to action (to buy)

› Understand your target consumer’s thoughts before implementing a strategy

› Step 1: Research your ideal buyer and create detailed identities for those people—more than a client profile—an identity that includes age, professional experience, background, interests, etc… Note: This should take time and effort,

therefore you must be patient—rushing the process will not produce results

› If you still don’t feel confident creating your own content on your website, then find other blogs in your industry to comment, converse, and engage with your customers and the industry

› Benefits of doing this before creating your own blog: Find and establish your unique voice Find out what your target customers are reading and are

interested in Find what keywords your target customers are using to

better optimize your website Begin to outline a long term editorial calendar for

potential blog posts

› There are 3 types of internal (on your site) content, which should be integrated in your overall marketing strategy Targeted content on landing pages Targeted content on your blog Website copy

› What is a landing page? A page on your site where you can publish targeted

content for a specific buyer persona This is especially useful for search engine marketing (SEO)

because you should have keywords geared specifically to the person who is searching on a search engine

I.E.: If you sell yoga pants, sports bras, and yoga mats, then a person who is searching for sports bras should not land on a page with yoga pants.

Matching search queries to landing pages will dramatically decrease the bounce rate, increase the amount of time spent on your website, and ultimately increase the chances that person will buy

• Use content to get personal with your target buyers

• You must post regularly to stay top-of-mind

• Bottom line and golden rule (which really annoys me): Create great contentIt’s annoying but true. And only you can know what great content is because you are the expert in your niche and know your target audiences

› Create content with various media—this includes videos (gym tutorials), infographics (tech), white papers, ebooks, webinars, blogs, and the list goes on

› Find the most appealing media for your target buyers and create content using those. This will increase readerships, views, and shares

› How to segment content for each buyer: Create editorial plans for each buyer persona BUT

leave room for real-time content as well—this will keep you at the forefront of organic search engines and top-of-mind

› First, you need to know the answer to the questions: “What problem are you solving for your

buyers?” “What are your overall business goals?” Once you can clearly state the answer to

those questions, then you can implement a strategy

Come up with 30 topics in 30 minutes› Ask yourself:

What are you passionate about in your industry How did you get where you were in your industry What are some personal anecdotes/experiences

you have seen in your industry? How can you share those with your audience?

What do you want to learn more about? (Changes are your audience has the same questions!)

We like David Meerman Scott’s planning template and we have found his steps to be very successful: http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Marketing_Strategy_Template.pdf

Develop an editorial calendar Define where your content is going (social media, blog,

contributed post) Establish hard deadlines (this keeps your team

accountable) Put in the time Delegate!

Alessandra Ceresaaceresa@greenrope.com