Highlights and takeaways from the CopyBlogger Authority Rainmaker 2015 conference in Denver, CO. It was a useful conference focused on the full lifecycle of content marketing. I’d like to share a few takeaways with you.
Focus on Creating Your Own Audience
A key theme was building an owned audience. Too often, marketers rely on other platforms for audience — whether it’s a trade publication, an industry site, or a social media platform. We refer to the audiences on these platforms as “rented.” Relying on a rented audience is like building a house on rented land. Eventually, you’re going to lose the house. The same is true of renting an audience. I hear countless stories of firms that “built on rented land” only to have the deal changed.
For example, in the past few years, lots of marketers, particularly in consumer-facing businesses, built out large Facebook audiences based on people who “liked” their business pages. For a while, this was great, and firms were generating a lot of business from Facebook followers. Then Facebook changed their algorithm, and reach dropped to as low as 1%. Before the algo change, a status update used to reach 25-60% of followers; after the algo update, the same update might reach only 1%. It’s like betting your trading strategy on one product based primarily on the behavior of a specific exchange matching engine. Then the exchange makes a substantive change to the engine’s matching algos that renders your strategy ineffective. Overnight, you can go from outsized returns to negative P&L.
Build Audience, Not Just Leads
According to Joe Pulizzi, recent studies by CMI have found that only 3 in 10 marketers are working to build their own audience on their own platforms. Instead, they focus most of their attention on lead generation.
“Build audience, not just leads,” said MarketingProf’s Ann Handley. Not everyone in your audience is going to be a sales qualified lead right away, but don’t let that deter your content marketing strategy. Some prospects might be interested in what you offer and the content you deliver, but have not yet encountered a critical business problem or trigger event that effectively challenges their status quo. But if you have been consistently nurturing them through your content programs, you’ll be in the back of their mind when the critical issues do come up.
If you focus only on lead generation, you’ll end up not serving those people who may not be an immediate marketing qualified lead but who might become one given time and circumstance. Building an audience allows you to surface those leads who are ready now AND develop a market that will support the company over time.
Remember that each audience member is a human being with a career, and they rarely remain in the same position for more than a few years. I’ve seen countless examples where someone could not get a preferred vendor in at one employer, but successfully introduces that vendor when they take on a new role at a new company. So nurture for audience development and relationship building, not just for leads. [highlight to tweet]
The payoff on building audience is slower, and short term ROI is harder to quantify, but over the long term, audience building and nurturing pays excellent dividends. Think buy and hold rather than going flat at the end of the day.
Quality vs. Quantity – A Fight for Sore Eyes
“Content isn’t just a magnet. It’s a filter.” — Doug Kessler1
[highlight to tweet] Over the years, PropelGrowth has focused primarily on helping clients build small, niche audiences, and we’ve done the same thing in building our own audience. This means that the number of visitors attracted and leads converted is pretty small. I used to feel that we were failures compared to the marketers who generated 100’s of 1000’s of leads with content campaigns. But now, it seems that the industry has come around to our approach. Turns out, those huge quantities of leads didn’t convert very well. In fact, even marketing thought leaders are now acknowledging that as their own subscriber bases grew; open rates, engagement, and conversion rates dropped.
Nearly all of our clients focus on a small target niche where there are not many prospects. For example, if you’re targeting tier 1 and tier 2 banks globally — your target account list probably has less than 500 names. If your company is in that camp, then it’s best to focus your audience building and lead generation efforts on the target niches and specific audience segments that are most likely to benefit from your services. Create content that is highly relevant and important to that microcosm instead of creating content with macro appeal. Your overall numbers will be smaller, but your actual conversions to sales will improve.
Anne Handley said, “We don’t need more content. We need ridiculously better content.”[highlight to tweet] Only about 30% of marketers in the latest CMI study actually KNOW that their content is effective. Those who do know their content is working indicated that they’re still focused on creating more engaging content and becoming better story tellers. 65% of these marketers are working to become stronger writers.
Value Is More Important Than Price
We must understand that value is what’s important to our customers and broader audience. Price is relative. Customers buy value. For example, compare price of a 2 liter bottle of coke vs. small single serving bottle. The small bottle is higher priced, because the customer values it more in specific circumstances where a large bottle is inconvenient.
Sean D’Souza pointed out that value is established with information. Price dominates when there is insufficient information by which to understand value. Information raises the perceived value. Take away information, and the perception of value goes down while price sensitivity goes up.
Whoever Gets Closest to Their Audience Wins
So how do you build a deep lasting relationship with your audience online? We only succeed when we matter to people. And we have to do this one person at a time — not to the masses all at once.
Our job as content marketers is to make a difference for our audience. [highlight to tweet] Only when we understand them can we stand in their shoes and use empathy to communicate with them. When we really understand the customer’s story, we’ll be able to create the content that our customers want and need.
Bernadette Jiwa pointed out, “If we want to get inside our audiences’ wallets, we need to start by getting inside their heads. It’s not the biggest company or the biggest platform that wins. It’s the person with the greatest understanding of their customers.”
Find your target audience, find out where they want to go by actually talking to them, and then take them there. But you can’t shortchange the buyer persona research process and expect to establish that level of empathy.
How to Create Conversations With the Audience
Over the years, content marketing pundits have repeatedly proclaimed that marketing should be about a dialogue, not a monologue. But they rarely offer tangible advice on how to make that happen. Most of the pundits have long-standing blogs with a few active audience members who routinely comment. They rely on this commenting to create conversation. It is a powerful way to connect with a small sub-segment of the audience.
But quite frankly, most of us are not going to succeed with this approach. Very few blogs attract that kind of engagement, and usually, the people who engage are not the targets we’re looking for to meet our lead generation goals. Recently, a few of the biggest blogs have actually turned OFF their blog commenting capability in the fight against comment spam (we did this too).
So here are a few practical tips for creating real conversations if you don’t have an active community on your blog.
· Q&A times — hold a live Q&A session online or via conference bridge where participants are invited to ask you anything. Make sure you have subject matter experts on hand to answer questions. You’ll probably want to make these sessions “by invitation only” to prevent competitors from joining. But this can be a powerful way to listen to your audience.
· Invite email questions — every time you publish a blog post, encourage people to respond with questions or comments via email. This is a better venue for people who work at banks and are prohibited from participating in public discussions (either in live conference calls or in blog comments).
· Surveys — send out brief surveys to your audience and ask long answer questions (e.g., “What’s a really frustrating problem related to ‘X’ that you’re dealing with?”). These responses will help you understand your audience better and will help you identify ideas for blog posts and e-books. For example, you could look for the thorny problems and answer them in an e-book.
Brand Voice
Ann Handley made an excellent point: “Good writing is a matter of getting inside the heads of other people so that you can respect their needs and wants. Your brand voice is not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
Your brand is not what you sell, it’s who you are as an organization. [highlight to tweet] Your brand voice should make clear:
· Who you are as an organization
· Why you do what you do
· What you’re like to deal with
Your voice should reflect your company culture and tell your story in a way that communicates with empathy.
Content marketing is not just copywriting. [highlight to tweet] It’s a calculated risk — it’s an opportunity to surprise and delight. Bring your copywriter in at the beginning of any program strategy so they understand the story and can find creative ways to tell it and make it a reflection of your brand.
I hope you’ve found these takeaways useful. If you’d like to hear more of the insights we gained from the event, give us a call or shoot us an email. We’d be delighted to discuss.
