Tag Archives: content marketing

The success of your video depends on your script

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Get your video script right to maximise the success of your videos

YouTube – The 2nd most popular search engine in the world.

Whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re looking for its the first port of call.

The rise in the significance of video in the modern marketing mix has been nothing short of astonishing. It reaches across almost all sectors and products – it’s firmly established as part of the online research process.

No matter what you’re selling, where you’re selling it or who you’re selling it to I am pretty sure that there is a role for video in your marketing mix.

As for your customers – you know they’re on YouTube. Everyone is. So if you’re not producing video then get to it.

You don’t need big production budgets – the self service video edit packages have it all.

You don’t need expensive soundtracks – there is a mass of music out there and available for pennies.

You do however need a good script. For far too many people this is the end point – it should be the starting point.

Does this process sound familiar:

  1. Start writing your story based on the message you want to get across.
  2. Realise it’s far too long – but can’t decide where the edits need to be.

As a general rule of thumb your video should be about 90 seconds long – and definitely no longer than 2 mins.

That means that you’re shooting for somewhere around 250 to 350 words for your script.

The only way you’ll achieve this is if your video has a specific purpose.

Most of the time it will require a good script writer to nail the message within the constraints you have. You’re too close – an outsider can extract the real hard hitting points that you want to get across.

The tone is particularly important with a video script – just because something reads well doesn’t mean it will work as a script.

Record it yourself on your phone and listen back. I have a very simple rule – if there’s anything on there that you’re not sure is 110% right then bin it and start over.

The end result – a video that’s half as long as the one you would have made yourself but has twice the impact.

If you would like to talk about how you can introduce video to your marketing mix or would like some help producing a script for your latest video project then get in touch.

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Why you should outsource your PR

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PR is an essential part of your marketing mix

PR has never been as important – Google has turned everyone into a researcher. Booking a holiday used to involve a 20 minute conversation with a travel agent. Not any more. People are now prepared to invest days of their own time building their own summer holiday through cheap airline sites in combination with Tripadvisor and other similar sites.

Whatever industry you’re in, whatever you’re selling, you can guarantee that at some point during the buying cycle your customer will spend a significant amount of time researching both on and offline. A well developed and executed PR strategy will help you maximise the opportunity that this offers.

Developing and executing a successful PR strategy requires substantial time and effort. Time and effort that I know from experience that marketing departments just don’t have enough of. Putting the content plan together at the start of the year is the easy bit – but how many of your releases either don’t get written at all or get cobbled together in a panic as a result of a last minute notice of an editorial deadline?

There are many reasons why outsourcing your PR makes sense and I have outlined some of these below:

1 – Maximise your return on investment

It will allow you to maximise the potential that the medium offers for getting your message out there by receiving free coverage in your target publications. Any investment you make in PR must take into account the equivalent cost of buying this space in trade magazines. The fact that an external PR partner will be focusing on this and this alone ensures a far better return on your investment than if you try and manage the process yourself.

2 – Creating targeted content with an increased potential for placement

Relationship building with editors and journalists is key to success – and once again I know from experience that while this is a great idea, most marketing departments just don’t have the time to do this properly. The result is a lot of guesswork about what material you should send to your target publications. By outsourcing your PR you can remove this guesswork from the equation – we understand what different editors are looking for in a story, what the editorial priorities are for specific magazines, what issues they struggle to gather regular content for. We can then use these insights to inform your editorial plan – maximising the potential for free coverage in your target publications.

3 – Better, deeper, more insightful content

We can get insights from within your organisation that you may struggle to uncover. Once we’ve identified the thought leaders within your organisation we can spend time with them to gather their thoughts on the relevant industry topics that are going to get us the most coverage. I know – from experience – that when you try and do this internally the regular meeting just gets pushed further and further back until you eventually just delete it from your outlook calendar. Not only is the meeting much more likely to happen when it’s being facilitated externally but with proper preparation and structure we can get much more valuable information from the meeting. Information which will provide content for several new items for your editorial calendar.

4 – Content Marketing in action

It’s your content marketing strategy in action. Producing all the content that your content marketing strategy requires is something that I bet you and your team just don’t have time to do. So leave it to us. We can work closely with you to make sure that it delivers all that you require in terms of coverage, increased web traffic, increased enquiry levels, increased downloads – whatever your specific goals are.

5 – Quality & quantity: the best of both worlds

The only way to be a really good writer is to write a lot – we do. Everyday. It’s not rocket science. The more you practice something the better you get at it. When you’re working within a marketing team you have so much going on that you just don’t have the time to write as much as we do. By outsourcing your PR you are investing in the quality of your press releases, news stories, white papers, case studies. This will lead to more coverage for your material – in an environment where layers of editorial oversight have been stripped away from the vast majority of publications they are crying out for copy that is sent to them ready for publication. By employing a professional copywriter to produce your content you will get better results from your PR activity.

If project case studies are important for you then we can help you make these have maximum impact. The key to good project case studies is understanding the key reasons why your customer bought from you in the first place and what benefits they have enjoyed since.

This is where it goes wrong for most companies producing their own material. All too often the case study turns into a description of the features and benefits of what you sell rather than a true project case study. We can get in front of your customers – because we have the time to do so. This results in is getting the insights necessary to allow us to produce a case study that your potential customers can relate to. And who knows – it may just uncover some additional sales opportunities with your existing customer that you just weren’t aware of.

It’s about your return on investment:

There’s a recurring theme here – the reason you should outsource your
PR is quite simply to get a better return on your investment.

If you would like some help developing your PR strategy or content plan and then executing a campaign that delivers for your business then get in touch:

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Build Your Content Calendar: 3 Easy Steps

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As we enter a New Year I’m sure you’re all thinking about your content marketing calendar for 2015.

There is a great article on the Content Marketing Institute website from October 2013 that offers some great advice. (The article was originally published by Shanna Mallon).

The success of the article for me lies in how simple the process actually is. There are only 3 things that you need to do in order to get you started:

Understand your sales cycle – if there are seasonal variations in your business then set your distribution plan accordingly. Understand when your customers are likely to be looking for your products and make sure you have set a plan in place to distribute relevant information at the right time.

Brainstorm topics and align them to categories – what are the questions that your customers want answered? what problems are your customers having that they would like help solving? what content can you offer that proves that you will be the right choice to do this?

Set your content calendar – Now it’s just about putting the plan in place for what content you produce and when you produce it. The plan should also take account of how your customers like to consume information – technical articles, project case studies, videos, white papers, videos etc. A good content marketing plan will include a mix of all of these (and more) which is tailored to the specific requirements of your customers.

It’s that simple. So stop putting it off and just get started.

You can read the original article from Shanna Mallon at the link below:

Build Your Content Calendar: 3 Easy Steps.

If you would like some help building your content marketing plan or producing your targeted content then get in touch:

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6 web development misconceptions of CEO’s

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Your website project needs careful consideration

An recent article on the Entrepreneur website outlined 6 common misconceptions that CEO’s have about web development.

The article was written by Zach Ferres and while I agree with some of the points he makes there are some others that I think merit a little more discussion.

I think the article starts off on the right note:

Remember the last website project you were involved with – the one that went over budget and missed all the project deadlines that were agreed at the outset – was most likely your fault (by using the term ‘your’ I’m assuming that you were part of the marketing department that was in charge of leading the project within your organisation).

There is no doubt that most website projects are a lot more painful than they need to be. It really is very simple – and with some forward planning and a better understanding of what it is that you are trying to deliver you can avoid all of this pain.

One of the best lines I’ve ever read about web development projects came from a guy at a company called Fathom in Belfast – he said ‘It’s entirely possible for a website to be pretty and pretty awful at the same time.’

Why does this happen? Because too many web development projects are built around what we (the organisation) want to talk about rather than what our customers are actually looking for. I’ve written another post on this very subject called ‘Your website – for you or your customers?’

Anyway, back to the 6 misconceptions that CEO’s have about web development:

1 – Website development is easy

I agree with Zach Ferres here – those not directly involved in the project have very little appreciation for how long the ‘under the bonnet’ development work actually takes. Our role as project leaders for the web development project is to try and build this understanding – break down the project plan into the relevant phases that your development company has given you and highlight the time devoted to the development work.

This is difficult because most CEO’s, other board members and other people in your organisation are just dying to see the big reveal of your new home page design. They care very little about the journey planning element of the website architecture which is essential if the website is going to perform to maximum potential.

My advice – involve them in this stage. Get them involved in understanding who it is that is visiting the site and what they are trying to achieve when they get there. This will help to build an evidence based argument about what content should be on the site and where it should live.

2 – Everyone should be involved

In the original post Zach Ferres believes that the project should only be left to the people doing the work – I’m afraid I disagree. I’ve seen too many website projects fail because the project didn’t have the buy in of people across the organisation.

I believe it’s wrong to assume that only marketing will know what people are looking for when they visit your website – this is not a marketing project.

Your website is a project that should involve as broad a cross-section of people and opinions as you can muster. All of this work should be done at the outset and once all of the intelligence has been gathered then the build process will come together a lot more quickly than without these essential steps.

You will also find the because buy-in now exists across the organisation the final website will be much better received internally when your launch date arrives. This is because the decisions about how to categorise information, how to present information, what calls to action to include were all taken by your development group and were based on evidence.

This avoids subjective opinions on colours, button sizes and the location of information being used as the basis on which people judge your website. The only judging criteria worth considering is the user experience on your website and ultimately the results that it delivers for your business.

3 – Websites are a commodity

I am fully behind Zach on this one – if you want to use free website build templates for your website project you’ve got to accept their limitations. The more customisation you want to be able to introduce to your website, the more likely it is that a custom build is the route you are going to have to take.

4 – Once a site is built it’s done

Your website project doesn’t have a completion date – the end of the development project is marked by your ‘go live’ date. This is only the beginning of the journey to turn your website into a pipeline stuffing machine (or whatever your stated objective is from the website).

5 – Anyone can create a great user experience

While Zach Ferres disagrees with this statement in the original post I’m actually inclined to support the view that anyone can create a great user experience on their website.

The problem is that most people don’t.

But the reason why they don’t is (in my humble opinion) a result of the process that is followed during the web development project.

Too many projects jump straight into defining the various menu options and then deciding what information to house in these silos. Then the marketing department starts writing copy (largely with the aim of hitting all the required keywords).

And all of this is done with no consideration for who will be visiting the site.

Before a line of code is written, a menu option decided on or a word of copy written you need to go right back to the start.

  • Who is it that visits your website?
  • What are they looking for when they get there?
  • How did they get there in the first place?
  • What other sites have they been on before they got to yours?
  • Is this the first time they’ve been to your site or are they a repeat visitor?

Doing an internal workshop with the people in your organisation who interact with customers most regularly will give you some great insights into what content you actually need to look at for your new website.

You can then validate this information by asking some of your customers whether your assumptions are right. This is extremely powerful – it takes the guesswork out of the exercise and gives you confidence, even during the build process that you are building something that will deliver better results for your business.

This is a very simple process – anyone who knows about your business can contribute whether they’ve built a website before or not.

6 – It’s your website so you dictate the design

I’m back to agreeing with Zach again on this one – there are web designers with much better knowledge of what works in relation to web design than you. They will make sure your site follows best practice guidelines which will maximise the potential for your website to deliver for your business.

Once again, ask yourself the question – is your website for you or your customers?

No project should be signed off until it has been tested with real users and feedback taken and acted upon to improve the site experience.

Thanks to Zach Ferres for the original post. I hope you find these observations useful.

If you’re working on a website development project and you’d like some help then get in touch.

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Is storytelling dead?

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storytelling for B2B marketers

Storytelling is still an important part of the marketing mix

I came across a post recently on the Explore B2B blog urging marketers to stop storytelling. On seeing the headline I thought I would disagree with the idea but after reading the article in full I could see where the author was coming from.

The article by Carlos Hidalgo highlighted that storytelling implies a focus on us as the storyteller rather than our customers. It was making the point that in the social media age we should be engaging in conversations (2 way communication) with our potential customers rather than simply telling them our story (one way communication).

While I agree with this principle it’s premature to signal the end of storytelling as a marketing tool of value.

And here’s why:

Before people will fully engage in conversations with us they want to know who they are talking to.

Do we understand their problems and offer a solution?

Do our values match with their own?

Do we have any evidence to support the claims that we are making about how we can help them?

online and offline conversations with customers

Conversations are given context by the story you tell

A well crafted story will help to answer these questions and provide the context which will give the subsequent conversations some meaning.

Of course the story we tell needs to be carefully considered. Too many of these focus on what we would like to talk about rather than what our potential and existing customers want to know.

If we have a good story to tell its most likely down to our understanding of customer requirements and capability to design a solution to these problems. So make this the story.

For me it’s not a case of storytelling versus conversations. Both are vital parts of the marketing mix.

One of the most significant impacts of social media has been to facilitate conversations between us and our customers – but the reports of the demise of storytelling have been greatly exaggerated.

If you would like some help creating your compelling story that will make your target customers engage with you first, and buy from you second then get in touch.

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Consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness

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Chess board represents marketing strategy

Random moves lead to defeat – strategy is what is required to win

I love this line – the title of a book by Scott Ginsberg from 2012.

For me it sums up what marketing is all about. While others may judge us on the impact of an individual event, video etc we should be judged on consistently delivering results that will allow our businesses to achieve their goals.

It is far too often the case that marketing is judged on the tactics employed rather than the overall results – and this is because of a disconnect between the overall business strategy and the marketing activities that we are engaged in.

Rare moments of greatness happen by accident rather than design. They happen because we’re just trying to do a lot of different stuff with the digital channels available to us without proper consideration for what we’re trying to achieve or what success looks like. It’s inevitable that the more we do of this stuff, the more we learn about what works and the better we get at spotting content that is likely to get a good reaction online.

And this is part of the problem – an endless pursuit of Facebook likes does not constitute a strategy. It is merely a tactic to help you deliver something valuable. So what is it that you’re trying to deliver? The problem is that a lot of people just don’t know.

To move from rare moments of greatness to the consistency that will deliver real business value you need to take a step back – ignore all the tools you have available to you and focus on what it is you are trying to achieve.

The first step is to understand what your goals are – this is derived from your overall business strategy. This could be to win a certain amount of new sales / donations within a new sector or market or increase market share to give some examples.

From this we are then able to define what the goals of our marketing efforts are:

Are we trying to drive traffic to our website or blog because we know this generates more leads?

Are we trying to provide resources and information to assist our customers with their buying decision?

Are we trying to build a social following to build our reputation in the industry?

Once you know what it is that you’re trying to achieve you then need to know how you’re going to measure success.

If we’re trying to drive traffic to the website to generate more leads – how much traffic do we need and how many leads should this convert to?

If we’re trying to provide resources and information to assist customers with their buying decision – how many downloads of the whitepapers, brochures and case studies are we looking for?

If we’re trying to build a social following – how many new likes or followers are we trying to win? Or maybe focus on the engagement metrics instead – the conversations that begin because we started them, the number of times our content was shared?

When you have these things in place you can then start thinking about the tactics that you’re going to employ to help you achieve your goals. It’s only now that the channels come into the equation – where do your target audience hang out, what is the best way to connect with them when they are there and what content will they find either useful or interesting? This should include both online and offline channels to deliver the best results.

A well considered digital strategy will yield results for your business – simply because you now know what you are trying to achieve.

This will allow you to quickly and easily report on progress internally and demonstrate to the cynics in your organisation the value you are adding through your digital content marketing activity. This focus on performance is what is all too often missing from the marketing function.

Too many KPI documents for the marketing department are littered full of tactics that shift and change depending on the latest requests from the board or the sales team. All this does is measure activity – and just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re adding any value.

By stepping back and considering what it is that we are trying to deliver we can shift the focus from the activity to the value that we are adding and this is when we will achieve consistency.

Because consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness.

If you would like some help either developing your digital marketing strategy or deploying the tactics to ensure success then get in touch.

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Content Marketing – still to be convinced? Read this.

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content marketing as a magnet for new customers

Use content marketing as a magnet for new customers

There are some compelling stats out there supporting the rise of content marketing over the last few years – the number of web searches for ‘content marketing’ has increased by 400% since 2010 (stats from Google Trends) and there are now 27 million pieces of content shared online every day (according to AOL).

These 2 stats are taken from a great blog post by @captora last week called ‘20 tweetable content marketing stats that every marketer should know’.

I published a post last week in response to this attempting to delve a little deeper. While the figures are undoubtedly useful for reinforcing the importance of content marketing to any modern marketing strategy I feel that there is a need to look at what questions they provoke.

The 2 most important questions for me are:

  1. What does this mean for your company?
  2. What can you do about it?

My previous post dealt with the 2 stats mentioned earlier about the 400% increase in searches for ‘content marketing’ and the 27 million pieces of content shared online every day. You can read my thoughts on this by visiting the post – Need convinced about content marketing? Read this.

For today, I’d like to focus on another stat from the @captora post and answer the 2 questions posed above:

Stat #1
78% of consumers think organisations that create content are interested in building relationships.

What does this mean for your company?

This one stat alone sums up one of the major opportunities that exists with content marketing. For decades marketing departments were engaged in the game of producing content and hoping that the relationships you had developed with your target print publications would mean that your news release, project case study or company announcement would get featured.

In most cases the only way to really ensure this happened was to part with some of your hard earned budget and invest in advertising.

Of course the best print publications maintain a level of editorial integrity (and that is how they have survived) but content marketing represents a huge shift in the balance of power. We’re all publishers now and the technologies that facilitate the content marketing revolution have added a level of democracy to our communications that didn’t previously exist.

For the first time it’s genuinely not about how much advertising spend you want to commit to a specific publication in order to ensure the required level of editorial coverage.

You produce your own content and publish it. If it’s good enough it will gain traction online with your customers, increase your profile and ultimately help you achieve your goals whatever they may be.

Another benefit of this development is that your brand can have a voice and the opportunity to communicate directly with your target audience rather than being run through the editorial controls of your target print publications.

This helps to better portray the personality of your organisation which allows your potential customers to establish whether it is an organisation that they would like to do business with.

What can you do about it?

In order to maximise the chances of success from your content marketing strategy there is an old saying that was a particular favourite of the sales director of a company I used to work for:

“You have 2 ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.”

Your first job in trying to take advantage of the content marketing opportunity involves listening and observing what is going on in the virtual world around us.

  1. What online channels are your customers currently using?
  2. What are the current issues within your industry that your products or services help to address?
  3. What have you got to say about these issues?
  4. What are your competitors currently saying about these issues and how can you differentiate your message?

Once you’ve got the answers to these questions you’ll be in a much better position to understand the kind of content you can produce in order to help you achieve your goals of more leads, more sales, more donations, more applications for the job you’re promoting (or whatever else is relevant for your business).

In summary, content marketing represents a huge opportunity for any business for whom their customer base is online. While the headline stats from the @captora post confirm this you need to understand what it means for your business and what you should be doing about it. Once you’ve nailed these two questions then the opportunity will begin to open up in front of you.

And you’ll enjoy the benefits offline as well – after all. you’re producing great content tackling the main issues facing your industry. What print publications aren’t going to be interested in that story?

If you’d like some help developing your content marketing strategy or producing the content you need to build your profile then get in touch.

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The Top 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015

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It’s that time of year when all the ‘top for 2015’ lists start coming out.

This one caught my eye – and in particular the first point that Jason DeMers makes in his post.

Publication is only the small first step – value comes from distribution.

I’m reminded of the old ‘build it and they will come’ line – it must have been nice to live in these times. Now we’ve all got to work so march harder to earn the right to be considered by our potential customers.

It’s something I see too much of in marketing – all the effort goes into producing great content with very little thought given to the distribution of this content.

I couldn’t agree with Jason more strongly on this one – it’s not the content that’s king. It’s the distribution of that content that will make you king.

If you can get the balance right between identifying the opportunity for great content, developing that content and building a network that will perceive your content as valuable then you’re well on your way to a winning content marketing strategy.

Have a read of Jason’s post for some other very interesting observations on where content marketing will take us in 2015.

The Top 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015.

If you would like some help building your content marketing strategy or even just producing some more great content then get in touch:

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Need convinced about content marketing? Read this.

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I came across a great blog post today from @captora with some really powerful stats on the rise of content marketing in recent years.

There is no doubt that the stats are convincing – content marketing is here to stay and I don’t think you’ll get much of an argument from any modern marketers.

So here’s my problem – if my hypothesis is correct and there is an acceptance that content marketing needs to be central to any marketing strategy there must be something else that is stopping people from getting involved.

I think there is a general fear of content marketing – largely driven by the fact that it is often accompanied by the word ‘strategy’. This immediately conjures up visions of 100 page documents and puts people right off.

So, to try and dispel this fear I’ve taken two of the key stats from the @captora post and asked 2 important questions:

  1. What does this mean for your company?
  2. What can you do about it?

Here we go:

Stat #1:
There are 27 million pieces of content shared each day online

What does this mean for your company?

This is one hell of a big number – you need to understand how much of this content relates to your industry, to the products you are selling. This will vary hugely depending on whether you’re involved in a mass market consumer product or a niche engineering application for example.

What can you do about it?

  1. Understand what your goal is – what does success look like? Sales, website visitors, video views, increased followers, more enquiries?
  2. Two ears, one mouth – use them in that proportion.
  3. Search online for content relating to your industry (Google Alerts are a great way to do this).
  4. Search Twitter to see who in your industry is doing this stuff well – and understand why.
  5. Once you’ve done this initial research you will better understand what content you can produce that is suitable for sharing, likely to get a response and will ultimately lead to more sales leads (or whatever your overall goal is).
  6. Start recording these ideas in an editorial calendar and hey presto – your content marketing strategy is underway.

Stat #2:
The number of web searches for ‘content marketing’ is up 400% since January 2011

What does this mean for your company?

Take comfort in the fact that this suggests to me that there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand how to make the most of this opportunity.

The opening line of the @captora post says “Content marketing has become a buzzword in modern marketing”.

Content Marketing is simply the latest way to describe what marketers have always done – produce good content. It’s nothing particularly revolutionary. Your tone might have to change and adapt to the social media channels that you are using in order to get the best results but otherwise – keep on keeping on.

What can you do about it?

Once you’ve developed the first run at your editorial calendar then select the channels that are right for you and just get started.

I’m reminded of a quote from Thomas Edison that is relevant to this discussion:

“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

Hopefully you’ll get the hang of it well before the 10,000 mark – but the only way you’ll really find out what works and what doesn’t is to get started. Set yourself some small objectives at the start that you think will help you achieve your overall goal – increased sales, donations to your charitable cause, views of your Youtube videos.

There are a number of other interesting stats in the @captora post and I’ll return to these at a later date.

Hope you found this post useful – if you did please remember to share with your network.

You can follow me on twitter @petracmarketing

And if you want some help developing your content marketing strategy then get in touch.

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A simple conversation

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talk to your customers

Talking to your customers will reveal much more than you think

How many case studies have you written where you’ve put words into your customers’ mouth and sent them the draft for them to approve before you publish it?

It’s time to stop  and let your customers do the talking for you. If you spend half an hour talking to your customer about that great project you delivered you’ll get some little gold nuggets that will make the story much more interesting, believable and likely to help you sell more of your stuff.

We think we know why people by our stuff – and for the most part we’re not far wrong. But every now and again a little surprise turns up – and this has benefits outside of the marketing project that spurred the conversation in the first place.

It reveals another USP, a new industry sector you could target, a new country where there is demand for what you do. It’s only one on one conversations that will reveal these little gems – so get talking.

Get in touch and we can talk about how we can work together on your project case studies.

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