Content Marketing Strategy | Joe Pulizzi

good morning good morning oh that was good I didn't expect that I thought I'd have to do that a couple times alright everybody having a good time all right we're gonna get right to it if you had your I had three cups of coffee how much coffee have you had I'm raring to go maybe again one more cup in before I start alright we're going to get started I'm going to talk to you about the content Inc model today a little bit about content marketing for those of you that are familiar with it but this year believe it or not I'll do about 70 keynote and workshop presentations around content marketing and I've learned that there is actually one key to a successful presentation you might say hey maybe it's sense of humor maybe you'll laugh at some of my jokes maybe it's relevant case studies maybe it's actionable tips so whatever you have in your head that you want out of this presentation you're most likely wrong the answer to a successful presentation is when the speaker sets incredibly low expectations for the presentation so I'm going to set your incredibly low expectations for you and I want you to get one thing at the end of this presentation I'm going to give you ten takeaways and things to think about regarding your content marketing program but I there going to be some that you're going to say we can't do that that's not relevant to us that doesn't make sense I want you to find the one thing so in this presentation I want you to really look for what's that one thing that you can do and take and make actionable in your work when you go back not this week hopefully maybe next week and get started and think a little bit differently about how we communicate with our customers do a little bit of overview here so let's go back to when Al Gore created the internet and talked about the website right so all us you know we're folks we're marketers we are trying to figure this whole thing out and in the you know let's say the 90s when the website was create this was fantastic this was great for marketers because we could take all that sales information all that product feature information and we can now stick it up on the web this was like one of the greatest inventions ever right oh thank goodness we can shoot all of our stuff talked about ourselves put it up on the web and we'll attract and retain customers by doing that the second greatest invention of course social media right oh my goodness we're going to take all our products and service Meishan I'm going to shove it in blogs and wiki's and Twitter and Facebook it's just going to be the greatest thing ever and then we unfortunately figured out that all that stuff we were putting up there nobody cares about nobody cares about our products and services nobody cares about our features and benefits they care about themselves their own pain points so as we started to get into the the creation of our website and as we started to look at our communicating on social media most of the information that we send up there is about ourselves and simply it's not getting attention it hasn't worked for us why can't our customers ignore us why are they because if you look in before 1990 there were only eight different channels that our customers could get information that means they were forced to listen to what we had to say only limited channels well today those unlimited channels right they can they can absolutely ignore us at will they don't have to pay any attention to us at all and so because even because we've got 24/7 access they they have 24/7 access to all the information through a smartphone and we have unlimited opportunity to publish publishing is near zero at cost when you think about it it doesn't match unless we start to figure out how we're going to communicate to those pain points and figure out how we're going to cut through the clutter with all these channels we have to deal with so everyone's flocking to this thing called content marketing probably the fastest growing area of internet marketing right now what is content marketing so I'll level set it I've only got a few slides of definition but I want to make sure what are we thinking about when we think about pure content marketing it's all about how do we create valuable relevant and compelling content on a consistent basis to a targeted audience to see some profitable action but really what we want to do is we want to figure out how do we build audiences we want to build an audience that's going to know like and trust us over time if content marketing was a stock you don't want to own it there's a Google Trends chart of content marketing over the last few years I started I started right here actually really nobody was talking about it nobody even knew what that was in 2007 when we started talking about content marketing now everybody has some idea what content marketing is and they're trying to use it in their business according to our latest research that by the way there's short-length bitly link it's all free and unguided if you want to check out our latest research with MarketingProfs basically nine out of ten businesses are doing some form of content marketing at least what they believe to be content marketing so everybody's using content marketing in some way but here's the step that makes me cry 30% this year we just finished our latest research b2b b2c and nonprofit research and the average effectiveness rate for marketers is 30% 3 and 10 just makes it's just miserable so 9 out of 10 companies are using content marketing just 3 and 10 if you're yeah if you're Daniel Murphy and your baton 300 this is fantastic you're going the all-star game you're going to the World Series if you're a marketer you're getting fired this is not going to work we've got to do better than 30% why only 30% we're still thinking about content marketing as campaigns content marketing is a marathon and not a sprint so we've got to think about the long term building an audience over time we're still talking too much about ourselves 55% of marketers according to our research is the one that kills me they have no idea what success looks like with their content marketing program they're just doing create blogs and podcasts and videos but they don't know ultimately what success looks like and the majority of companies actually don't have a documented strategy of any kind so think about think about how many so much investment in content marketing it the majority of marketers out there have no idea what success looks like and have no documented strategy this is a problem we're treating content like an advertising campaign we can't do that and the Donalds is unhappy with this how about you want a different one how about this one yeah the doctor we need to do better we need to do better we want we want them to make the dental happy right so let's do better I really believe there's a better way to think about this that's we're going to talk about this morning okay how can we change how we're looking at communicating with our customers and the content we create to actually create better customers out of this so I'll tell you a little bit of a story here's my little orange notebook that I have all my goals my personal goals financial goals family goals and I write those down and one of my personal career goals is I want to write a book every two years started in 2009 with the first book wrote one in 2011 epic content marketing came out in 13 and the most recent one which is sitting up here is his content Inc and I just that just came out last month so I'm like what am I going to write about I said well maybe I write about what we did a Content Marketing Institute maybe we talked about hey we had very few resources we were able to focus on building an audience we built out that model loyalty model there and then we started launching products of services once we built a loyal audience and then I said well nobody's going to read about a book about me that's terrible that's completely counterintuitive to content marketing we need to do better so I went out searching I went out searching for companies that were building an audience first through a content first approach and then launching products or services on the back of this now the book title talks about entrepreneur and the subtitle talks about how entrepreneurs can build massive audiences what we found is this model for you can use this model for any size company so whatever industry you're in whatever size company whatever role you can take this model we're going to go through and you can absolutely integrate it into what you're doing in a business but it's the same idea we have to create value with our customers through how we communicate first and then we monetize it whatever that is and we're going to talk about the different ways you monetize it so as I went out I'm actually looking are there other companies out there that are doing this and what we realized is and this is what blew me away there were dozens and dozens even hundreds of different companies all over the world in all different industries that were doing this that we're following a Content first audience first approach and as we went and we started to do the research and looked at each one of these companies we reverse engineered the model and we looked at what are they doing are they is there a formula here that each one of them were using and what we realized this is probably the most fascinating thing as you're going through and you're doing research for a book we actually found that every company did the same six steps everyone followed the same formula so as most of us kind of lucked into it we thought it was the right way to go we actually found that there's a formula here that we can all use so that you don't have to waste time and think about it anymore you can actually follow this formula and drive revenues significantly if you follow these six steps so this is what we call the Content Inc model I'm going to go through all six steps here I'm going to give you many case studies and what we found in different ways to look at it and think about how you communicate with your customers and the first of the six steps is the sweet spot so we start with step one step one is a sweet spot and here is what we think about with the sweet spot every one of you has a sweet spot whether you've identified it or not it's if you're a small company you're probably doing around some key passion area if you're a larger company it's some customer pain point and that intersects with some area that you actually have authority to communicate on where do you have a knowledge or skill that you can actually communicate people will believe you so that's what we call the sweet spot let me give you an example if I know this guy I love this case study this is the chicken whisperer this is Andy Schneider he is the foremost expert in the world on raising chickens in your backyard this actually is the thing I actually talked to Andy this is actually what he does he's built a multi-million dollar platform off of teaching people how to raise chickens in their backyard and Andy basically he started as a hobby he's on a site in a suburb in Atlanta and he wanted to raise chickens in his backyard and he's like went to Google tried to find out information couldn't find anything on how to do it then he started to talk to experts and he started to educate himself and he started to become the leading expert and then his neighbor's you know he's doing a pretty good job raising chickens in his backyard in his neighbor's said hey Andy we want to do that too starts getting little neighborhood meetups around raising chickens in your backyard he started to do that and then he started getting calls from other cities it's an Andy would you come out and meet up with us went up started to do Meetup org sessions and he started to go all over the United States doing special meetup groups around raising chickens in your backyard this is Andy of course he's holding a live chicken here wouldn't have it any other way she's built this platform and he actually took that meetup formula and he put it into a radio show so if you can see how this works so he's basically he's got the radio show during the week 20,000 listeners a week listen to Andy Schneider people people that want to raise chickens in their backyard but look at this Monday's the chicken doctor with Peter Brown why is that so important because over the weekend the chickens got sick we got to do some what we're going to do so we're going to hit we're going to have the chicken doctor on Monday so he's thinking about his programming and how that's going to work I'll get more on to Andy a little bit later but think about it so what was Andy sweetspot loves teaching passionate about tea would teach anyone anything he absolutely was passionate about that gets up in the morning thinking about this stuff became the foremost authority in backyard poultry that's the sweet spot let me give you an example that's been going on for 120 years see if you can figure this one out let's say on the one side we are you know the pain point is farmers and how do they can get more out of their farm how can small businesses drive more revenue how do they treat their employees how do they get more corn out of the land whatever the case is and then on the other side let's say where our expertise area is we know more about technology and agriculture than anyone else in the world we know who this is John Deere very good you get a free book there you go this is the furrow magazine I love this by John Deere started in 1895 and if you said Joe who's the largest media company in the farming industry I would tell you it's not a media company it's actually John Deere 1.5 million subscribers 40 countries 14 different languages it is now a print digital publication and if you think about how we communicate and I talked to the production team for the furrow and I said how many how many times over the hundred 20 years have you mentioned John Deere products into your content over 120 years they said between 13 and 15 times in 120 years they're not talking about themselves right they're focusing on the pain points of their customers as they go so we're going to talk more about Andy later sweet spot is step one you're all doing the sweet spot in some way it's the content till this is the by the way you haven't created any content yet this is all strategy the content tilts what's super important let me talk about the content tip how you really differentiate yourself here's Ann Reardon and Reardon is known as the baking queen of Sydney Australia she wanted to start a baking blog and start sorry some baking videos she had 100 subscribers in January 2012 not she now has over 2 million subscribers on YouTube here's what looks like she's bacon she's having a good time it's how to cook that.net she's really successful but I want you to think about this let's say you want your an and you want to start a baking video series and try to get attention how many baking videos and blog posts are there on the web today thousands millions how is an with her low production quality to start with video how is she going to cut through the clutter and get any kind of attention there's no way it's going to work absolutely no way unless she's telling a different story so this is with the link between the sweet spot and the content tilt everyone you all have a sweet spot but most companies do is they start creating content from the sweet spot you can't do that you've got to take the other step and you've got to figure out how you tilt that content how do you find an area a Content niche on the web that has little to no competition that you actually have a fighter's chance to break through and a lot of us Co experts know this but we're talking about things that aren't being talked about that will be talked about where you can actually be the leading expert at something how do you take 5 pounds of Snickers bars and put them in a cake does that look good this morning I don't know if it does but it's right there so she focused on so this is one of Anne's recipes she said well how do we do that 5 pounds of Snickers bars put it into a cake anybody see this one this Zohan is the Instagram cake lady how do you could perfect replica of the Instagram logo and how do you looks quite complicated doesn't it so what is Anne's content tilt what is her different story where she's going to cut through the clutter and make this thing work and get attention sweet spot there it is up at the top but it's the content tilt that makes it all happen she focused on impossible food creations she did not do a breast P she did not do a video unless she asked herself that's a pot that's got to be impossible people will think that's impossible too - that was her content tilt and that's why she broke through very quickly that's why the Instagram cake went viral and that's where she had an opportunity to build an audience now over two million people let me give you an example of how this works I know you're all probably probably very familiar with Google Trends I think it's one of the most underutilized tools out there but let's just say the Joe out of whatever reason I don't know why I use this example but let's say I want to start a knitting blog so Justin I don't know anything about knitting but I want to start a knitting blog so I put knitting into Google Trends and here's the relative search traffic over time on knitting you see how it spikes every December January why is that why does it spike every December January because it's getting cold here I'm from Cleveland it's really cold in Cleveland on the lake every gin and also holiday presents right so the interest Peaks up everywhere so okay that's something but if you go out and you say I want to start a knitting blog you have to compete with all the other hundreds of other knitting blogs out there and you've got to actually pull attention from those to get any kind of attention all it's not it's probably not going to work so let's let's break this down what I want to do is I want to go into knitting and I want to look at what the break out terms are so I'm gonna go all the way down to the right as you know I'm clicking on rising you know we've got some opportunities to actually talk about some different things knitting the knitting loom is back look at it's breaking out knitting knitting for beginners double knitting knitting cast on doesn't matter right look for whatever your industry is this is what I care about I'm not caring about necessarily as we think about search where we're going into oh here's what everybody's focusing on I want to be the ones that are breaking out I want to be the market leader in these ones that have yet to really grow that's where the opportunity is at to tell a different story and to find your content niche what most of us do with our content tilt is we go to broad I want you to focus on the smallest possible in spite so hard you've got to focus on the smallest possible area that you actually have a chance to be the leading expert in something now I want you to think about this all media companies do this and we do not all media companies I've been out about 30 to 35 different launches of publishing properties whether that be custom magazines newsletters webinar programs social media and every time we launch from a media standpoint we always start with an editorial mission statement it's like key it's like the first couple days and we're putting together the strategy editorial mission statement hardly any companies any brands that sell products and services do this and I think it's a missed opportunity and I think you can really fine tune your content tilt if you focus on this area so I'm going to help you I'm going to work on this with you is a little exercise and we call this the content marketing mission statement I'm going to give you a few examples this is homemade simple this is from Procter and Gamble homemade simples been up since 2003 believe it or not talk about a marathon and not a sprint they have over 2 million I think it's actually a 5 million now 5 million consumers that subscribed to regular updates from homemade simple from Procter & Gamble's so yes I would like your sales information P&G that's the information that's so good it doesn't seem like sales that's what they're sending out and they're they put together a this is a shortened version of their content marketing mission statement and this is how you get started enabling women to have more quality time with their families this is not about Proctor and Gamble selling more Swiffer pads this is all about the audience and what the audience's needs are we're going to use this at the litmus test for all the content we create women have more quality time with their families what are you not going to see here you're not going to see any six hour recipes right why is that because it doesn't go to the mission so as a content director as a Content Manager you can say oh you say somebody in your organization has a really good idea you can say oh it doesn't go to the mission it doesn't make sense for what we're trying to do and tell our story so really really important let's look at a b2b example this is indium corporation all of you might be thinking well maybe I've got a boring product or service and I can't do this well this may be the most boring product on the planet indium corporation manufacturers industrial soldering equipment so any of you that are thinking that you don't have sexy things to talk about here you go he started this blog in 2005 in 18 months they saw 600 an increase in qualified leads it's worked very very well for them but they started with a content marketing mission statement by the way they have 70 engineers I'm sorry that's not right 21 engineers creating 70 different blogs for indium corporation but they started with this helping engineers answer the most challenging industrial soldering questions that's all they're doing they're only targeting engineers one audience they're not talking to carding plant managers are not targeting CFO's answer the most challenging industrial soldering questions they're not talking about ball bearings are not talking about siding that's all they're doing there's a couple key things in this they're targeting one audience if you target more than let's say that you look at your b2b process if you're a b2b company you have seven to nine decision-makers in your process most b2b companies they try to target one two three four audiences with their content as soon as you go outside of one audience you're already irrelevant if you're targeting one one more than one persona with your content marketing strategy you're probably going to fail you have to just target one and you want to be as specific as you possibly can so let's go through the three there's three areas of how you can do this so I'm gonna this is Darren rouses digital photography school again started by building an audience now it has a multimillion-dollar platform in his digital photography school he has his content marketing mission statement right on his site welcome to digital photography school a website with simple tips to help digital camera owners get the most out of their cameras three parts who is my audience digital camera owners right what is going to be delivered simple tips what is the outcome the most important thing is the outcome for the audience helping them get the most out of their cameras this is very simple right so it's not rocket science but nobody does this every one of your content creators should be seeing this as part of their brief before they create any content for your particular niche you will save so much money in the editing process if you give this up to them and you don't have to edit it after the fact the second thing is for those of you that maintain editorial or content marketing calendars I want you to add outcome to that so let's say oh here's the topic of the blogpost here's the search engine we're focusing on here's the approval process and what so go through that spreadsheet whatever you use and at the end I want you to add outcome what's in it for the audience for that particular are you trying to help them get a better job live a better life what is that particular thing and you will say he will save soma you'll get your ROI right then just because you'll save money in the editorial process and review process if you do that good little tip so this is what I want you to do when you get back this probably next week think about what how you create your content now do you have this if you don't go through the process define your audience what are you going to deliver what's the outcome so you've identified your sweet spot what's our content till what's that area that we can actually be the leading expert in the world how are we going to tell a different story because most most of the companies we go and talk to they're tell they're creating the same content as everyone else you could take their logo their branding off of it you wouldn't even know what's coming from them it just sounds like everything else in the industry you've got to differentiate that story then we haven't created content yet now we do now we're going to build the base this is where it all gets started here's your content creation so you're ready for this super complex strategy here's a speaker here's the easiest strategy you will ever see this is it every one of the case studies we look reviewed and we talk about in the book followed the same exact strategy when it comes to building the base and this is it I actually went through it I'm like can we get something more complicated so people believe it this was it we focus on one cut for the most part we focus on one content type is it audio is it video is it textual we focus on one main platform is that our blog or website is that iTunes is it YouTube consistently deliver that content is it every Monday Wednesday Friday is it every Saturday what is is it once a week is it twice a week what is that very consistent John Lee Dumas from entrepreneur on fire who built a multi-million dollar platform off of his podcast he sends out his podcast every day 3:30 in the morning Eastern Time and he's done it for three years I just was on his podcast I was podcast number 1115 I believe it or not so at 3:30 every day so that was the key consistency and over a long period of time the shortest case study that we found to monetization so starting this process when you're starting to content first audience first process and then to get to actually driving revenue shortest time nine months average time 15 to 17 months you may say that's long you may say that's not I don't know what you're thinking but what most companies do they try to do this and within three months or like where's the leads we need more we want to get value right away you cannot extract value until you give value you have to make sure you build a loyal relationship with them first so that's building the base let's talk about a few examples I know a lot of you know Brian Clark over a copy blogger started blogging for 19 months before he got to monetization right so he's talking so if you look at what you know you many of you are probably familiar with it three resources that will help you craft smarter landing pages he's talked about online copywriting he's talking about search engine optimization he went from zero to one of the fastest growing software as-a-service companies on the planet by building a hundred thousand plus subscribers through blogging every day on his site so textual content on his own platform everyday over time 19 months let's look at a video example one of my favorite video examples you large enterprises like this this is uske Bank from Denmark one of the largest banks in Denmark they were spending actually a lot of money millions of dollars every year on sponsoring soccer tournaments and the marketing team got together and they said we don't want us we don't even know what we're getting for that sponsorship can we do something else and they said let's build our own audience let's try it let's do a television network they started uske Bank TV believe it or not this is inside the bank this is inside the bank and they actually have a tagline that says we are the only media company with its own bank isn't that something I absolutely love that so they started to build an audience 24/7 financial news targeted to Millennials every day on their own platform creating the video and what's so funny about this example is those same organizations that were charging a million $1 for sponsorship every year they recently went back to uske Bank and said look you can have all the benefits used to get what you paid the 2 million dollars for but you can now have it for free if you'll cover our event believe that talk about a cost savings right talk about it they built an asset that was discrete and different from the products or services that they sell that's how valuable it is this one I found this is Matthew Patrick and game theory I don't know if you got any gamers out there I found out about this one as I was walking through our computer room at home and my son was watching this video called game theory he was talking about subscriber burn as I walked in I'm like subscriber burn that's my industry so I sat down and I watched the video each of these videos there's between 12 and 17 minutes long we actually put Matthew Patrick on the cover of our magazine chief content officer and tried to figure out how did he do this now a multi-millionaire he's got a fast-growing agency he consults directly on algorithm changes for YouTube believe it or not but he started with the same process he started by focusing on one one video a week every week on YouTube consistently over time he's got more than 5 million fans subscribers on YouTube billions of views built this multi-million dollar company and now it's hard to believe that he's actually consulting directly for YouTube itself I don't know if you think this is interesting right I mean our smites goddess is too sexy I don't even know what that means it doesn't mean anything to me but myself like my sons love it they watch this stuff all the time so everyone everyone the same model and by the way this is the same publishing model that's been used for a hundred plus years we think that oh we want to tell these stories and we want to send all this information out and we got it we're going to do on a Facebook and Twitter and snapchat we're going to blog about it we're going to do videos and pocket we basically throw up content all over the place that doesn't work this is what works one content type one platform consistently deliver over time so that's building the base but now we've got it we want to convert right we want to build an audience we want to build an audience of subscribers so the fourth step is always once you build bass now we want to harvest the audience we want to build audience over time so now I'm going to talk a little bit about social media and I'm not by the way I'm not a social media hater I'm very active on social media we do a lot of social media activities at content marketing institute but I'm going to I'm going to want you to think a little bit differently if you don't so here's your space boost Starbucks Facebook page got now over 40 million people that have liked their page when Starbucks does an organic update to their fans on Facebook how many of those forty million are going to see it somebody yell it out three thousand it's actually probably pretty close it's less than 1% and by the way Facebook changed their algorithm right and that's fine they can do that but we played by one set of rules and said hey if we create an audience on Facebook they will start seeing our updates and Facebook says no it doesn't work anymore now Facebook may be a really good advertising platform for us now but not really good from an organic standpoint Starbucks spent millions of dollars building an audience on somebody else's platform and now they're paying for it alright let's look at don't even get me started with Google+ right I don't even know what it is it is a dead is I think it's dead maybe you know better than I do all I know is in the last year they had two major reorganizations they said oh it's still going they changed their logo fit with the new Google logo main thing I don't know what we're using it or not I've got I've got two and a half million followers here from Star what do I do put all this energy in this end up creating this platform and then it's gone and think about all the changes that have happened lady lately like LinkedIn is changing their how their groups work what was it last week YouTube came out and said okay well if you're a partner if you're selling advertising on on our YouTube platform you have to sign this other agreement to get in YouTube read our subscription program or basically we're going to make you private they're changing rules all the time and we are giving them all this power and trying to build audiences on those other platforms and that is not the way to go this is what I want you to focus on I want you to build your own subscribers that you have some control over specifically email I gotta say oh my god email emails dead email I'm going to I'm going to show you email is more powerful than it has ever been before copy blogger said I copy blogger wouldn't have a business model unless they had those 200,000 plus email subscribers that they started with you know Maas Rand Fishkin and Moz has done the same thing build over a hundred thousand subscribers in the same way using this content Inc model we talked about them in the book in the introduction think money magazine from TD Ameritrade I love this example this is a print magazine believe it or not and it goes to very active traders so these are traders that are trading 50 150 200 plus times a day and they're sending a print educational magazine to them think money and the people it Ameritrade wanted to kill it they're like we're in a innovative company we don't want to do print anymore we don't even know if it works we can't measure it took him two years to get the data and two years what they found was is that traders that subscribe and read this magazine trade five times more than those that don't how's that for ROI now the CMO that wanted to kill that project is now raising up and said look at this magazine it's awesome this is fantastic we need to do more print so I want you to think about building your own subscribers in your own audience just like a publisher a media company would now here's my very sophisticated Yabu sliding scale of subscribership now by the way these are all good so all these are all good I want a lot of Facebook fans I want Twitter followers I want LinkedIn connections I want all these things but they don't they're not all equal right I have the least control down here like look at YouTube for example let's say I build subscribers on YouTube which is fine but I may have a couple videos out there but if engagement isn't working right and YouTube's a YouTube's algorithm doesn't like it they might say I'm going to show Jimmy Fallon videos instead of your stupid video absolutely they have the right to do that with their own platform we have more opportunities at the top where do we have some control so if you think you're using all these social media subscribership channels we want to move them up chained up every opportunity up the chain this is what I want you to think about social media absolutely use it I know we've got some speakers later that are going to talk about their own platforms that's great I'm all in on that but I really want you to think from a business standpoint that you might get up tomorrow morning and they may not exist anymore they may be gone and if you think about it that way you start thinking about where you can get a little bit of that control a little bit more data and then you can use that data to create better customer connections you might say but Joe what about BuzzFeed they're like the poster child for social media engagement and they're doing all these videos and all right here's what I want you to do take the BuzzFeed test follow the trail of calls to action when you look at BuzzFeed content you know where it leads email because they're scared just like everyone else it's like oh we got all these social media fans and everything but we don't control that how can we we can do that through the capital hundreds of different email opportunities to get into segments into different ways for whatever New York Times just mentioned they're going from 23 e-newsletters to 35 different newsletters some of the e-newsletters targeted ones that they're creating or getting 50 to 70 percent open rate I know what you're thinking email inbox is too cluttered how do we cut through you all have the one two or three different emails that you open every day the ones that you're starring are the ones that you're reading and then you're saying the rest is trash we're getting read Spain we don't want any of that you need to be one of the one two or three that they open every day you need to be that go-to resource for them so I want you to think about how some of these companies are doing and this is totally blatant and right now it works it might not work tomorrow but right now it works we talked about John Lee Dumas an entrepreneur on fire he has iTunes subscribers he has hundreds of thousands of iTunes subscribers that he ultimately has no control over so what does he do all his calls to action go to his website and he's not even shy about it this is his homepage you want to join Fire Nation sign up get a lot of value I need the sign up I actually was you know we talked about the strategies to Papa we use Pipitea integrates with our WordPress platform and I was like guys it felt a little bit like a used car salesman not that there's anything wrong with that but putting pop over and of course you all know it is it good I don't know whatever we tried it we tested it which you should always test this rate just didn't always take anyone at face value so let's see how it works you know the giveaway a nice little piece of information and get them to sign up and feel part of the social proof part of the community 65% of our daily signups we get about 150 to 170 signups a day 65 percent come from this form so that already I'm interested and what we also found out as we went through the buyers journey and figured out what those people do they become some of our best customers so now I love this actually if I could put two popovers on my page I would do it I need more popovers it really not some I don't know what's going to happen I mean things are changing with mobile I don't know if it works if it's going to work but right now it works really really well because we want to make sure we get those subscribers and those connections not leads they're not leads yet these are just we're just starting to build information that's where most of us haven't go wrong with all of our popovers and pop-ups and getting we think right away oh this is a lead it's not a lead we've got to build that relationship first and we got to qualify it we got to know where they're at and then maybe we can create a lead out of it a lot of you are doing this already and you know it but we want to make sure what do we need we need an amazing e-newsletter most of the e-newsletters we're all putting out are terrible they're all talking about us we're sending out millions of emails I want you to have an amazing e-newsletter that's the one that they open and you need an amazing remarkable exchange of value what is that report that ebook that's something you're going to give them so you can act they will actually give you a correct email address I ever seen you guys have this to some of the we get some really profane emails I frickin hate pop-ups at gmail.com like we'll get a lot of those as we go through so you want real because we want them to be in them to get the information we want them to see that it's value we're trying to create value so we've Hart we built the base we harvest the audience now we're going to diversify once you build a Minimum Viable audience whatever that is for you it could be a thousand it could be 5,000 and RK it was 10,000 in Matthew Patrick's in games theories case his was 500,000 he's targeting consumers so whatever that is we're going to get to that number and then we're going to diversify most of us diversify right away well we're going to do all this stuff I don't want you to do that I want you to diversify later now we're going to look at the 3 and 3 model for those of you that are looking for hey I want to be a rock star my personal career every one of the case studies we looked at have these three so this is 3 & 3 model they have an amazing blog they have a book like a really like a drop on the desk book a real book and then they're out there public speaking we see that in every case from a corporate standpoint it's these three we want the leading digital platform the leading print platform and the leading in-person platform I know we're all talking digital but I'm telling you if you look at all the major media companies out there are models that are in the book that we talk about but all of the buzz feeds of the world The Huffington Post of the world New York Times look at they all have these three they're all building the three legs of the stool so now we have to think about how we're going to build those out and take the next step as we go I'll give you some data on it this is our data from Content Marketing Institute this is what we found why diversification is key so these are all the people that came to content marketing world our Big Show and we looked at well what's the B how do they get there what's the path we found out that the magic number is three if they sign up for three different things that we offer let's say a subscription to CCO or one of our webinars they sign up for our email newsletter weekly daily whatever it's the three is the number they're way more likely to come to content marketing world we see a significant behavior change by subscription to three things and this is why we want to diversify so now we have got 14 or bunch of different things that we offer but we did we started with just the platform we basically 24 months and all we were doing was blogging building the audience that was it nothing else then we launched the magazine then we launched on and on and on let's go back to our friend Andy does Andy do this model is the chicken Whisperer do this I want to know if Andy does this model right we started really built his base on the radio show the twenty thousand listeners every week he's consistently creating that then of course there's the chicken with per magazine the leading magazine in the industry mind you and of course it's the ultimate guide to raising chickens in your backyard which is the number-one book in the category there's only two books in the category by the way but this is the number one book but even the chicken whispers doing this strategy let's look at Jojo fantastic designer built a multi-million dollar company started with just a blog now she's got projects with Microsoft and Target and Johnson & Johnson these design integrations it's just amazing what she's been able to do she started in 2005 three really short blogs a day every day and mine should mean short I'm talking like a hundred words short every day that's all she did five years 2010 she started writing books 2011 she started on Pinterest now she's one of the most pinned people on pin 213 1.1 million followers and she's just blown up into this huge fast growing company but again started first the blog and then she started to diversify after the fact and of course we talked about how we did the same thing just the blog then we did the event content marketing world then we did the magazine chief content officer then we did our podcasts the sole marketing after we built the base first so this is not easy you're going to this takes time to build you have to have patience to do it for those of you that have a lot of budget out there what we know when we talk to a lot of the enterprise we work with mostly multi-billion dollar companies they have a lot of cash a lot of cash on the sidelines right now and a lot of them are looking at well maybe we're impatient maybe we don't want to build it maybe we want to buy it and I think there's a huge opportunity for all of us no matter what size company you're with I think there's an opportunity to look into a niche and actually purchase let me give you some examples jpg magazine 2009 going out of business after the Great Recession had 300,000 people subscribers subscribed to jpg magazine advertising plummeted couldn't get find any support what are we going to do all no other media companies wanted to buy them Adorama Adorama came around Adorama sells photography equipment JPG magazine is an educational resource for photographers does that make a fit yes they've purchased some in 2009 with a buying group it's been a great relationship for both parties it's a definite win Adorama didn't have to build that platform they purchased it I know a lot of you familiar with marketing automation company HubSpot they had a sales blog they had a marketing blog they said we want an agency blog specifically for agencies did they want to build it they said no it's going to take time it takes patience to do that agency post was available they just purchased agency post now they have an agency blog and we're seeing deals happen in the tens of thousands up to multi-million dollars but I think that we're going to see the next you heard it here next 12 to 18 months you're going to see rampant M&A around brands buying media companies bloggers influencers I want you to list where your customer is hanging out in that particular niche I want you to list those sites and I want you to make decisions are we going to partner with them do we want to buy them or do we do nothing I think it's a huge opportunity for you to speed to market there here's the last one and then we're going to get into some questions so get if you have any questions let's get those ready so you're all thinking okay great Joe I don't want to make some money off of this what's monetization how do we monetize lots of different ways to measure how your content is performing this is my favorite what's the difference between those who subscribe to my content and those that don't once you get the connection of a subscriber then how do they be different do they buy more do they stay longer what do they do differently we can measure this but the problem is we take it takes time to do that you have to go through at least a buyer's cycle to get to a point where you've got the kind of data that's going to make sense right and you could there are nine different ways we talk about all of them in the book - whether you're making money you want to sell more products and services are you going to launch advertising programs are you going to increase your products if you're go to more loyal customers like John Deere does maybe it's a data driven activity like Kraft Foods has Kraft recipes com they mined data that's all R&D that's all for new product development maybe they're launching events whatever the case is I'll Copyblogger do it right every blogging everyday built 200,000 subscribers now they're selling software-as-a-service products how did TD Ameritrade do it they wanted to create a behavior change in their current customers that they would actually buy more generate sales that way this is one of my favorite ones that maybe you've heard of river pools and spas this is Marcus Sheridan so Marcus likes to talk about how so basically real quick story is 2007 2008 remember those times and made basically River pools and spas installs fiberglass pools who was installing fiberglass pools in 2008 how many people the people that put down $50,000 deposits wanted it back they said look we're hurtin you know I need to pay the mortgage I need to put the kids through school I can't do the pool thing anymore what are we going to do started to basically do the blog like indium did and he said we're going to answer all the questions that nobody else is answering he if you go to any kind of search terms around fiberglass pools fiberglass pools versus concrete pools how much does it cost you know questions that weren't being answered River pools and spas comes up they are now world renowned brand they went from fifth in their market in 2007 to in 2011 installing more fiberglass pools than any company in North America fifth in their market to more than it and that all they did was they created the block that's the only thing they did the most awesome swimming pool block that was it it's not sexy but it works so I want you to create the plan but I want you to focus on building an audience I want you to focus on build this is the thing that I want you to really think about this is the thing I truly believe you have to create value before you extract value create value first before you extract value it's where you need a little bit of patience we're all we're all so quick to get the leads and to get them in and work them down the system and get them to sales and sell and sell and sell but if we take a little bit more thoughtful approach I think you'll see amazing changes what we saw for those in the book so because I really do believe this I think you have to be the leading expert in your particular niche that you're targeting and I want you to do the test look at the content you're creating is it any different than any other pieces of content out there in the industry are you telling the same story as everyone else have to tell a different story and a loyal audience will lead you to revenue like all these people we found I found I wasn't alone lots of different people obviously Rand up there as well same model we talked about him in the book so here's your takeaways here's what I want to think about so find a niche where you can be the leading expert in the world I want you to develop that content mission focus on that content marketing mission the what's the base build that base your content type what's the platform deliver consistently over time don't build your house on rented land don't build your content house on in places and social media platforms that you cannot control build an audience of opt-in subscribers to do that you need an amazing e-newsletter and a remarkable download then you diversify use that rule of three print in person digital figure out what your subscribers do differently everything you do has to focus on audience first audience first and then products if you build a loyal relationship with your audience they will tell you what they want to buy they will absolutely will know like and trust you even more and they will pretty and that's what we found out in the book all these case studies you could pretty much sell whatever you want once you build that loyal relationship with them but you have to be patient had to be patient so for those of you that have people in the organization than our patient and want immediate results do a pilot program six-month pilot program everyone in the room this is what we're trying to do know that you need more time but at least get the budget for six months so that you can start the process did everyone get at least one thing that's not good everyone get at least one thing all right did anyone get more than one thing hopefully I've exceeded your expectations thank you very much I appreciate it this is before we get to so I don't we have time for a couple questions before we do we just created our documentary called the story of content it's available in Amazon Prime or at the story of content calm if you have any people that don't believe in content marketing and just don't get it this is 43 minutes we're starting to show it in universities across schools across the country around the world agencies are getting together groups are getting together if you want more information on putting kits together let me know because we've got screening kits I think that this is how you're going to turn non-believers into believers hopefully get you some more budget all right do we have some time for a few questions five minutes for questions and if the first question gets a book because I got one right here for you I can't we've got a question in the back thank you here comes the mic oh yeah me I can hear you go ahead so you talked about the different content type that needs to be developed text images video yeah and so I'm out to launch a blog in the next couple months so I've been thinking about like do I change it from okay I'm gonna start with text and I'll go to video but you mentioned that we should stick with one type did I hear you clearly was it one type I like all going to do a video and just stay consistent is there a problem if you mix it up obviously with text images and video so when I'm talking about textual I mean if you're going to integrate images into that because that's just good usability so if you're talking about images but if you're sorry I apologize infographics infographics I'm when you're looking at your platforms and textual you can in an absolute integrate pictures and imagery and stuff into that but that's still your main platform is a text-based blog platform that you're going after I would I mean I would just be careful about oh I'm going to start integrating video or audio and whatever and don't get distracted focus on that platform and what we saw the case studies in the book yes they integrated imagery but it was all about building that blog platform first and that was that they were going for and for usability sake they would integrate pictures into that but they're not going out and say okay here's a video here I give you example of miles right anybody know look at whiteboard Friday for Moz love my whiteboard Friday right think about how he started he started with just the blog first blog blog built the subscribers then he launches whiteboard Friday as the regular ongoing but he had the audience built first so focus on that content type first and then start integrating your whiteboard Friday type things your your second or your podcast offering or whatever but yes integrate images but that's still considered at least according how we talked about in the book still textual good absolutely lots of questions coming in got one there one here hey Joel how's it going gum you mentioned early on about how if you're targeting multiple personas with your content strategy you're probably going to end up failing um while I understand that aspect from a b2b standpoint a lot of companies are starting to dive heavily into multiple personas who they're targeting um what what do you suggest these companies do if they've already invested in creating all these multiple personas and you know then turn their content more effective okay so a great question about the persona so if you look at the average b2b sale yeah between seven and nine personas some of them are bite the direct decision-makers some of them are gatekeepers some of them are influencers so you're looking at that now you have to make a decision about who you're going to focus on what most people are doing well most b2b companies do is they say oh we're going to do a Content initiative to these three personas and I'm saying okay good you're going fail there's no way you're going to be relevant enough for those three let's start with one so let's say you make a decision and that's where you're not going to do a content marketing initiative to all nine of those you're maybe gonna pick three but you should start with one so I'm going to start with the one and we're going to build a loyal audience there and then once we do that we're going to go to to give you a great example of who did that really well Huffington Post Huffington Post has what 240 250 different dip blogs now you know what they started with one to one audience and then when they built that audience know what they did then they went to two and then they went to three so most b2b companies fail right away because we want to we're going to target the CEO and the CIO and the CFO and the plant they're just trying to target as many people as possible and go abroad never will cut through never will be relevant enough there's too much competition out there so you have to make choices and this is why we call it strategy so just to make sure okay which is one we're going to go after and maybe the other six may be used to say we're going to go after these one two and the other six or seven you're going to target and communicate with them in other ways but not necessarily build a content platform around it it's a great question got time for two more questions I think lots of questions thank you by the way I'll be around for a while and Ivan wants the D value their book I'm happy to sign it later hi I work with a client that has it's a grocery retailer and they recently came out with the newsletter and what they are trying to do is they offer a lot of recipes in that type of content but in addition to that they also kind of talk about themselves they have coupons and things like that and is there a place for that because I know you mentioned John Deere only mentioned themselves 3 to 15 times and I feel like this grocery retailer kind of talks about themselves quite a lot but I'm not really too sure how they can balance that with the coupons and things like that exactly so don't have a problem with so let's say you've take the newsletter and you have certain parts that you're going to talk about yourself you can do that but you have to limit it and you have to think about it just like a call to action on a conversion and a landing page like most the way that content is being done right now is there's there there's all kinds of things that most landing page oh no this is a benefit this is a feature this is great and you're looking at all these different buttons but really a best landing page is a very simple one that has one call-to-action so I would look at okay here's the contour the content is the content we're not going to do a bait-and-switch we're just talking about helpful content for that person and then if you have some calls to action to different things outside of that content that works very well most of the programs that we talk about in the book actually did that but how they do it is when you look at email if it's an educational email that for the most part that educational email just does that it just teaches it just helps and then if they're having a separate offering they usually keep that that's a separate sales messaging you're not mixing up mixing it up so if you have to have it together and I totally get the conversations you're having I would say let's be strategic about it and you might want to do a count how many stories do we have versus how many calls to action let's say for this newsletter we really want to focus on having this one thing happen so let's focus on that for this issue and then let's not have 20,000 coupons in it great question one we have one more question real quick we got one back there I got one here got one here thank you I'll just see he just walked right by you that was just I was just wrong alright go ahead I do all right thanks for always replying to my tweet by the way um I was wondering how important is it to have some kind of like recognizable face to your brand kind of like how you are with Content Marketing Institute does it give your competition a much bigger advantage if they have like a recognizable celebrity face to their brand I think it absolutely does help it's not necessary to do that I mean if you look at what Red Bull media house has created if you look at what Kraft recipes has created if you look at what John Deere created they've got experts regular columnist that they're starting to build up as influencers but they don't necessarily have one like maybe myself or Rand Fishkin or Brian Clark or sort of theirs but look at what happens over time like Brian Clark doesn't have the notoriety and Copyblogger that he used to have because he's too again sort of a back seat and he's positioning other experts to do that and we're trying to do the same thing at CMI I would just say it should be part of your influencer strategy to integrate influencers in your own company as well as outside companies to make that work to give you your own authority it's not necessary but it does help but I think that if you don't have one and you want to start integrating influencers you should if you have people in your own company that you can lift up absolutely I would do that and I think the savviest most innovative companies are doing that with their content marketing program they're saying hey let them be rock stars too and it will rising tide will lift salt lifts all ships so it's a great great question thank you very much I'll be around have a great great day appreciate it

Channel: Conductor

Views: 165,298

Keywords: Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing, Marketing conference, Content strategy 2015, news content strategy, enterprise marketing team, small business marketing

Id: 0BaSjglvEf8

Length: 57min 50sec (3470 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2015