TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

03 INTRODUCTION

04 What is Content Marketing, and Why Do I Need It? 09 Educate First, Sell Second

11 PLAN

12 Mapping to Buyer Personas and Journeys 15 Developing Personas 27 Developing Your Brand Voice 31 Brainstorm 35 Types of Content 45 Content Mix 48 The Content Food Groups 51 Editorial Calendars

57 CREATE

58 Hiring/Team Positions 63 Outlines 65 Editing Your Content 72 The Three R's of Content Marketing

78 DESIGN

79 Content Design

84 PUBLISH AND PROMOTE

85 Content Repositories 89 Content Alerts and Strategy Docs 91 Promotion

96 MEASURE

97 The Content ROI Mystery 99 Metrics for Different Kinds of Content

108 CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING, AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING, AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

Content marketing is the process of creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage your audience. In Content Rules, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman define content as "anything your organization creates and shares to tell its story." Content takes many forms, but it only qualifies as content marketing if, according to the Content Marketing Institute, it aims to drive profitable customer action.

Today, your buyers and customers live in an age of information abundance. They're more inundated by marketing messages than ever ? more than 2,900 per day, by current estimations. As a result, marketers are challenged by attention scarcity ? the concept that the more messages your audience is forced to filter out, the harder they become to reach.

So how does content marketing help? Done right, content marketing elevates your brand above those thousands of marketing messages, and becomes the fuel for engagement with your customers. It's the offer in your email campaigns, the link you share on social, the collateral you hand out at events, the case study you showcase on your website and the silver bullet your sales team uses to close a deal.

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING, AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

In our view, engaging content marketing fits these seven qualifications:

1. It engages individuals on their own terms, using buyer personas (see "Developing Personas" on p.16)

4. It's the right fit for your channel ? whether it's being used on your website, in email, on social, or elsewhere

2. It's based on interactions buyers have with your brand, and mapped directly to their buying stages (see "Buying Stages" on p.22)

3. It tells a continuous story, with a unified narrative that evolves throughout a customer's journey

5. It has a clear purpose, and a clear call-to-action for your audience to follow

6. It has pre-defined metrics, and is designed to be measurable

7. It is created in the most efficient, effective way possible ? without sacrificing quality

"We're entering a new phase of content marketing right now. The new discipline is emerging from the early experiments and pilot investments. And it's way more strategic and central than anybody thought."

Doug Kessler,

Creative Director & Co-Founder, Velocity Partners

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