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CMO’s Unhappy With Content Marketing Efforts

CMO’s Unhappy With Content Marketing Efforts

With seventy percent of B2B marketers creating more content than they did last year, you would think that their bosses would be happy with their content marketing results.

But more is not always better and that appears to be the case according to a recent survey by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and NetLine Corporation. The survey found that 90 percent of CMOs said they have a content strategy, but only 2 percent consider their existing approach to demand generation highly effective

The challenge for many CMOs, and marketers in general, is producing content that translates into business results. How can they do that? By following these three strategies.

Content Amplification

Only 12 percent of marketers believe they have a content marketing strategy and amplification to target the right audiences with relevant and persuasive content. They are also not using multiple distribution and syndication channels for maximum reach, impact and return.

“Generating demand and ensuring the consistent flow of high-quality, actionable leads is paramount to the success of today’s business-to-business marketer." “Sales enablement and pipeline performance remain key mandates as organizations look to fine-tune their content marketing practices to be high-performance growth engines.”

Donovan Neale-May

Executive Director of the CMO Council.

Customized Content

Seventy five percent of marketers measure the success of their content marketing efforts by the number of downloads or registrations they get.

But often those goals are not met due to:

Not developing customized content for target audiences (48 percent of respondents)
Not allocating sufficient budget to create engaging and authoritative content (48 percent)
Not producing content that is relevant or meaningful to different audiences (44 percent)
Not reaching the right decision makers across the organization (43 percent)
List ItemNot leveraging the right distribution channels and syndication opportunities to maximize reach (39 percent)

As Robert Alvin, CEO and Founder of NetLine Corporation put it:

“The quantity and quality of audience-appropriate content directly correlates to the number of leads that will end up in the sales pipeline. “Content demand generation programs start with the asset but must ensure proper consumption. Syndication and distribution to target audience groups with measurable results is indispensable for a successful content strategy.”

Robert Alvin

CEO and Founder of NetLine Corporation

If you’re looking for a content marketing agency that can help you achieve your business goals, contact Braveheart Digital Marketing today. We’ll be happy to discuss your content needs and provide a content strategy that aligns with your overall business goals.

How We Generated 2,680,000 Qualified Visits to Our Sports Websites

When we launched our sports network, we faced the same question you face everyday: “How can I drive more traffic to my web site?”

Sports is as competitive online as it is offline. The online world of sports encompasses teams, leagues, major publications, TV networks, and tens of millions of fans worldwide writing about their team and sport. How could we attract more web site traffic to our sports sites when the competition for their attention was so fierce?

We produced a web site traffic generation plan that focused on three channels:

We knew that by consistently and methodically executing our three-channel plan we would see results, and we did; web site traffic increased from 652,000 visits to 2,680,000 within two years!

Our Twitter accounts also grew from 111,000 followers to more than 350,000 followers. Our email list started at zero and boomed to over 25,000 subscribers.

Most importantly – our revenue reflected our success;

Sales Increased From $731,000 To $2,460,000.

Driving web site traffic is relatively easy for us with our combined 20+ years of SEO and marketing experience. The hard part was driving qualified, engaged traffic full of fans likely to buy something. Here’s how we did it:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO was one of our main sources of web site traffic, driving 40% or over 1,000,000 visitors in our site’s second year.

We faced three major challenges:

The league, team, and major media outlets were all viewed as authority sites by the search engine, making it nearly impossible to rank for one or two word terms. We had to find a better alternative.
We wanted to build relationships with fans in the US and across Europe, so we needed a customized tactical approach for each site.
We had to remember our goal to produce 8,000 pieces of content per year while considering SEO best practices.

How did we achieve success?

By implementing the SEO best practices we made sure that the important search engines could find all the content that we were publishing on a daily basis.

We used a combination of tools and widgets to make sure that the ongoing content had optimized title tags, had all the appropriate internal links, and automatically shared via the appropriate social networks.

We took the time to research and understand our audience. What topics were fans interested in? We found out and developed content for each topic that sparked major interest. We didn’t waste time and money producing content that fans weren’t interested in.

To make sure that we were focused on the best performing topics and keywords, we used a simple metric—revenue per search engine visitor.

Cultivating Referral Sites

Organic search was only one source of traffic. Another potential source of quality traffic was referral sites. On referral sites, sports fans looked for ways to interject themselves into conversations and share our content. The process of identifying and researching quality referral sites is worth the time and effort.

Traffic from Referral sites has a different “feel” than organic search traffic. The ability to “feel” traffic is a benefit of years of experience generating qualified traffic. It’s a sense one develops over time and exposure to many different scenarios where audience building is critical. People from fan sites were at a different phase in the buying cycle, so we offered them chances to subscribe to newsletters or follow us on Twitter. This allowed us the opportunity to build a strong relationship with them. Relationships built over time and within the context of a common interest can lead to sales down the road.

Content as a Strategy

The best way to bring fans back to our sites was to produce interesting and engaging content.

Our content was written for fans by fans. Instead of just regurgitating the news, we gave our opinion on it. That drew fans and debate to the sites and kept users coming back for more.

The network of sports websites that we started with broad content became more niched and focused as it grew. This allowed us to reach the most passionate fans, the fans with burning interests in their teams, the fans who wanted to engage and interact with other fans.

We published great content several times a day, bringing those fans back to the sites on a daily basis.

We also used the scheduled post feature to ensure that we were publishing at the most optimal time to reach our target audience. For example, with London five hours ahead of New York City, it wouldn’t make sense to email Londoners and New Yorkers at the same time. The scheduled post feature allowed us to publish at local times and ensure we reached the most fans at optimal times.

Social Media

We used social media to promote content and engage with followers and fans.

Social media was a great source of traffic. We focused on accruing followers for our social media accounts by creating a voice and tone that resonated with fans. Our Twitter followers grew from 111,000 to over 350,000. That meant more fans were exposed to our content, which drove even more visitors to our sites.

We also used a website called Tweetreach.com to measure the effectiveness of the tweets we sent out. I am a big fan of A/B testing and we found that we could triple the number of impressions and CTR on our tweets just by testing different tweet formats.

Conclusion

Increasing qualified web site traffic from 652,000 visitors to over 2.68 million visitors in only 24 months was the result of a traffic generation plan that included performance-based organic search by a trusted, qualified SEO professional, select fan sites, well-written, on-topic content, and the strategic use of social media. Have a question on how to generate more qualified web site traffic to your site? Contact us today.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

This month has been the month of audits as almost every project I have worked on this month seems to involve some sort of audit (content audits, page audits, landing page audits, etc.).

My auditing procedure begins with gathering the data I need—analytics, keywords, conversion rates, etc. Additionally, I ask clients for four pieces of information on their target audience:

I am amazed at the number of times I hear that this information is not available. Without these four pieces of information, the content recommendations switch from being highly customized to more general in nature. Instead of highly targeted content that speaks directly to the user and explains why product X meets their needs, the content focuses more on features and benefits. Although that kind of content offers useful information, it lacks the hook—the story that draws users in and makes them take the next step. The most common reason I hear why companies have not developed buyer personas is because developing them is time-consuming. While it is true that generating really good buyer personas does take time and effort, the benefit is that content that is developed with specific users in mind will result in higher engagement and conversions than content that is not. Without buyer personas, companies are losing the opportunity for more business. Do you have your buyer personas? Contact us today, so we can help you discover your audience and pitch to them directly!

Braveheart Digital Moves To Manchester NH

We are happy to announce that Braveheart Digital has a new home. We have moved our offices from the Alpha Loft incubation and acceleration space in Downtown Manchester NH to the Red Oaks Offices on 66 Hanover Street, still in downtown Manchester.

Our NEW address is:

Red Oaks Offices

66 Hanover St

Suite 200

Manchester · NH · 03101

Being located in the heart of downtown Manchester will allow us to attract the SEO content writers and email marketers we need to help our clients grow their traffic, increase leads and drive new revenue.

Braveheart Digital is an SEO Company bringing together cutting edge, organic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, marketing savvy and a solid methodology to help businesses achieve their growth objectives.

CMO’s Unhappy With Content Marketing Efforts

Content Amplification

Customized Content

Recent Posts

How We Generated 2,680,000 Qualified Visits to Our Sports Websites

Sales Increased From $731,000 To $2,460,000.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How did we achieve success?

Cultivating Referral Sites

Content as a Strategy

Social Media

Conclusion

Recent Posts

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Recent Posts

Braveheart Digital Moves To Manchester NH

Recent Posts

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