Blog
Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.
Once you have established a succinct marketing strategy and objectives, establishing the return on investment is easier. You look at all your inputs, how much did you spend or invest in resources. Then look at the outputs. The proviso here, is often money is invested in a year but the return can be a multi-year payback. Which is often forgotten. That’s simple in principle. So how do you measure it? Often through a mix of measurement… Continue reading
When Isaac Newton established the first law of motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, he probably didn’t have content marketing in mind. But it’s a useful thought to have in mind when thinking about return on investment. Establishing ROI in three simple steps works like this: 1. You need to start with, what did we give the market, or what resources did we expend. 2. Identify to what end, what goals were you trying to… Continue reading
The classic question, how do I create good content for our website? Let’s get back to basics, customers and future customers visit your website with goals in mind. Jot these down. Then look at what content could help them achieve those objectives, faster, easier, more effectively. A way to work backward on this is to go interview a few customers to understand their purchasing journey. Why did they buy? What else did they consider? How did they… Continue reading
The cost can range dramatically, up to $250k for a custom piece on The NY Times. However, the whole campaign could be much more. Another grouping would be around $25k – $75k. With the upper end getting you a piece on BuzzFeed. Then, trade magazines will be a bit lower with packages often $7.5k-$15k. Often with a lead generation or webinar opt-in attached. Working with influencers can then range again from as low as $50 and up. Continue reading
A brand approaches a publisher and asks them to sponsor their content. This could involve creating a new piece of content, sponsoring an existing section or the brand supplying content. The most effective way is to create the content in partnership with the publisher. Then the brand gets the benefit of delivering the story within the publishers environment, that context, and audience can easily engage in it. Further the partner can promote and distribute the content to their… Continue reading
Good content does the job the marketer wants from it. Make sure you have an effective content marketing strategy first. This will help you understand if a piece of content is doing its job. So when creating your content, reference your strategy, will this content help deliver on that goal. Then once you have published it, check the data, are people consuming it. Are enough people seeing it? It is likely you will need to make one or two rounds… Continue reading
Go and download our example strategy doc. Fill it in. Follow the best practices in the spreadsheet. Then each month, update and revise this, continue to develop it. Build on it, simplify it and remove it. Continue reading
So you’ve nailed your content strategy and now you’re ready to implement it. You’ve got tons of creative ideas about how to reach your audience and boost your ROI. But you need some structure, a central place to hold all of the nitty-gritty details and a way to clearly visualize what is happening when. This is where a content calendar comes in handy. Essentially a content calendar is a tool to help you organize and plan all of… Continue reading
Marketing metrics are tracked and measured by your marketing analytics software. To track the metrics, you need to install the code provided by your marketing analytics partner. Some metrics may need additional configuration, for example tracking conversions, or engagement rates. Which may need defining with additional o’clock actions. Once you have installed the code, you will need to QA it to make sure it is tracking correctly. Then after a few hours, you should be able to log in and… Continue reading
Get a report created on your campaign, and go and evaluate it. Sounds easy huh. You’re probably reading this because you had a report of some sort and you’re trying to re-figure out, what should I do here. What is important. So let’s go back to basics 1) Why did you do this campaign? 2) What were the objectives? 3) How did you deliver on those objectives? 4) How did you measure the delivery of those objectives? 5) What did… Continue reading