Content marketing isn’t just another arrow in your quiver — our panel of top marketing professionals argue that when it’s used correctly, it’s a nuclear-grade weapon in the war for customer engagement and real ROI.
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Content marketing is consistently the most important — and the least understood — marketing tool. In our upcoming webinar, we share the insights from the imminent VB Insight report about what it takes to create compelling content that gets discovered and really connects.
“Content marketing has exploded over the last few years,” says panelist Chase Hooley, senior manager of content marketing at MapR Technologies. “We’ve bought in to Seth Godin’s saying: content marketing is essentially the only kind of marketing that’s left.”
Content marketing, he says, “is about the only way to get our target audience’s attention anymore. They have the power to block our ads, they have the power to leave the website if they don’t like what they see.”
And that’s why creating content with real, measurable value for your target audience is the essential backbone of content marketing. “Once we’ve got their attention, then we can get down to the analytics: what’s working, what’s not,” Hooley says.
What’s working is measured in increased sales opportunities. In fact, MapR’s content marketing efforts drive the majority of the those opportunities, and help shorten sales cycles.
A content marketing strategy is built from the ground up. MapR spent three months talking with marketing agencies and conducting interviews with sales reps, internal subject matter experts, and customers to build out audience personas and buyer journeys for each of them. Keyword research on each persona’s micro-moments — those intent-rich instances when a potential customer comes to a decision or forms a preference — guide content development and determine the impact of engaging at that essential moment.
While interactive ebooks, articles, and videos are important pieces of the puzzle, the blog has been a focus for MapR from the start. Content is heavily SEO-optimized, and focuses on building reciprocal links so that it ranks well and pulls in engaged, interested traffic.
“They’re coming to our blog to read and consume and basically become better at what they do for a living,” Hooley says. It creates a solid demand gen platform as potential customers consume that content. “Then, he says, “we can start to move them through the buyer’s journey and help speed up that process. The blog is definitely foundational.”
And choosing the right technology is essential. Hooley relies on the content management platform Kapost which is key to keeping the team better aligned and to better plan content strategy.
From an ROI standpoint, Hooley notes, Kapost’s content-scoring metrics, which highlight the best-performing content, drives content promotion, strategy, and creation.
What’s the future of content marketing? For Hooley’s team it’s a content recommendation engine on the MapR platform. “Between the qualitative research we’ve done and crunching all the other analytics we’re able to pull on our platform, our goal is to create a more relevant and engaging experience on our website toward the end of this year.”
To learn more about content marketing tech, analytics, and ROI — plus fundamental content creation strategies — register for this free webinar with our panel of content marketing experts.
Don’t miss out!
You’ll learn: Which content marketing strategies will boost your marketing initiatives The right voice for your company and customers — and how to keep it consistent How to get buy-ins from internal subject matter experts What you gain from content marketing, including lead gen, expanded social presence, and individual and company brand recognition What tools and metrics to determine the ROI of your content marketing.
Speakers: Stewart Rogers , Director of Marketing Technology, VB Insight Mitchell Reichgut , CEO, Jun Group Chase Hooley , Senior Manager, Content Marketing, MapR Technologies
Moderator: Wendy Schuchart , Analyst, VentureBeat
This webinar will be based on Stewart Rogers’ VB Insight report, which will be published in February, 2016.
This webinar is sponsored by Searchmetrics, Inc.