eDavid Cummings, Director of Forth Metrics looks at the emergence of blogger outreach where the relationship with the right bloggers can lead to thousands of instant customer relationships.

1. Blogger outreach
David Cumings
Forth Metrics

2. Outline
• How to be visible
• Blogger outreach as a solution
• The process
• Benefits
• Measurement

3. Issues
• Route to market
• General visibility
• International markets
• Great stuff not seeing the light of day

4. How do you achieve the required
levels of visibility without Hollywood
dollars?

5. Spray and pray?

7. Lord Leverhulme
Founder of Unilever
“I know that half of my advertising budget
is wasted, but I’m not sure which half”

8. blog.forthmetrics.com

9. inkybee.com

10. Why blogs matter
• Engine that drives ideas on the Internet
• The realm of experts
• Panda/Penguin updates

11. Proposed solution
• Blogger outreach as part of organised
inbound content marketing campaign

12. Marketing has changed
• Outbound marketing
• Inbound marketing
• Content marketing

13. Outbound marketing

14. Outbound marketing
Trying to find your audience using;
• Cold calling
• Direct mail (press releases)
• Email ‘blasts’
• Print ads
• Radio and TV Interruption

15. Inbound marketing

16. Inbound marketing
Being found by your audience
• Through search
• Through social media
• Through blogging
Permission
Be visible to your audience using content

17. Content marketing

18. Content marketing
Teach, don’t sell
• Be visible to your audience and attract
them with content
• Think like a publisher
• Don’t be dull
• Educate, entertain - and be relevant

20. Marketing is Dead

21. Marketing is Dead
Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi) 2012

22. Marketing is Dead
Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi) 2012
Content marketing is
the only marketing
left

23. Marketing is Dead
Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi) 2012
Content marketing is
the only marketing
left Seth Godin 2012

24. Benefits of blogger
outreach
• Cuts straight to the chase
• Precise and targeted
• Reliable
• Measurable
• SEO performance
• Gets better the more you do it

25. Important points
• It's about developing friendships
• You need to be creating compelling content
• It's a two way process
• You have to have a lead capture strategy
• It requires an investment of energy

26. Preparation

27. Objectives
• Know your business objectives (how much
money do you want in the bank by what date)
• How many physical conversions does this
translate into (total money needed / unit cost
price = conversions required)

28. Example:
• Business Objective is to generate 4K of sales
for ‘Our Well Received Debut Album’ by the
end of September 2012
• Campaign Objective is to get 571 people to
download ‘Our Well Received Debut Album’ by
the end of September 2012.

29. Customers
• Know your target customers
• Who are the people who are going to deliver
the business objectives by actually spending
their cash?
• Where do these people ‘hang out’ on the
Internet?
• Have some sort of a clue about why this
audience is going to care about your offer

30. Lead capture
• Every campaign requires a lead capture
strategy.
• People don’t buy when you want them to buy.
They buy when they’re ready to buy.
• Capture the leads and follow up with them
• Use a landing page

32. Process

33. Find the influencers
• Find the influential bloggers that your
customers follow
• Estimate the visibility they might achieve for
you
• Use this to estimate conversion rates based on
reach. Are the numbers high enough to
achieve the objectives?
• Keep a Google doc recording your level of
interaction with them

39. Reaching out
• No spammy emails
• No press releases
• No cold calling
• Follow on twitter and retweet occasionally
• Subscribe to their blog and read it
• Comment sensibly once in a while
• Behave like a friend

40. Reaching out
• Be sane and be normal
• Follow on Twitter
• Read their blog (really)
• Retweet occasionally
• Get to understand them
• Comment sensibly once in a while
• Behave like a friend
No spammy emails or press releases!

41. The content offer

42. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)

43. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)
• Teach, don’t sell

44. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)
• Teach, don’t sell
• Educate, entertain, and be relevant

45. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)
• Teach, don’t sell
• Educate, entertain, and be relevant
• Think about the expertise you have and how it
will help your target audience.

46. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)
• Teach, don’t sell
• Educate, entertain, and be relevant
• Think about the expertise you have and how it
will help your target audience.
• Prepare a content launch strategy that
includes anticipation

47. Tip, monitor Google Analytics for the
'How, Why, What, Where' questions.

48. Create content that answers these questions

49. Types of content
• Video
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• etc. etc.
But, make it really genuinely useful.
And make it compelling.

50. Lead capture

51. Lead capture
• Remember, you need a lead capture strategy

53. Putting it all together
• Get your influencer friends to review content
• Even get them to contribute to it
• Then, plan a content release strategy
• Build up some anticipation
• Set a launch date
• Get you influencers lined up to talk about it
• Release, and watch the sales or leads come in

54. But, to re-emphasise, success is based on
developing friendships and putting effort into
making really useful content
Neither of these is too hard to achieve

55. Example
• ‘The Best Practise
Guide for Blogger
Outreach’ eBook
• Released July 2012
• 11 main influencers

57. Measurement
• Weekly meeting (not sit down!)
• Visibility achieved?
• Engagement achieved with the offer?
• Conversions to leads?
• Are the numbers going up?
• Discuss ideas to increase conversion
• Assign actions to improve now before next
week

58. inkybee.com
David Cumings
dave@forthmetrics.com
@davidcumings
07725057500
blog.forthmetrics.com