Josa Young at Screen Pages Client Event Sept 2012

1. Content:
The jam in your
transactional
sandwich
Josa Young

2. One I made earlier (1996)
Searchable
content UGC E-commerce

3. Enter a vegetable, and you will get a
selection of recipes to help you decide
what to do with what is in the box –
completely novel concept at the time
(remember no one really knew what
celeriac was in 1996, let alone kohlrabi!)

4. Pre-internet: A business that took off as a result of an
article I researched & wrote for the Telegraph…
Ideal audience, compelling content, great pictures, accurate contact details = sales!

5. Now everything’s gone a bit blurry…
• The traditional boundaries between advertising
and editorial have dissolved. With the onset of
the internet, marketing, advertising, editorial
have all blurred into one package
• The key today is to associate your brand with
well-executed content that will support your
customers’ decision to invest in your brand and
product…
• So the examples I am going to show are pretty
broad, ranging from blogs to video, articles to
quizzes

6. Content is the human touch
Content, in partnership with design, is
where you inject emotion and story
telling into your customer relationship
• Get it right – provide a delightful
experience that adds value – and you
can act like a consumer
journalist, guiding your customers
towards what they want, and with
luck, what they didn’t know they
wanted, within your transactional
space…
• Brands are snatching the initiative
from the traditional media

7. The trend in content
• In the wider digital marketing landscape, the traditional media fear that the
content initiative is being wrested away, as brands no longer need media to
engage directly with their customers’ hearts and minds online
• Traditional media talent is moving across too
• Lucy Yeomans from Harpers Bazaar has been poached as ‘editor’ of Net a
Porter. Essentially an online retailer boosted by glossy magazine kudos

8. Getting it wrong
Get it wrong –
introduce confusion,
jargon, complexity,
clutter, marketing
speak, dead ends,
sharp corners,
pushiness and pain –
an overlong video or
dull blog that adds
nothing to their
experience – and
you’ve lost them

9. What is content?
• Broadly, content is your ‘stuff’ – anything that
populates the various platforms you use to use to
serve your customers – from a tweet to a
Facebook posting, a video to an on-site blog, an
article to a questionnaire.
• I am going to start off with a very boring
organisational slide because content can be very
expensive to create, and there is no point in
doing it unless there is return on your investment
• And your investment is time as well as money

10. Phase, Task, Inform/Inspire, Convert – can be in a different order
PHASE TASKS INFORM/INSPIRE CONVERT
What stage are they What are they What can you do What is the
at in their trying to do to help them get smoothest and
relationship with having arrived? what they want? best way to get
your brand? them to convert?
Discovery – search, Easy path to ‘Click
Searching for Articles, videos, ques
recommendation, tionnaires to refine to buy’ buttons
what they want
newsletter their choice clearly visible
within your site
Registering for an Filling in a form Case studies, You get their data,
account/newsletter (make it very newsletter examples, they get
easy) advantages of account, convenience/offers
competition
Think in terms of a seamless path of engagement, from discovering that they want what
you have got, enjoying the content you provide to support their choice, buying it and
getting it delivered. Even customer service can be a form of content….
© Josa Young 2012

11. Engaging audience emotions
By the reassurance of an ordered experience of phase-
led, task-led, inspirational/informative and conversion
content defined by:
1. The phase of the customer’s online journey
2. The tasks they need to complete to move ahead
3. The many types of content that will inform, inspire and
entertain them and support their progress
4. The tools that enable conversion
• Aim to surprise and delight your audience

12. Who is your audience?

13. Creating content that is perfect for
your audience is crucial for
engagement
Advent calendar with prizes, ecards to send
your favourite recipes, a personalising quiz to
choose your ideal Christmas menu, and lots
and lots of gorgeous recipes….
• The uber-hip and cool developers told me that, ‘We don’t do things
like that any more…’
• The supermarket audience loved it, and conversions were high
from this source – you could click to buy all the ingredients for your
chosen Christmas dinner in one easy move
• This package of prizes and interaction, gorgeous Christmassy design
and fun personalisation was ideal for this audience – definitely not
cool and hip!

14. Teenage boys and housework: oil & water?

15. Example of the audience and brand perfect content…
Get a room…
Mr & Mrs Smith
Aimed at exhausted
parents who want to
get it on….

16. Interactive video – Tippex, a brand associated with
typewriters, and therefore overtaken
by technology, goes viral

17. How it worked for Tippex
• They didn’t know who their audience was any
more, so they created a new one using viral
content
• It’s a winner in business terms, too. A survey by
Tipp-Ex showed that the ‘buying attention’ of
potential customers – which positions the brand
as the first product they are likely to buy –
increased by 100 per cent, while sale volumes
were up by 30 per cent compared to the same
timeframe the year before.

18. blogs
• It’s just a hunch, but I don’t think the navigation term ‘blog’
gets many clicks in a straightforward navigational website
• On the other hand, blog-type content, or interactive
articles, can be a strong driver for sales – particularly if
there is unique expertise involved
• Woven deeply into the transactional content, so you can
find information as you consider a purchase, posts, blogs,
articles (call it what you will) can be powerful
• Drawing your users into reacting to your content is key – via
commenting, social sharing, reviewing, rating…
• Particularly if it is well written, picture heavy and, like the
best consumer journalism, draws a picture of the place of
an item in a real person’s life

19. Forming partnerships with bloggers
• There is nothing more ‘authentic’ than a genuine
blogger, defined as writing about something they are
passionate about and deeply versed in – the tone and
style is worth capturing with a view to enhancing a
brand.
• Brands do ‘blogger outreach’ which always sounds
rather sinister… but it can be very effective.
• One brilliant blogger, linked to your site, can enhance
your brand.
• An example would be an independent gardening
blogger writing lively and interesting seasonal
posts, linked to a garden supply site or nursery.

20. Original, expert, interesting
Websites retailing fashion are now beating a path to popular fashion bloggers’ doors;
we decided to do something a bit different with The Scent Critic – perfect for a big
perfume retailer, written by leading beauty journalist Josephine Fairley….

21. Aesthetic, focused, visual

22. Tesco’s fashion blog

23. Using your Facebook page as a blog – fast and
effective – update regularly

24. Using Twitter as a blog
This is not an ‘official’ Twitter stream – but it has served to boost brand awareness
for this robot vacuum cleaner. Unlike Shippams paste which had a sense of
humour failure, real Roomba seems to tolerate self aware Roomba – the
sophisticated response!

25. Tesco videos: cool and utilitarian

26. Tesco videos: Human and welcoming

27. I want to know more!

28. Visual pickers/questionnaires

29. Verbal questionnaires

30. What do you want your audience to
feel as they move around your site?
• Relieved
• Comforted
• Delighted
• Engaged
• Pleased
• Supported
• Warmed
• Excited
• Energised
• Inspired
• Satisfied

31. Trust

32. Satisfaction

33. Where does content come from?
• Commissioning
• Aggregation
• Syndication
• White labelling
• Repurposing of existing branded content
• It doesn’t matter where it comes from, as long as there is a
consistent editorial direction dictating quality, tone, style, impact
and engagement of every piece of content delivered
• Oh, and fail quickly: A content strategy must also take into
consideration a evolving digital landscape - rapid prototyping and
testing of content types for effectiveness against a range of goals
can streamline experience and lead to greater success

34. Don’t hide your content
• Be proud of it!
• Flag it up at the top of the page!
• Make sure it is not just flat articles, but
interactive
• Consider tools, calculators, questionnaires
about attitudes that deliver answers in the
form of a advice and b product
• Make sure that your users can share it easily
with prominently displayed buttons

35. 2008: Content innovation – as the recession began to bite, and jewellery of
all inds became a massive trend, it was essential to highlight jewellery
shopping on Vogue – concentrating on style, but including the expensive
stuff too…

36. Property Vision YouTube channel

37. Using Tumblr

38. Facebook content and Like gates

39. Gateway to multiplatform content

43. Bye bye car, we’ve really enjoyed driving you…
Delightfully amateur UGC from Mumsnetters to highlight the family friendliness of the
vehicle and associate it with ordinary life, buggies, laundry and babies!

44. User generated content

45. What is ‘customer delight’?
Lovely idea, lame content EDF

46. Actually it’s just a pedometer…