Content Marketing Guide: How could good content improve your marketing performance? We’ve done the research, checked out other frameworks and compiled a free eBook to help your content marketing plan. What’s inside? • Content Marketing Framework • Top Tips, Statistics and Savvy Marketer ideas

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Content
Content
Marketing
Marketing
Guide
Guide
Content
Marketing
Guide
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Hunt
Director of Strategy at JBH
Jane has many years experience working directly with clients to create useful, engaging content for B2B and B2C
customers, turning brands into Thought Leaders in their industry. Projects vary from designing content strategies for
social media to sourcing writers for specialist newsletters and blogs to writing content for infographics.
In this handy guide, Jane offers an introduction to the benefits of content marketing, some impressive statistics, a
framework for creating your own content marketing plan and top tips and resources to help you along the way.
We hope you enjoy the eBook and would love to hear about your content marketing initiatives and success stories!
Just email hello@jbh.co.uk
jbh_jane
Jane Hunt
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

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How can good content improve your marketing performance?
Engaging content can help build awareness of your brand and its products, improve reach, give
your brand more credibility, increase customer retention and ultimately boost sales!
Do you want to create a buzz around your brand and products?
Content marketing is a great way to use internal knowledge and brand expertise to engage and
influence your audience(s). Customers love hearing a good story, learning top tips to improve
their experience of a product or finding out about the next generation of products. Consumers
are also happy to share content with their friends and family if they believe it will be of benefit or
entertainment to them, generating word of mouth!
Check out the following impressive stats and start producing great content.
Good luck!
Jane Hunt
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

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What could content marketing do for your business?
Increase brand reach and content visibility
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Increase word of mouth and ultimately sales
Blogs on company websites
attract 55% more visits
6 in 10 Facebook or Twitter users are more
likely to recommend a brand they follow
Companies with blogs get 97% more
inbound links than others
Word of mouth is the most important
consideration for 50% of buying decisions
Improve brand credibility and increase brand affinity
Blogs are 63% more likely to influence purchase
decisions than magazines
60% of consumers feel more positive about a
company after reading custom content on its site
Increases marketing effectiveness
63% of companies said posting content to
social media increased marketing effectiveness
Boost sales
67% of companies find customers via Facebook,
61% via LinkedIn and 53% via Twitter(1)
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

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This quote by Richard Branson sums up
the rewards of creating quality content
for your audience(s):
“
If you win people over,
the profits will follow
”
(2)
Virgin is a great example of a brand that
uses content marketing effectively to
promote their brand story.
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

6. Where do I start?
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Content marketing needn’t be complex; it just takes
some thought, research, ideas and a little bit
of planning.
If you’re a small business you may not have the
resources to produce engaging content each day.
It may be that once a month you share product
developments with your customers, or launch a
competition via Facebook or your blog to generate
leads. The most important thing is, to understand
what you want to achieve and why, and be realistic
about your resources!
We’ve done the research and have compiled
a simple guide to help you write your content
marketing plan. We’ve also added some Top Tips
and Savvy Marketer ideas along the way to make it
easy and enjoyable!
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

7. We recommend following these 5 steps for content success:
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1. PLAN – Behind all decent content is a plan of attack! Who do you want to reach and why?
What are the main objectives?
2. STORY-TELLING – Think about tone of voice, themes, and the key points in your content you
want the reader to remember.
3. PROMOTION – Which are the best channels to reach your audience(s) and how will you
promote your content across multiple platforms?
4. LISTEN – Who’s talking about you and are you involved in the conversation?
5. MEASURE – What does success look like and how will you measure it?
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PLAN
To create the right content for your audience(s) you
need to know which audience(s) you want to reach
and why!
Consider these 5 questions:
1. What are your marketing objectives?
2.
Which audience(s) do you want to reach with
your content?
3. you want to start a relationship with
Do
customers or develop one?
4. What does your company do well? Play on this!
5.
What content do your competitors offer their
customers?
TOP TIP
Use a SWOT analysis template to quickly analyse
your company strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats. It will help you plan how content
marketing could be used to support current
marketing activity. Download a template here (3)
1 of Richard Branson’s top tips to gain and retain
customer loyalty:
“What can we can offer customers that others
aren’t, or won’t, because they are so narrowly
focused on profit?”(4)
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STORY-TELLING
Consider these 5 questions:
1.
What are the brand stories that your audience
should know? E.g. history, expertise, USP’s –
think about what makes you special.
2.
What content would be of value and interest to
your audience(s)? This will vary across channels
and audience(s), so be prepared to tailor content
to both!
3.
What tone of voice will you use and what will
your key messages be?
4.
Who will source, research or write the content
and promote it?
5. you have any internal experts or
Do
ambassadors who can contribute? Don’t
underestimate the time and resources you’ll
need to produce regular, quality content.
TOP TIP
Don’t forget to ask employees what content
they think would be relevant and engaging to
your audience(s), after all they should know your
customers well!
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PROMOTION
Consider these 5 questions:
1. Which channels are you currently using and why?
2.
Which get the most customer interaction
for your brand? Are you missing any
opportunities?
3.
Decide which channels best reach your target
audience(s) and design the content around
those.
4.
Establish what the objectives are for each
channel and what success will look like.
5. you’re offering free guides or writing blog
If
posts, don’t forgot to ask people to subscribe
so they don’t miss out on your quality content
in the future.
TOP TIP
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Be realistic – you may not have the resources
to create daily or weekly content. Try running
monthly or ad hoc content marketing campaigns
to get started.
Don’t be afraid to ask people to share your content
with their friends if they found it useful!
Savvy marketer
If you’re posting content to social networks
use an application like Buffer(5) that will send
your posts at the optimum time for increased
engagement. You can also use it to share content
more easily from the web, your mobile or blog
and analyse your social activity.
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LISTEN
Don’t just create new conversations, listen to what your customers are saying and create content that is
responsive and enhances their experience of your brand.
TOP TIP
Savvy marketer
Use free software to find trends, audience profile
info and content ideas!
Use Google Trends(8) to find out what themes are
popular in search, relevant to your customers or
target audience. Discover content ideas before
your competitors!.
- oogle alerts(6) – updates you on news and
G
opinions relevant to your company/market/
products/customers comments etc.
- Sproutsocial(7) – manage social content, track
customer conversations about your brand and
measure effectiveness.
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MEASURE
All marketing activity should be measurable and
content is no exception. You just need to work out
what success looks like and what mechanisms
you need to measure it.
Decide:
1.
What is the objective of the content? Sales
leads? Purchases? Social shares?
2. et specific, achievable targets. Setting goals
S
will give you more motivation to push your
content out there and get it noticed!
3. stablish mechanisms to measure
E
performance. Measure engagement (read rate)
and response rate (comment/share/buy etc.)
TOP TIP
Google Analytics(9) is a great tool for measuring
and defining monetary value of content on your
website. You can create a bespoke content
marketing dashboard that directly links content
to conversions, so you know how influential your
content was in the purchase process.
Click here to read more about creating a content
marketing dashboard in Google Analytics.(10)
jbh.co.uk/ebooks

13. SOURCES
1. The benefits of content marketing (infographic)
www.contently.com/strategist/2012/03/22/content-marketing-benefits-infographic
2. 4. Richard Branson’s 3 Steps to Brand Loyalty – Virgin Entrepreneur
www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/richard-bransons-3-steps-to-brand-loyalty
3. www.businessballs.com/swotanalysisfreetemplate.htm
5. www.bufferapp.com
6. www.google.com/alerts
7. www.sproutsocial.com
8. www.google.co.uk/trends
9. How to review content effectiveness using a custom Google Analytics dashboard
www.smartinsights.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-setup/how-to-review-contenteffectiveness-using-a-custom-google-analytics-dashboard
10. http://www.google.com/analytics
11. The CMI Content Marketing Framework
www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/CMI_Framework.pdf
12. 7 frameworks and more tips for smart content marketing programs
www.contentmarketingexperience.com/2013/7-frameworks-and-more-tips-for-smart-contentmarketing-programs