Presentation by Joe Pulizzi given at Esource 2009 Utility Marketing Conference. Pulizzi presented the shift from traditional marketing into three key areas - content marketing, listening, and the combination of social media and relevant content distribution.
Value Proposition canvas- Customer needs and pains
Three Things NOW! - Content Marketing, Listening and Social Media
1. Joe Pulizzi, Junta42
Esource Utility Marketing Conference
Three Things NOW!
Content Marketing, Listening
and Social Media
2. Hi! I’m Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe)
• Evangelist, speaker,
author for content
marketing – why
marketers need to be
publishers.
• Founder and Chief
Content Officer for
Junta42
• Co-author of
Get Content
Get Customers
(McGraw-Hill)
• Former Vice President at
Penton Media, Inc.,
North America’s largest
independent b-to-b
media company
7. Buyers Used to Solve Problems…
• Talking to Company Sales Reps
• Distributors/Resellers
• Product Literature
• Seeing Ads in Magazines
8. Educated Buyers Now Solve Problems…
• Google searches.
• Online portals and news sites.
• Listening to bloggers’ advice and opinions.
• Word-of-mouth & “Word-of-mouse”
• Direct to company websites.
12. Everyone is a Publisher Today
• Like it or not, everyone is a publisher, and you need to
understand what that means.
• Look at your marketing activities…starting to feel a lot
more like publishing.
Magazines
Newsletters
13. You Are the Publisher
1. A Blog
2. White Paper Series
3. eBooks
4. Case Studies
5. Vertical Search
6. Content Microsites/Portals
7. Online Quizzes
8. Digital Magazines
9. Community Forums
10.eNewsletters
11.Variable eNewsletters
12. eZines
13. Podcasts
14. Audio Books
15. Vodcasts
16. Video Portals
17. Website RSS Feeds
18. Social Networking Sites
19. Webcasts/Webinars
20. Virtual Trade Shows
21. Online Games
22. Content Widgets
14.
15.
16. What this is all about…
The art of understanding what your
customers need to know,
and delivering it to them in a compelling
way to create or change a behavior.
Content Marketing
Custom Publishing
Branded Content
Content Strategy
Customer Media Information Marketing
Custom Media
20. How to Create Engagement
• Give your customers relevant, compelling
information
or
• Give them a good time…
21. What this is all about…
The art of understanding what your
customers need to know,
and delivering it to them in a compelling
way to create or change a behavior.
This is BEST accomplished
through PUBLISHING,
not Marketing
22. The Big Shift
While all this was happening, we went
from…
A provider of natural gas and
energy-related products and
services
24. The Publisher Mindset
Organizations are just now beginning to understand
that, along with the products and services that they
offer, one of their core products is
information.
If not the most important one…
25.
26.
27. It’s Not about You!
Provide relevant content that gives
solutions to some of the toughest
problems customers are facing.
28. Your Ideas Spread!
• Should be the core of your marketing campaign.
• Position yourself as the trusted solutions provider
for your industry and help people spread the
word!
29.
30. You Don’t Have to Be a Media Company to Be
a Media Company
• Content, if good, will be accepted.
• NO TECHNOLOGY BARRIERS.
• Reach/Circulation no longer an issue.
• Extra bonus for transparency and immediate
communication (most publishers are not good at
this).
51. Content and Social Media
• Understand who your customer is and where the
pain points are.
• Develop consistent, relevant content in multiple
channels.
• Let go of all control. Let your idea spread.
• People share your ideas, link to your content.
• Content is found through social media and search
engines.
• Customers start relying on you for your expertise
(relationship!)
• You are the trusted solutions provider in your
industry.
52. Club Meetings @Stores
Email Newsletter
Custom Magazine Versions
On Demand TV Channel Social NetworkVideos
Music
Website
53. Why does content matter?
• It tells your story.
• It answers people’s questions.
• It inspires and entertains.
• It motivates.
• It drives decision-making.
• It manages expectations.
• It brings your brand to life.
• It builds – or breaks – trust.
54. Why does content REALLY matter?
• It’s what informs customer action … or INaction
… both online and off
Traditional
Content and
Social Media
55. 1. Select someone to be your publisher, managing
editor or journalist. Be the Media.
2. Who is your Chief Conversation Officer?
3. Evaluate every communication: are we providing
pointers to the next piece of information they
need? (The Content Audit)
Next StepsNext Steps
Speech originally given April 9th, 2009 in Phoenix, AZ
2% of attendees used direct mail to make a buying decision in the last few months. Same for yellow pages.
90% used Google or a search engine over the last few months to make a buying decision or recommendation.
75% using Facebook.
20% using Twitter
In the beginning of media, we had many voices (pamphleteers). These voices then merged into what we knew as big newspapers, big radio and big tv (fewer voices).
Today, we are going back to the beginning. We now have fewer voices again. Knowing that changes how we need to go to market.
Since only 30% of our spend goes to customized content…to spread our ideas to many voices, and 70% still goes to media placement…things need to change. We are still marketing for when we had fewer voices.
Buying patterns have changed. Buyers used to solve problems by talking to sales reps, calling distributors and talking to resellers, reviewing product literature, and seeing ads in magazines, on billboards or on television.
Educated buyers now have the ability to acquire information in numerous ways, often and now, most times, before ever coming in contact with your company. This includes…Google searches, online portals, engaging in blogs, through offline and online word of mouth, and going direct to company branded websites for product and service information.
Over 90% of consumers use the internet as part of their decision-making process. If you are not there, you may get left out of the buying process.
Action #1 – Understand that Marketing is Now about Publishing
Are you a marketer or a publisher?
Like it or not, we are all publishers. Just look at the ways we are going to market. Looks a lot like publishing, right?
Just look at the options we have when we market, or publish our content/information.
So, in the past we would focus on this kind of media (ad from GE)
Now we develop relevant content for customers (Home Energy Report Card Quiz from Owens Corning).
And that’s why I believe that content marketing needs to be the core of your marketing program, which will be the engine of your entire marketing program.
Content marketing is the art of understanding what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a compelling way.
Instead of focusing on your product or service and selling them, you devote resources to creating information that your customers and prospects need.
Discuss Terms for a minute
This is your marketing. Journalism plus marketing, call it advanced storytelling, is how the future marketing departments will function, not because they want to, but because they can and must.
So, instead of doing this (Bud Bowl Commercial)
We do this (How Electricity Works from PG&E).
What’s our “secret sauce” – we need to give that away to customers/prospects to start building a relationship with them…getting them to trust us.
Kirk Cheyfitz, legendary journalist and current CEO for Story Worldwide, a post-advertising agency, says that marketers have only two choices when communicating with customers today. One is giving them relevant, compelling and valuable information, or, number 2, show them a good time, or entertain them. That’s how we engage our customers.
And this is not easy stuff, frankly, it’s sooo much easier to buy placement and interrupt customers with product and service offers. But almost across the board for most brands, we don’t live in that world anymore.
This is best accomplished through Publishing, not traditional marketing.
Our goal today is to be the trusted expert for our customers. That’s how we will grow our businesses.
Leading brands such as Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco are beginning to view their content, their information as a core product, with R&D and major investment. They are starting to understand that they need to build their own media channels, and set processes so that the information can spread freely.
Developing your own media does not mean you talk about yourself and your products (MyFord Magazine). Your customers only care about themselves…so give them information that truly affects their lives.
HomeMadeSimple.com is a home solutions website and enewsletter created by Procter & Gamble. Outside of a few coupon offers and logos at the bottom, you’d never know it was from P&G. I cut out the box of P&G brands from the bottom of the web page to show you…that’s it. The rest is packed with useful information for in and around the home.
If you go to the about us section, here’s a snippet.
When people ask me what Home Made Simple is all about, I often think of a friend of mine who does a great job balancing her life as a wife and working mom. "Keep it simple," she always says.This positive attitude is what defines Home Made Simple. It's about ideas and products to make your life more enjoyable. It's about finding ways to simplify, organize, beautify, and inspire your life. It's about helping to keep it simple.
Over 1 million+ opt-ins to receive their weekly eNewsletter. According to P&G, it’s own of the most important and influential R&D programs they run for those brands. So, for P&G, their goal is not only to create a conversation and relationship with these people, but they test new product ideas as well and bounce the concept off their customers.
Along with the Weekly enewsletter, Home Made Simple has a Social networking site for moms called MomJunction
Overall, an Incredibly simple site that gets results.
Your content should NOT be about you, your company or your products and services. That’s the content marketing difference.
Anything you create needs to have the possibility of spreading.
Have you ever seen people spread around a print ad, or an online display ad? Probably not.
Create information that people talk about.
I’m sure many of you have heard about this case study, but it’s always worth repeating. This is WillitBlend.com, created by, of course, a blender manufacturer called Blendtec. With less than $1000 in total investment, they put up a website that featured 2 minute videos of the CEO blending up items using their blender. For example, they blended up chuck norris action figures, golf balls and even an iPhone.
The Results…over the past two years.
120 million+ total views of their videos
How has that changed the business? According to BlendTec executive George Wright, retail sales have increased by more than 500%, which he attributes almost solely to the video series. BlendTec is now perceived as the undisputable blending king through this mixture of information entertainment content. When you get a chance, it’s worth checking out.
Content, if good, will be accepted.
There is nothing stopping you. Technology is cheap today…no excuses.
If your content is good enough, you can reach your target audience…plus, look at the database you currently have an leverage that information to develop great content.
Are you listening? Are you honest with your customers about who you are and what you do? In today’s world, you better be…you need to be.
#2 – Use Online tools to Listen
Google Alerts is a free tool. The first thing you need to do is create a gmail (or google mail account), which is also free. Once you have a Gmail account, go to www.google.com/alerts. Then, just type in your keywords. In this screen, you can see I typed in content marketing, which will search for the words content and marketing being in close proximity of one another, and send you an alert as google picks it up, once a day or once a week. You can set up as many words as you want.
Of all the listening tools out there, Google Alerts is probably the one I use the most. The way Google Alerts works is that I can monitor keywords and brand names, and whenever anyone mentions them pretty much anywhere on the Internet, I’ll get a notification. As a rule, when anyone blogs about me, my company, or my book, I want to know about it and comment to them. Google Alerts helps me find most of this.
But where this is really of value is to find out what people are saying around they topics that are important to you and your company. For example, by monitoring the term “content marketing” over the past couple years, I’ve really gained insight into how the definition has broadened and how more people are using the term in general. Also, we can help shape the conversation through our own content because we know what’s being talked about on other sites.
Now, I prefer using a phrase match to my google alerts. A phrase match is, as you see here, I put quotation marks around the term I want to be notified on. This means that content and marketing must be next to each other in order for me to get an update. What you might want to do is start with the general search and see how relevant the results are. If there are too many non-relevant returns, then use can change it at any time to a phrase match.
And here’s what it looks like when I get the email. So, in this alert, someone at bizsugar blogged about my article, Patsi Krakoff is talking about content marketing – so I should go comment there, and the third one discusses a company that offers content marketing and social media – definitely have to check that out.
Do you have a Twitter Strategy?
The average Twitter user is between 35 and 55. It’s a pretty good bet that at least some of your customers are on it. If you are in the marketing field, you MUST be trying to figure this tool out.
Leading brands are using Twitter. JetBlue communicates frequently with Fans. Comcast uses it as a customer service tool. H&R Block holds customer Q&A’s via Twitter.
Twitter lets you listen to your customers in real-time.
Twitter Musts
Never answer the question “What are you doing?” Noone cares about that. Only communicate what is important to your customers/prospects/readers/followers.
Someone needs to own your Twitter account for your company.
Share information that doesn’t necessarily come from you, but is also valuable. Be democratic…you’ll get more credibility that way.
Who’s the human behind the Twitter account. Be ready to respond. Be real. People want to work with other people, not with companies anymore.
Get a Twitter management system like Tweetdeck or Tweetgrid.
Now, to use Tweetdeck, you must first sign up at www.twitter.com and set up your free account. With Twitter you can search to find if your friends and colleagues are on the system and, if you want to, you can follow them. Following someone is like “friending” them in Facebook or a connection in LinkedIn. Some people on Twitter have thousands of followers, while others follow hundreds and thousands.
Since this is very hard to keep track off, Tweetdeck becomes a great tool.
I’ll talk more about Twitter a bit later, but I want you to know that I personally thought that Twitter was a silly tool when I started. Once I got into it though, I have found that it is a powerful tool. We’ve actually done business partnerships through Twitter, and it drives about 10% of my total website traffic now.
So, if you’re not on Twitter, today’s a good day. If you have any questions, just follow me and send me a note, I can walk you through.
TweetDeck is a Twitter management system where I can see real time what is going on regarding our brands and our key searches. TweetDeck allows you to set searches ahead of time, and as something is typed in, like “content marketing” I can look up that person or be directed to the article being discussed. Incredibly valuable.
In this screen, I can see all the people I follow on the left hand side, people talking to me under replies, and then anyone talking about me at all in the 3rd Column.
Once you’ve mastered listening, you can distribute your RSS content feeds automatically using a free tool like Twitterfeed.
#3 The Importance of Social Media & Content
Over the last five years, we’ve seen the role of content change…today, being about having a conversation with customers.
Today, if you can tell a consistent story, and can distribute that valuable story in the places where your customers are, you will be in the middle of the conversation around key industry issues involving your customers.
And now we are back to publishing relevant stories using these kinds of tools.
Brian Solis example…he has a process set to how he distributes his content on a daily basis…becoming one of the leading experts in “New PR” in the process.
How about some data-driven content marketing? Website grader from Hubspot uses available internet data to give you a grade on how your site is performing, and give recommendations on next steps to take.
Hubspot has spread their brand as a valuable SEO analysis company by offering free content tools such as Website Grader.
USPS went from just a magazine called Deliver to…
An integrated package of content tools to help their customers.
The results: 43% of Deliver readers say it has increased their intention to spend more on direct marketing; 67% say it has increased their opinion of direct marketing; and more than 50% have taken action in the last year as a result of Deliver articles. There have been more than 70,000 downloads from the DeliverMagazine.com website, including more than 3,130 white papers. During the first six months of 2008, the website received more visits each month, with 9,347 visits in January and 43,036 in June. But the overall goal is not web site visits, it’s getting marketing decision makers to understand the value of direct mail and take the action to do more of it as part of their marketing program.
This is the MasterCard Small Business Site. Before, they really just had product information about the different cards and other services available for small business owners.
About two years ago, they made a commitment to talking about how small businesses are solving their financial challenges. They now provide regular advice-driven articles, ways to run your business better strategically and financially, and how other small businesses are dealing with growth challenges.
The results:
Traffic Up 322% Year over Year, which sounds impressive, right? Here’s the big number.
More than 50% of new signups coming via a content article. This means that customers are coming first to engage in the information. After a while of learning on the site, they decide to complete an application for a MasterCard credit card. This is perfectly executed content marketing.
MasterCard was able to reposition themselves into a trusted content provider, and by doing so, they are increasing sales!
Follow these steps and you will succeed
Understand who your customer is and where the pain points are.
Develop consistent, relevant content in multiple channels.
Let go of all control. Let your idea spread.
People share your ideas, link to your content.
Content is found through social media and search engines.
Customers start relying on you for your expertise (relationship!)
You are the trusted solutions provider in your industry.
Understand what LEGO is doing. They are content marketing masters. Study them and you’ll find opportunities in your own market.
Content matters because it drives behavior.
Knowing that, you need to look at how you allocate your funding moving forward. Spend less on “renting” placement and more on developing content that your customers will want to engage in.
Steps to take right now…
Select someone to be your publisher, managing editor or journalist. Be the Media.
Who is your Chief Conversation Officer?
Evaluate every communication: are we providing pointers to the next piece of information they need? (The Content Audit)