How to Know Exactly What Content to Deliver to Convert More Prospects

Back in the 1940s, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel conducted an experiment. They showed study participants an animated film consisting of a rectangle with an opening, plus a circle and two triangles in motion.

The participants were then asked to simply describe what they saw in the film. Before you keep reading, take a look at it yourself. I’ll be here when you come back.

So, what did you see? Out of all the study participants, only one responded with “a rectangle with an opening, plus a circle and two triangles in motion.” The rest developed elaborate stories about the simple geometric shapes.

Many participants concluded the circle and the little triangle were in love, and that the evil grey triangle was trying to harm or abduct the circle. Others went further to conclude that the blue triangle fought back against the larger triangle, allowing his love to escape back inside, where they soon rendezvoused, embraced, and lived happily ever after.

That’s pretty wild when you think about it.

The Heider-Simmel experiment became the initial basis of attribution theory, which describes how people explain the behavior of others, themselves, and also, apparently, geometric shapes on the go.

More importantly, people explain things in terms of stories. Even in situations where no story is being intentionally told, we’re telling ourselves a tale as a way to explain our experience of reality.

And yes, we tell ourselves stories about brands, products, and services. Whether you’re consciously telling a story or not, prospects are telling themselves a story about you.

Are you telling a story? And more importantly, does that story resonate with the way your prospective customers and clients are seeing things?

This is the key to knowing what your prospect needs to hear, and when they need to hear it, as part of your overall content marketing strategy. And in a networked, information-rich world where the prospects have all the power, this is your only chance to control the narrative.

What kind of story to tell?

You need to tell a Star Wars story. And by that, I mean you need to take your prospects along a content marketing version of the mythic hero’s journey.

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell identifies a “monomyth” — a fundamental structure common to myths that have survived for thousands of years. Campbell’s identification of these enduring myths from disparate times and regions has inspired modern storytellers to consciously craft their work following the monomyth framework, also known as the hero’s journey.

Most notable among those inspired by the hero’s journey is George Lucas, who acknowledged Campbell’s work as the source of the plot for Star Wars. As a content marketer, you can also consciously incorporate the monomyth into your launches, funnels, and general editorial calendar.

The image above shows the general elements of the hero’s journey, which can be broken down into much more detail than presented here. It’s important to note that not all monomythic stories contain every aspect, but the original Star Wars faithfully follows almost every element of the hero’s journey.

Let’s focus on the first two steps of the journey, in the “ordinary world” before the journey truly begins. Here’s how those elements occurred in the original Star Wars.

• Luke is living in the ordinary world of his home planet, working on the family farm.
• The “call to adventure” is R2-D2’s holographic message from Princess Leia, the classic princess in distress.
• Luke initially refuses the call due to his family obligations, until his aunt and uncle are killed.
• Luke meets his mentor and guide, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who convinces Luke to proceed with his heroic journey.
• Obi-Wan gives Luke a gift that determines his destiny — his father’s lightsaber.

How does this apply to content marketing? Simple. As I mentioned last time:

Your prospect is Luke. You are Obi-Wan.

The mistake most often made in marketing is thinking of your business as the hero, resulting in egocentric messages that no one else cares about. The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.

• The prospect starts off in the ordinary world of their lives.
• The call to adventure is an unsolved problem or unfulfilled desire.
• There’s resistance to solving that problem or satisfying the desire.
• A mentor (your brand) appears that helps them proceed with the journey.
• You deliver a gift (your content) that ultimately leads to a purchase

By making the prospect the hero, your brand also becomes a hero in the prospect’s story.

And by accepting the role of mentor with your content, your business accomplishes its goals while helping the prospect do the same. Which is how business is supposed to work, right?

8 core steps in the buyer’s journey

I’ve been using the hero’s journey to teach marketing and sales since 2007. I’ve found that just the act of thinking of the prospect as the hero makes you a better content marketer.

When you think in terms of empowering people to solve their problem by playing the role of mentor, you’re naturally performing better than competitors who take an egocentric approach.

This is also the exact way we come up with content marketing strategies for our own launches, funnels, and general editorial calendar. After years of using this strategic process, I’ve found that every buyer’s journey contains key points where you must deliver the right information at the right time to succeed at an optimal level.

Remember, each journey is tied to a particular who that you have documented. Some people create content journeys for multiple personas, but my advice is that you pick one at first and focus. Even Apple stuck with one target persona for the entirety of the Get a Mac campaign.

You’ll notice I use the word “problem” below, rather than “problem or desire.” An unfulfilled desire is a problem in the mind of the prospect, so it works on its own.

1. Ordinary World: This is the world (and worldview) that your ideal prospect lives in. She may be aware of the problem that she has, but she hasn’t yet resolved to do something about it. You understand how this person thinks, sees, feels, and behaves due to the empathy mapping process.

2. Call to Adventure: The prospect decides to take action to solve the problem. It could be a New Year’s resolution, a longstanding goal, or a problem that rears its head for the first time.

3. Resistance to the Call: At this point, the prospect starts to waver in her commitment to solving the problem. Maybe it seems too hard, too expensive, too time consuming, or simply too impractical. As we’ll discuss in a bit, this is a key content inflection point.

4. The Mentor and the Gift: This is the point that you are initially accepted as a mentor that guides the buyer’s journey. The prospect accepts your offer of a gift, in the form of information, that promises to help her solve the problem.

5. Crossing the Threshold: This is the point of purchase where the prospect believes that your product or service will lead to the problem being solved, which will lead to transformation. The most important thing to understand is that, unlike flawed funnel metaphors, the journey does not end at purchase.

6. Traveling the Road: The customer begins using the product or service with the goal of achieving success in the context of the problem. Who cares if the customer stops the journey right after purchase, right? Wrong — too often this leads to a refund request; plus you miss out on the huge benefits that accompany a happy customer.

7. Seizing the Treasure: The customer experiences success with your product or service. What does this look like for them and you? How will you know when it happens?

8. The New Ordinary: The customer has experienced a positive transaction with you, and yet we’re just now getting to the really good stuff. This is a perfect time to prime them for repeat or upsell purchases or referrals. At this point, deliver content that aims at retention for recurring revenue products, and make savvy requests for direct referrals, testimonials, and word of mouth.

Of the eight, only Traveling the Road isn’t universal — if you’re an electrician, you show up and either fix the problem or don’t. But if you’re selling software-as-a-service, for example, content that gets users engaged with the platform is critical to reducing churn.

These core steps can provide you with a beginning framework for a detailed map of the buyer’s journey. The next step is to add the touchpoints that are unique to your product or service.

Your unique journey map

You may be thinking about how exactly you’re supposed to map this out. Fortunately, there’s already an established procedure for this, just as during the who phase.

An experience map is a visual representation of the path a consumer takes — from beginning to end — with your content, and then with your product or service.

By mapping the journey, you know where the additional crucial touchpoints are, and what content can empower the journey to continue.

Here’s an example from Adaptive Path for Rail Europe:

This map demonstrates the journey a consumer would take while riding the trains in Europe. It follows her from the early stages of research and planning to the end of her trip.

You see what she is doing (searching Google, looking up timetables), what she is thinking during each action (do I have everything I need, and am I on the right train?), and what she is feeling (stressed: I’m about to leave the country and Rail Europe won’t answer the phone).

Do you see the correlation with the empathy mapping exercise you did back when developing a snapshot of your ideal customer? It’s no coincidence that we’re now applying what the prospect is “Thinking,” “Seeing,” “Doing,” and “Feeling” in their ordinary world to the journey they need to travel.

In a piece called the Anatomy of an Experience Map, Chris Risdon at Adaptive Path suggests your experience map should have these five components:

1. The lens: This is how a particular person (or persona) views the journey. Keep in mind, this journey will not be the same for everyone. You will more than likely have more than one experience map.
2. The journey model: This is the actual design of the map. If all goes well, it should render insight to answer questions like “What happens here? What’s important about this transition?”
3. Qualitative insight: This is where the Thinking-Seeing-Doing-Feeling of an empathy map comes in handy.
4. Quantitative information: This is data that brings attention to certain aspects of your map. It reveals information like “80 percent of people abandon the process at this touchpoint.”
5. Takeaways: This is where the map earns its money. What are the conclusions? Opportunities? Threats to the system? Does it identify your strengths? Highlight your weaknesses?

You can find more detailed information on creating a customer experience map here. Like empathy mapping, it can be done solo, but works even better as a collaborative process, so that everyone on your team understands the journey from the perspective of the prospect and subsequent customer.

Mapping the 7 key influence principles

When you consider influential content, you may naturally think that it’s about how your present the information. While that’s true from an engagement standpoint, which principle of influence to apply and when to emphasize it is an exercise in what as well.

In other words, beyond the raw information of the what, you’ll also want to identify the order of emphasis for things like reciprocity, social proof, authority, liking, commitment and consistency, unity, and scarcity.

Every successful digital marketer I know purposefully applies those seven principles in their content and copy, because they all treat Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini as their bible. If you haven’t read it, you should — but in the meantime check out this six-page PDF that explains the original six principles, and here’s an article by Sonia Simone on the all-important 7th principle of unity.

At Rainmaker Digital, we think in terms of four different types of content when mapping the buyer’s journey. Keep in mind that great marketing content contains all of these elements; you’re simply selecting a category based on the primary aim of the individual piece at the appropriate time.

First up we have Attraction content, otherwise known as “top of funnel” information. This corresponds best with the Resistance to the Call point of the journey — it addresses the problem while also addressing common objections to moving forward. In addition to creating the feeling that “you’re reading their mind,” you’re also invoking early influence through reciprocity, social proof through share numbers, and establishing authority.

Next up, you have your cornerstone influence principle thanks to Authority content. The important thing is that you demonstrate authority, rather than claim it. Your Attraction content sets the stage, and your Authority content should be gated behind an email opt-in. At this stage, you’re establishing clear authority, continuing to leverage reciprocity and social proof, and adding liking, plus commitment and consistency thanks to the opt-in.

Affinity content solidly positions you as a “likable expert,” but it goes beyond that. This is where you let your core values shine. You reflect the prospect’s worldview back to them in a completely authentic way, prompting the powerful principle of unity. Never underestimate how often people choose to do business with people they like, and who also see the world like they do.

Finally, it all comes down to Action. Unlike Phil Connors, you don’t look for ultimate action at the beginning of the journey. But you do rely on smaller actions along the way, especially at the bridge between Attraction content and Authority content. That said, the key influence principle at this stage is scarcity, which you’ve earned the right to employ thanks to the other six principles. People fear missing out more than they desire gain, so make sure to use it ethically.

This is the outline of your story

It’s tempting at this point to try to imagine how you’re going to execute on your strategy, but you’re not quite there yet. Soon, I’ll share with you a “real world” example of how this looks in action.

For now, map the journey experience. In addition to your character, you’ve now got the plot points in the narrative you’re weaving.

All that’s left is to figure out how to tell the story. That’s up next week.

The post How to Know Exactly What Content to Deliver to Convert More Prospects appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Must-watch TV shows of 2017 for small business owners

Happy Friday! TGIF! You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again, we’re all “livin’ for the weekend.” And for many, those precious days off are often spent binge-watching Netflix or HBO (Stranger Things or Westworld, anyone?).

While we’re no stranger (no pun intended) to the occasional couch-potato phase, we’re still trying to stick to our New Year’s resolutions to learn something new, work on that side-hustle, and use our time mindfully. Enter the “productive” TV show. You know, the one that you can watch and feel like you’ve spent the last 30 or 60 minutes unwinding thoughtfully, rather than in a brain-drain.

Luckily, even if you’ve already watched every episode of Shark Tank and listened to all the TED Talks, there are still shows to stimulate and entertain the business-minded viewer. Inc. recently published their 9 Top TV Shows Entrepreneurs Should Watch in 2017. From HBO’s satirical Silicon Valley to our very own documentary web series Small Business Revolution, Inc.’s list has a program to fit your every mood for many weekends to come.

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© 2017, Tori Tsu. All rights reserved.

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Do Your Tweets Deliver Revenue? Here’s How to Use Kissmetrics to Find Out

The average social media manager gets paid roughly $47,190.

They tweet, post, share, like, favorite, comment, and reply to make sure your company’s social media is covered.

Some companies use social media differently. Slack, for instance, uses Twitter to communicate the brand and notify followers on product updates. Here at Kissmetrics, we’re tweeting links to our content. Expedia tweets sales offers to the hottest (pun intended) destinations.

So with all this tweeting and sharing, does any of it really convert to revenue? Granted, some companies couldn’t care less if the tweets to their product announcements lead to signups. But some companies are invested heavily in social, with managers and interns making sure their bases are covered. But for those that are promoting their deals 10x a day (I’m looking at you, JCPenney) is it worth it? Do those tweets convert to revenue?

Here’s how to use Kissmetrics to find out.

Tracking Links Back to Revenue

UTM tagging makes a marketers job infinitely easier. Any campaign you’re promoting, just tag the URL with some UTM parameters and watch the traffic come in.

You can apply these UTMs to the links you share on social as well, even if you’re using a link shortener like bit.ly. They’ll simply redirect to the URL containing the UTMs.

So let’s say we’re a marketer for a small e-commerce company. We have a moderate Facebook and Twitter following, combining for about 25k fans. We regularly tweet out sales and other promos to our followers.

But there’s a gap – we don’t know if anyone actually purchases after clicking the links.

Enter the solution: Kissmetrics. With Kissmetrics, we’ll track who is clicking these links and if any of them actually convert to purchasing.

So if we have this link, tagged properly with UTMs to promote our upcoming sale:

http://ift.tt/2kBXI99

Then we’ll share it on our Twitter page. We can make the same link for our Facebook followers, just switch the Campaign Medium and Campaign Content from twitter to facebook.

Now comes the fun stuff – tracking it to see if anyone is converting!

We’ll load the Kissmetrics People Report and set it find the people who did these two steps in order – viewed the url listed above, and then converted.

So we have a couple things here – we’re telling Kissmetrics to find the people who have viewed the URL http://ift.tt/2kBXI99 and then purchased. Our date range is set for the last 7 days.

We can do anything else to replace Purchased. Maybe added item to cart, signed up for newsletter, viewed product video, etc. But for now, we’ll keep it as Purchased.

And because we’re tracking revenue with Kissmetrics, we’ll create another column to see the total purchase amount each customer made:

We’ll run the report and get our list of people and their revenue:

This shows us that 5 people made purchases from that link we shared on Twitter. We also see each customer’s purchase amounts, ranging from $9.97 to $47.26.

Tracking Social Media Campaigns

Some of you may have social media campaigns. You may be using a hashtag for your campaigns, and want to track all the links coming in from the campaign. For this, you can use UTMs and keep the same Campaign Medium.

For example, if you’re promoting your winter campaign on Twitter and have hundreds of links pointing back to your site, you can change all the UTM parameters but keep the Campaign Medium the same. This will make it much easier to track.

Let’s see how this plays out in a Funnel Report. Here’s how our setup looks, step-by-step:

1. We’re looking for people who came to our site via a UTM with the campaign medium being twitter. Anyone who came to our site without that campaign medium will not be included in this funnel.
2. These people will have to add a product to the shopping cart to be included in step 2.
3. And they’ll need to make a purchase.

Let’s run the report and get the data:

We see that in the 30 day span, we had about 7500 people visit us from this campaign medium, of which 102 people ended up purchasing. From here we can judge the campaigns performance to see if the cost and effort was worth the returns.

Conclusion

What’s the return on your social media?

For many companies, it’s been almost impossible to quantify. Most social media tools cannot tell you your return. But with Kissmetrics, where you can tie revenue to campaigns, you’ll see the returns you’re getting for every tweet, hashtag, and influencer mention.

Questions? Put them in the comments.

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics.

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Taking Your Content the Extra Mile By Marketing to Marketers, Earning Trust, and Mastering the ...

With many not-so-successful ABM implementations, an overload of Pokemon Go content, and increasing obstacles because of ad blockers it’s not surprising so many marketers are embracing a new year. To kick off this year, Randy Frisch and I have an inspirational lineup of content marketers to help you with your 2017 content marketing strategy.

Through our conversations with Travis Wright, Nick Steeves, Claire Suellentrop, Jess Ostroff, and Pamela Muldoon, you will learn the best insights to make the most of your content marketing. 

Tune in to a Content Pros episode while you’re on a run, commuting home, or out for a coffee break. Our guests will fill your ears with goodness.

The Real Impact of Content on Social Selling

Travis Wright, CMO and Chief Marketing Technologist at CCP.Digital, knows that content plays a massive role in the three major digital trends of today: social business, marketing technology, and customer experience. Social selling and content marketing are a match made in heaven when it comes to these trends, but to preserve its impact, marketers need to guarantee its acceptance on all levels of the business.

To ensure that social selling is successful in your company, start with business strategy and goals, only then following with a focus on technology. By starting with strategy, marketers can ensure that they build social content into the very fabric of an organization

After strategy comes action, and that involves creating not one, but two content funnels. By creating a strategy for each, your content will be hitting the right eyes at the right time and for the right purpose.

Listen in now to hear more from Travis on: 

• Why successful social selling means the entire organization needs to be socially savvy
• How flexible content marketing means being ready to react to everything at any time
• Why combining technology with excellent service means developing account-based content advertising

How a Microsite Can Take Your Content to the Next Level

Pop-ups are often thought of as necessary but also as cumbersome, annoying, and sometimes destructive when it comes to moving a prospect along the funnel. However, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to conversions and pop-ups.

Nick Steeves, Chief Product Officer at Wishpond, has cultivated a career in successfully using pop-ups to turn prospects into leads and leads into sales. Through careful targeting and contextual CTAs, he takes the sting out of those previously pesky pop-ups and makes them an invaluable marketing tool.

He also has the in-depth knowledge in marketing required to actually market to the well-versed and wary audience of marketers themselves. When it comes to this group, it’s about losing the tricks and focusing on providing a no-nonsense value offer.

Click here for more on Nick’s proven approach:

• How effective, targeted pop-up management leads customers beyond annoyance to conversion
• How creating a microsite can lead to keyword dominance
• Why a convincing call-to-action means moving the CTA from the bottom to the top

How to Find Startup Success Through Content

Starting a business is a risky venture with a lot at stake: money, reputation, career, and the list goes on. Before embarking on this exciting and terrifying adventure, many entrepreneurs do their best to ensure success by creating a solid business plan.

For Claire Suellentrop, Director of Marketing at Calendly, a proper business plan should take a fresh look at content marketing and understand how it can be used to fuel business growth.
By focusing on building the organization as a whole instead of just “staying in your (marketing department) lane,” content marketers can have an enormous impact on the growth and longevity of a startup, making themselves an invaluable asset to any organization.

A few highlights from my conversation with Claire:

• Why content marketing for a startup means a blending marketing with sales and infusing it throughout the organization
• How understanding and adapting to the current stage of growth for your company leads to more successful content
• Why developing impactful content around customer success means rolling up your sleeves and diving into data

The Secret to Exponential Brand Growth Through Podcasting and Atomization

Listeners benefit from informative, entertaining shows that fit perfectly in the hectic, multi-tasking, on-the-go lifestyle common to so many of us these days. But what does a brand get out of producing a podcast?

If you ask Jess Ostroff, Managing Editor and Executive Producer for Convince & Convert, podcasting is one of the best ways for a brand to build credibility and connections with their audience. It gives a unique depth to your company’s presence that is not replicated through any other social media platform out there; it literally gives your brand a voice. 

When presented with a choice in the marketplace, a buyer will go with the one they trust, and by focusing on podcasting development, that choice can be you.

It’s not too late to hear from Jess about:

• How the evolving world of marketing leads to learning on the fly
• Why producing in the modern media realm means doubling as IT support
• How content atomization leads to wider reach and greater insight into what your audience wants

Taking Your Content the Extra Mile

We pour hours of our time and endless amounts of energy into creating single pieces of content that address particular concerns or work towards a certain goal (sales, campaign, metrics, etc.). But what happens to that content once the goal is met?

Pamela Muldoon, Revenue Marketing Coach for The Pedowitz Group, believes that content has multiple lives to lead along our buyer’s journey. By thoughtfully repurposing old content, you not only save time and money, but you also ensure all your buyers find stories that appeal to them and help them along the funnel to conversion.

But for a content marketer to harness the full power of content recycling, they must have organization, dedication, and a champion that understands the impact of properly framed conversations.

Here are three insights to look forward to in this episode:

• Why being a subject matter expert means putting content updates into your workflow
• How reframing content for individual personas leads to a fresh, impactful look at old ideas
• How an internal content champion leads to successful campaigns in even the most regulated of industries

Before you go and listen to these informative episodes, grab a copy of The Future of Content Marketing, to think about what comes next after you implement all the great ideas from this month's guests.

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A Real Honest Talk About What It’s Like To Make Content For A Living (FS199)

This is episode 199 (one hundred and ninety-nine!) of the Fizzle show.

That’s one podcast a week for three and a half years.

For many of you listening running a blog or podcast for a living is a dream. For others, it’s a nightmare, or a necessary step to creating an audience you can serve for over time.

On this incredibly honest episode you’ll hear about what it’s like behind the scenes of a large blog and podcast.

We get into:

• Why we started the Fizzle Show in the first place. What our strategies and goals were.
• How to reframe the way you think about your relationship with your audience so you can have fresh insights about what to make.
• How we pivot and get the content strategy back on track when it starts to feel too cumbersome.
• What we’ve learned about the “long slog” of content creation over several years.

Thank you for listening to the show. We’ve got a whole slew of good stuff planned for the next 200 episodes :) … but we wouldn’t have any fun doing this if you didn’t let us know it mattered to you. For all of you who listen, however much you do so, thank you for your hearts, your time and your attention.

Now, please be our guest and enjoy episode 199 of the Fizzle Show:

It’s better to listen on the go!    Subscribe on iTunes 

Subscribe (how to)   iTunes   Overcast   Pocket Casts   Stitcher   Soundcloud   RSS  

“A real honest talk about what it’s like to make content for a living”
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How to Evaluate the ROI of Branded Content

In 2011, Google’s Zero Moment of Truth report struck fear into the hearts of marketers and companies alike with its finding that the average consumer reviews 10.4 pieces of content before converting.

What made this finding so scary? It underlined the importance of content to modern marketing strategies, and many companies feared they weren’t producing nearly enough content to drive conversions.

To remain competitive, marketers and small businesses jumped in feet first.

Their version of “shoot first; ask questions later” resulted in a lot of content produced on websites that wasn’t actually doing much converting.

The Benefits of Branded Content

Soon, astute businesses realized that publishing high-quality content instead of high volumes of content was what really counted. These businesses began reaching out to pay to get their content published beyond their own websites, on the sites of complementary online publications — often those with more traffic.

This type of content, called “branded content” (or “sponsored content”), is a way for brands to expose their content to a much larger audience than their own websites, while possibly building a collection of trustworthy backlinks to their site and getting their brand in front of more eyes.

Image Source

An example is this branded article that New York Times’ T Brand Studio produced for Netflix. While this piece doesn’t mention the benefits of Netflix services or products in a traditional advertising sense, it does provide original and thought-provoking insight into the topic of female inmates — a topic that also serves as the main focus of a Netflix original series. Instead of spending their dollars on a banner ad telling consumers to watch Orange is the New Black, Netflix put their resources towards getting an intriguing piece of content in front of the eyes of over 1 million New York Times readers; content that may inspire many of those readers to watch the related Netflix series.

Marketers and advertisers are embracing branded content because branded content pieces have been shown to be more engaging than banner ads. Studies show that the use of ad-blocking software is on the rise, and 45% of AdBlock users expressed a desire to remove as many ads as possible from their web experience. Engagement with branded content is more robust; while viewers spend an average of 1.6 seconds looking at a banner ad, they spend much longer engaging with branded content (anywhere from 60 seconds for branded news content, to 323 seconds for branded finance content).

A 2015 study from Business Insider’s BI Intelligence estimates that marketing spend for branded content (called “sponsored” content in the study, and represented in red in the graph below) will continue to rise significantly over the next few years.

Image Source

Branded Content Strategy Challenges

Measuring the success of these content pieces accurately and clearly in order to assess return on investment (ROI) is one of the biggest challenges that brands and advertisers face when implementing a branded content strategy. Without a solid understanding of ROI, it’s difficult to steer a successful campaign, and even more difficult to get buy-in from executives who control the advertising budget and want to see that their dollars are well spent.

Research from the Content Marketing Institute reveals that 33% of B2B marketers and 41% of B2C marketers cite “the inability to measure (ROI) as a significant challenge” to producing branded content.

As a relatively new avenue of marketing, measuring the ROI of branded content can be a challenge. The good news is that it can be measured; and those who do measure their branded content are more likely to receive buy-in (and budget approval) from executives, and obtain stronger insights to cater their marketing strategy to their target market.

If your senior management team is hesitant with using branded content as an advertising opportunity, having clear metrics to measure success may be what you need to tip the scales. There are five different metrics that you can track to show the ROI of branded content you have produced.

The Metrics to Measure

The metrics to use when determining how content contributes to a company’s bottom line include:

Consumption Metrics

Important because they reveal brand awareness and “reach,” consumption metrics can include:

• Page views
• Blog/infographic/video views
• Downloads
• Social chatter: Social-listening services like Mention and Radian6 can tally how often your name comes up on social channels, blog posts, and forums.

Consumption data measures brand awareness and web traffic. The key is to measure these metrics before the content rolls out; set a goal for desired increase in each metric, and track these increases after the release of a branded piece.

Lead Generation Metrics

Most brands today offer a free download in exchange for an email address. The addresses that come in are leads. The company can then send the leads helpful blog posts and offers on a regular basis through email marketing campaigns. Each of these leads indicates that your content has impressed or intrigued the reader enough to convert.

Form submissions are also counted as leads. These indicate that your website’s content is compelling enough to get a visitor to ask for a phone call from you.

Track leads generated through either your email management system or a customer relationship management (CRM) system to evaluate your efforts and see where most of your leads are coming from. You should also consider adding a “how did you hear about us?” question to your newsletter sign-up form.

Conversion Rates

The best content gets people to take action. A click from a blog post on your website — and, eventually, a sales page or email sign-up page — indicates the post has pulled its weight.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools to use for conversion tracking for branded content. With accurate tracking, (the Campaign URL Builder is a huge help here) content that funnels significant traffic to popular sales pages can be given proper credit and used to guide efforts in the future.

Sharing Metrics

Social likes, comments, shares, and email forwards all indicate that the reader agrees with or appreciates the information enough to pass it along to friends. They may even view sharing it as a way to increase their own social clout.

Most publications will have buttons or metrics on published branded content to show shares, and there are tools, like Coverage Book or Share Tally, that can be used to track how many people have shared a branded post with their networks.

Sales Metrics

C-suite inhabitants tend to want to go right to the ultimate goal: sales metrics. “How many sales has this content generated?” Unfortunately, in an era where consumers expect to be wooed and educated before buying, sales metrics aren’t the easiest to attribute to content.

It’s common knowledge that prospects require multiple touches before deciding to buy. Content tends to take the role of lead nurturer, providing the multiple touch points required to warm up a prospect.

With Google Analytics and marketing automation working together, however, marketers can see how many web visitors came in from different content pieces. When a web visitor goes from a post to a sales page, marketers should count that action as an “assist.”

Surveys: Content Measurement from a Different Angle

When combined, the five metrics above are powerful tools for assessing your branded content’s ROI — but the monetary measure of a piece of content can still be difficult to fully comprehend. You can build a more robust picture and add context to many of the above metrics through consumer surveys.

With an easily accessible, brief, and well-designed survey, you can gain insight into consumer reactions to your content and your brand’s overall reputation. When paired with metrics like social shares, downloads, or form submissions, you’ll uncover a clearer picture of why and how your content is driving the conversions you see — allowing you to adjust your strategy according to what works and what doesn’t.

Sometimes brands can even get the publisher that hosted their content to conduct a survey for them. Publishers want to demonstrate how the content their clients pay dearly for is swaying and even motivating customers to buy. They must show their results if they expect to get return customers.

In one example, BuzzFeed surveyed two audiences: one that had seen five to nine of its client’s “sponsored” (paid) posts and another that hadn’t. The client, cell carrier Virgin Mobile, worked with BuzzFeed to come up with articles that would appeal to BuzzFeed readers.

After running the articles for a few months, BuzzFeed asked two yes-or-no questions:

“Virgin Mobile is a brand I’d investigate for my next phone purchase.”

and

“Virgin Mobile is a brand that understands me and the things I like.”

Image Source

Recipients that had been exposed to Virgin Mobile’s articles were 150% more likely to report that they’d consider the brand when it came time to purchase another phone. Those that had seen the articles were also three times more likely to conclude that Virgin Mobile was aware of their values and interests. Both answers typically lead to brand lift and better sales. For many companies’ marketing goals, this “lift” can be considered part of the ROI for their branded content.

Is Branded Content the Future?

The era of banner-ad dominance is at an end. Studies show that ad blocking is on the rise, and 60% of clicks on banner ads are accidental. Marketers and advertisers know this; and they recognize that branded content may be a good alternative. Branded content is one way to provide connection to prospects that will make them grateful or amazed, and more engaged with their brand. What most marketers need to achieve now is buy-in on the part of their superiors, and tangible metrics that can guide their strategies to success.

By using these tips to monitor and assess branded content, marketers can take the extra step and measure the traffic, leads, and even the affinity their content drives. The BI Intelligence study mentioned above found that consumers have far more goodwill toward branded content than disruptive advertising. Consumers come to a website or publication looking for useful information or entertainment. When they get what they came for, you’ve got satisfied consumers and built positive relationships with your brand. As a marketer, you’ve always known this is the key to positive ROI — and now you can prove it.

About the Author: Andrew Lovasz is the CEO of Main Path Marketing, a leading digital marketing firm providing enterprise level solutions to SMB and mid-market companies. He has 17 years of experience as an executive in the digital marketing industry, with clients ranging from Verizon Wireless to thousands of small and mid-market car dealers, restaurants and hotels.

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Fizzle is Hiring! Web Developer Needed

At Fizzle, we’re focused on helping our members earn a living doing something they love. Our courses and community are designed to help these members make smart progress while supporting each other in a fun environment.

Our team is now working on an exciting new software project. We need a strong client-side developer to do some of the heavy lifting for us.

This project is top secret, so we can’t reveal all of the details until we interview you, but we can tell you some of the technologies involved. This is a real-time communications project. We’re in the prototyping phase currently, and our client stack is built on VueJS, Socket.io, Babel and Webpack. The server is based on Nodejs, Express, Socket.io, MySQL and Redis.

We’re looking for a developer to start part-time to help us turn our prototype into an alpha version ready for real user testing. If things go well, there will be opportunities to turn this into a full-time position.

You’ll need to have experience with:

• Developing single page style client applications
• Using a modern component-based javascript client framework like Angular or React
• Writing clean HTML & CSS (but you don’t need to be a designer)
• Bonus points for experience with VueJS, Socket.io, Babel and Webpack
• Even more bonus points for experience with server side API-based development, NodeJS, MySQL, Redis

You’ll also need to be passionate about front-end development. We want someone who writes quality code that can last for years. You also need to speak and write English fluently.

At Fizzle we’re focused on creating the best training and tools for independent business builders on the web, and this is a great opportunity for the right person to join a very special little company.

This is a part-time contract opportunity, with opportunity to evolve into a permanent part-time position for the right fit. Initially we may only need 10 hours a week. The work can be completed remotely, and on your schedule.

How to Apply

Please submit a resume and a cover letter explaining:

1. Why you want to work for Fizzle, and not somewhere else.
2. A description of a project you completed recently, including your role, what you learned, and why you’re proud of what you accomplished.

Getting to Know Each Other

This is a small team and everyone on the team has to wear a lot of hats. To make sure Fizzle is the right fit for you, and vice-versa, this role will start out as a short-term position and grow from there if we’re both smitten.

Compensation is dependent on experience. Please include your requirements with the application. We prefer someone based in the United States for this role (or similar time zone), but we’re also open to hiring the best person for this job, no matter where they live.

Email everything to corbett@fizzle.co and include “Web Developer” in the subject line. If you attach a resume, please send it as a PDF file. Feel free to get creative with your application, but make sure you’ve followed all of the rules mentioned here.

We look forward to hearing from you!

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