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© Benjamin Haas

As writers of content for marketing, we at Write Angle work for companies of all stripe from nascent start-ups to large publicly-held brands. How to best measure the effectiveness of this or that content invariably comes up along the way and there’s never a shortage of opinions on how to do it. Which is the most important metric — click-through, volume of readers, new site visitors, orders, revenue?  We put this question to the Linked In community recently, asking  1) what measurement methodologies do you find to be the most effective and 2) how do you rank order your content assets from most to least effective and why?

We were prompted by Contently who passed along the work by Ascend2 and Research Partners: http://contently.com/strategist/2015/04/27/the-most-effective-and-difficult-types-content-marketing-in-one-chart/ Their research examines the relative effectiveness of articles/case studies, videos, infographics, research/white papers, webinars/online events, eNewsletters, photos/illustration and news releases.

We would now like to know what you think of these findings. Yes, it’s using an awfully broad approach to determining meaningful findings. Still it raises some fundamental questions about content categories and their respective “effectiveness”, presumably in triggering new site visitors, generating new sales leads, increasing conversion rates and driving revenue.

How do do you measure the value of the content your team creates?

And good riddance

It’s not often that you sit through a webinar and come away with some real insights.  Fortunately, today’s webinar conducted by Mintigo on improved lead generation through “Content Intelligence” delivered — and hit on some important truisms facing marketers.

As a company that espouses the “power of relevant marketing”, Mintigo struck a chord.  Zeroing in on the content marketing deluge – i.e. “crap” – that is drowning customers and prospects, the Mintigo folks got to the heart of the matter: effective content cannot just entertain and inform, it must contain material that “authentically matters to the people you’re trying to reach”.

So how do you make this determination? It boils down to segmenting your content based on your prospects’ identifiable traits and self-proclaimed areas of interest.   “Content Intelligence” uses more personalized and relevant communication to clusters of targeted prospects based on big data analysis of multiple sources (think websites visited, news preferences, blogs read, social postings and more).  By extracting the needs and interests of prospects, you can segment them into interest groups, clusters and personas.

Make no mistake, this is hard work.  And Mintigo is the first to say so despite the fact they offer up what they declare to be the world’s first Customer Search Engine that automates a lot of the heavy lifting involved.

One of the key challenges of content marketing boils down to producing enough fresh content – and figuring out what topics to communicate – to continually engage targeted prospects with information that is highly relevant in order to trigger more click-throughs.  And this means that engaging the right content development shop to help fulfill this need is becoming one of the most strategic decisions facing marketing departments today.  The days of “spray and pray” marketing are history.  Welcome to the era of content intelligence.

Phil Roybal, VP marketing at CollegeOnTrack (not a client), executed just about everything the right way on his web site, right out of the start-up blocks. As a form-and-content template for consideration by other raw start-ups, it’s as good as any we’ve seen. To us, it’s recommended viewing for early-stage companies in any category. CollegeOnTrack is a software package that simplifies the application process for jittery students and their anxious parents.  Roybal, a former marketing exec at Apple, understood the need to keep the story on the web site simple because simplicity is what his product is all about.  The demo video on the home page, for example, is a classic how-to explanation of the company and their offerings.  The rest of the site features relevant, sticky content dealing with issues that matter most to students juggling applications, essays and appraisals of this or that school.

While CollegeOnTrack can be justifiably proud of its life-simplifying software, as most parents of a college students past and present can attest, the focus of the site reflects the world as seen through the eyes of students, parents and counselors. In other words,  Roybal’s customers.  This outside-in perspective can be easily blurred during the content creation process.  CollegeOnTrack proves that this doesn’t have to be the case.  As far as his web traffic goes, Roybal admits that while it could always be better, conversions are tracking the plan.  “We had a great trade show this month and look forward to next month’s event,” he said.  Just as high school students and parents have been looking forward to seeing what’s in their snail-mailboxes lately.

What’s your method for ensuring your web content reflects the POV of the visitors you want to attract? How often do you refresh  site content? What’s your most recent rate of conversion and how is it trending?

Follow customers, not trends

There’s an old saying that nobody’s as gullible as a salesman afraid of missing out on a trend. We would put some marketing people into this category today.

Consider two astute observations that came our way recently. One is that you shouldn’t believe all the hype about “in-bound” (as opposed to outbound) marketing; the other says quality content on a web site always trumps search-engine optimization (SEO). You’d think that both contentions would be self-evident truths.  In practice, too many marketers seem only too eager to err on the side of excess when it comes to perceived trends affecting their craft.

The dramatic rise of social marketing is the “trend” here that so many marketers seem afraid of missing out on.  Don’t get us wrong. We’re avid practitioners of all things digital but we’re in solid concurrence with Seattle-based PR exec Howie Barokas. To his way of thinking, the advent of social media has given too many marketing types, particularly when it comes to PR, a bad case of myopia about potential customers and the content aimed at them. While social media has changed the way people consume information and buy things, at the end of the day it’s just another channel. However important, it’s just another element in the mix of advertising, direct marketing, tradeshows, webinars and all the other means by which marketing content is made available.

As for the plight of the SEO-obsessed, we commend the sentiments of our colleague Efi Rodik: “People are sifting through the garbage online to find the good stuff—information that is informative, engaging, and above all, relevant. If your site is so keyword-optimized that it barely passes as English, then you’ve got a problem.”

Having responsibility for marketing content, you can never lose your focus on your end-user. We share Rodik’s view that customers looking for information or resources on the web will always want content that’s easy to read and understand. “If you’re pounding your keyword,” he says, “rather than focusing on providing useful, compelling information, then you’ll lose a conversion, your bounce rate will go up, and your ranking on your search-engine results page will suffer”.

New study on web sites reveals what engages and retains the visitors you want

Results of a study on web sites made recently by an independent group on behalf of Facebook are now in — and they re-confirm what we preach repeatedly here: that sites having content which visitors can most easily identify with, and relate to on a personal level, are the most effective in engaging those visitors, holding their attention, achieving their recall and motivating them to return.

In other words, the mission we all want our sites to accomplish.

We’re delighted that these findings are so consistent with our own religious belief that marketing content of all kinds, online or off, must speak clearly and directly to the real-world issues of customer problems, ambitions and aspirations.  And it must be carefully framed in customer terminology–their vernacular, not yours–spotlighting the problems and challenges that real customers grapple with in their world every day.  This means taking your content a step beyond product descriptions, case studies, whitepapers and technical briefs that dissect the problems besetting the kind of customers you’re pursuing — and letting buyers describe exactly how your offering delivered real, measurable solutions in the circumstances your visitors (readers) can easily identify with.  The more personal and identifiable your content is, the more engaging and harder working your site can be.

In an era of incredible info overload, AKA “big data”, it’s encouraging to see research findings confirm that some content really does find its way into human memory.  The caveat: to know all you must about whom you’re targeting to the point that the topics you select and the way you present them are memorable. Another word for personal.

Are you satisfied with your site analytics and metrics today?  Your conversion rate?  How do you keep your content consistent with customer preferences and interest?  How can you make it more personal?

Marketing people in early-stage companies have daily to-do lists that would, per head, choke many of their counterpart departments in larger enterprises.  Still, as we continually preach, the need for ever-fresh content on web sites is a primary to-do for companies of any size.  The fact that business blogs are typically the fastest, simplest means of keep content topical and fresh is the biggest reason why they’re so prevalent.

But a recent Inc 500 survey revealed a sharp decline in corporate blogging last year compared to 2010 (37% vs. 50%). In the same survey, however, 56% of the non-blogging companies said they planned to start or re-start a blog in 2012.  We suspect the reasons for the drop-off may have to do with the realities of blogging and the resulting disillusionment of bloggers who failed to recognize benefits.

To those companies intending to blog for the first time and to those willing to jump back in the game we send best wishes —  and a caveat.  We counsel a variation on the advice proferred recently by Reputation Capitalization’s Mary Slayter.  We have our own checklist we offer our clients.

You know you’re ready to publish a blog if:

1. You are not a control freak. You trust the employees tapped for content generation to represent your brand without an onerous review process that takes a half-dozen people and untold hours of deliberation.

2. Your goal is to establish a reputation as a trusted source of industry information as a means of eventual revenue.  The operative word here is “eventual”.  You’re OK with the long-term-prospect nature of actual revenue coming directly from leads your blog will create.  Of course, results will vary company to company, industry to industry. Quality leads generated by effective keywords on the rest of your site is a different matter. The payoff is swifter than publishing a blog, but the time and effort to maintain efficacy is more labor intensive.

3. You have no problems linking your content to a competitor’s site. We especially like Slayter’s counsel here: “A robust industry blog will require you to have civilized, public conversation with your competitors. A generous spirit in this regard  is what will make you a thought leader in your industry; it also has some powerful SEO advantages”. Hey, your customers know they have choices. Earn their confidence by showing confidence in yourself.

4. You understand the utility and the value of any content having nothing to with pitching your wares.  You write the blog to gain and keep readers.  Period.  You understand them well enough to know instinctively what compels their interest and what they find interesting enough to warrant their time.  Your whitepapers and case studies reflect this exact same insight.

5. You know there is no free lunch. And no free blog. For this reason, you’ve set aside the sufficient resources for design, content and promotion.  Why? Because to measure content marketing’s contribution against the other elements in your mix (traditional advertising, PR, etc.) you need to examine actual  costs.

So, did you or a company you know discontinue blogging recently?  Why?  How did you respond to the checklist items above?

The good folks over at Marketo published some stunning numbers this week that should be a wake-up call for anybody running marketing today.  Boiled down, the findings revealed that most marketing leaders have little or no confidence in their ability to drive revenue. Nine out of ten senior marketers surveyed “do not feel confident in their ability to impact the sales forecast of their programs”.  And 20 percent of them don’t measure what they do at all.

Isn’t driving sales one of the fundamental purposes of the marketing function? There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for closing deals and making the quarterly numbers.  But this much is known for certain about today’s in-bound marketing world: those companies who keep their web site content fresher and publish it more frequently draw the most sales-validated leads.  They consistently realize the highest conversion rates and apply measurement tools to clearly demonstrate the results of programs that contribute to bottom line revenue.  Can’t blame them.

Yes, Marketo is in the business of measurement software, but the connection of quality traffic volume to SEO rankings is driven by nothing more or less than the content sought by customers constantly on the lookout for fresh information relative to their specific needs.  Recognizing these needs and publishing relevant and engaging content is what separates the “10-percenters” who are successfully driving revenue generation from the other 90 percent who aren’t.  Those in the tip-of-the-pyramid ten percent club have figured out the correlation between publishing engaging content with regularity and making it count on the bottom line.

Are you in the 10-percent? What are you doing to stay there, or get there?  How do you keep your marketing content fresh and relevant?