[WMD2016] Reforge >> Susan Su "The ROI of content and how to scale"

Editor's Notes

1. Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’re working hard on a piece of content. You’re getting pumped while anticipating all the triple, or hell, quadruple, digit shares, and you’re practically salivating at the thought of all the juicy backlinks you’re bound to get. Only, instead of all that stuff, here’s what happens:
2. Or in other words this:
3. Or, maybe something along the lines of this:
4. When you were really expecting this:
5. Here’s the deal. I’ve heard THIS sad truth hundreds of times when talking to startups big and small.
6. And that’s understandable. Peak content is real. 300 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute 1.97 million blog posts published per day…. On Wordpress ALONE Over a million books published per year (over half are self published) and most only sell 250 copies or less. The nation is awash in…. Content marketing.
7. But, it’s not content’s fault!
8. “If you build it, they will come”.... is NOT an effective content marketing strategy. anybody remember Field of Dreams? Sorry folks, this only happens in Kevin Costner movies.
9. So today, we’re going to cover two FRAMEWORKS — or “Looks” if you will — for how you can build a high ROI content strategy from the ground up.
10. A word of caution before we proceed: if you’re looking for a bag of tricks, you better save yourself a few minutes on watching this talk and google that at home. Content tricks can be great as OPTIMIZATIONS layered on top of a robust strategy, but no amount of tricks can replace solid frameworks for content-based growth.
11. Framework 1: Content-Market Fit. Content market fit is made up of TWO things: great content, and a market that wants it.
12. Ipsy is a 500 company that has some of the strongest content market fit I’ve ever seen. Here’s the Key to Ipsy’s content market fit:
13. They started with the “market fit”: Michelle Phan uploaded her first video in 2007, got 40K views within the first week. And today, that video has over 11 and a half million views.
14. Makeup tutorials are a natural fit for youtube because of three factors: 1. demographics (who’s on there), 2. content demand (70% of searches on Youtube begin with How To) In other words, people are looking for instructional content on Youtube. 3. There’s a match between content format and platform format -- it’s visuals, it’s colors, it’s movement, it’s videos.
15. Three years later, when Ipsy was started, the founders Marcelo and Jennifer knew that they had to bring on board a partner to anchor what they suspected would become their biggest growth loop -- content. And Michelle was the perfect partner -- Substantial built-in following A existing content brand On key platform for their demographic and product category On a discovery portal that with over a billion users around the world, watching over 40 minutes of video content per session, was exactly the growth channel they needed. In other words, they had content-market fit.
16. How can YOU get content market fit? Here’s my checklist (and you can score yourself on these): 1. Is there a market for your content? 2. Does it have enough reach and engagement for you to bank your growth on it? (example youtube) 3. Do your platforms reach your segment? (Look for demographic fit and a match between content format and platform) 4. Is there a demand (amongst your segment) for your content type? 5. Finally (a bonus): is there someone who has created their corner of your content market, that you can work together with?
17. Peak content is real. There are literally hundreds of millions of new pieces of content being created every day. To compete, you can’t just throw it out there, you have to be strategic, and implement frameworks for success before you start. If you build it, they WON’T necessarily come. You have to spend half your time on distribution, and better that that time be spent on pre-insuring distribution by making sure you have content market fit. Frameworks are always better than content hacktics. Hack tics can be a great booster, or bonus, on top of a strong framework, but no amount of buzzfeedy headlines will replace a lack of content market fit. Speaking of which, content market fit is where it’s at. It is the foundation of making sure your content based growth loop actually helps you with growth. Finally, there’s a solution to all of this. You can use the Content Market Fit checklist to make sure you have fit before you start throwing a bunch of resources behind your content strategy — and yes, content takes a LOT of resources. It’s very resource intensive upfront, which is why you need to be so careful that you’re headed in the right direction. After you find content market fit, there’s one more BIG pitfall waiting to sabotage your content growth efforts.
18. And it’s what I call: The Customer Awareness Cycle Mismatch, aka Selling a retirement plan to a high schooler
19. Now, here’s the second framework I want to introduce you guys to. It’s called, the Customer Awareness Lifecycle. Unaware -- problem aware -- solution aware -- product aware Most of us focus our efforts on the last stage, trying to make people product aware of OUR product. We get all graspy and anxious to sell them our brand over all the other brands. But our own worst enemy isn’t ONLY the direct competition The real issue is that we’re ignoring a chance to speak to this entire part of the lifecycle We’re missing out on a chance to be like a childhood friend.
20. Now, to go back to that high schooler example, you can think of it a bit as the evolution of your customer. Let’s say your high schooler finally realizes the benefit of a retirement account. She has gotten a little older, is no longer in the high school stage and has moved from unaware THROUGH problem aware (oh hey, what happens when I’m old and not working anymore and still need money?) all the way to solution aware (hmm, a retirement account could help me with that). Let’s say you’re a trusted childhood friend who helped her move through those stages. And you also happen to sell a financial product. When she is ready to be product-aware -- at the consideration stage -- who is the first person or brand that she’ll turn to? If you’re not seeing ROI on your content, first check in: Are you pushing for too much, too soon?
21. Adespresso is a 500 company that gets it right with the Customer Awareness Lifecycle. They spend 95% of their time talking to people at the 3 earlier stages of the customer awareness lifecycle. Adespresso has 5k customers and is processing 1% of Facebook’s entire ad revenue. They have a sales team of zero, and instead rely on a “salesforce” of content marketing, drip emails and product onboarding. They got 335K uniques last month and are converting 50% - 60% of visitors to their landing pages to subscription. Content enables AdEspresso to get warmer leads at significantly lower cost, and because of this they get their CAC back in the first month. AdEspresso content is multi platform and multi format: Blog posts Ebooks Webinars Video courses Newsletter Slideshare presentations Online community
22. Over 95% of AdEspresso’s content volume falls right here: Their blog posts help people go from unaware of their marketing problem, to aware that they have a marketing problem related to social media and Facebook. Their video courses, newsletter, further or “advanced” blog posts, and other materials take people from problem aware to Solution Aware. Their downloadable ebooks and webinars that you have to register for, take people from generally solution aware to specifically product aware. By then, they have developed long and trust-based teacher and student relationship with their target audience. And that’s the perfect time to finally talk about a product. Let’s look at two brief examples of AdEspresso content.
23. This example shows the landing page for the AdEspresso Academy, which is their content marketing library. As you can see, the page focuses visitors around content consumption and education related to marketing problems and possible solutions. There is very little content that talks about AdEspresso the Product, just a tour link and a Pricing link at the top (the pricing link is not pictured in this image).
24. Here’s another example. Their Ads Gallery is an interactive database of tens of thousands of ad examples that you can scope out and even click through to follow the funnel. This is an engagement tool that can educate and offer value to a customer who’s still figuring out a problem or a solution, before they’re ready to consider any Products. There’s so little product-focused content that the team told me they still get AdEspresso customers who had been readers of AdEspresso’s content for YEARS without knowing that there was a tool on offer. They didn’t KNOW because their awareness wasn’t there yet. They were in Learn mode, not in Buy mode.
25. So if you’re wondering why you keep scaring all the conversions away, use the customer awareness lifecycle template to plot out every single piece of content -- where does it fall on the spectrum? Most of it, like all these yellow dots, should be making people more aware of the painful problem they need to solve — giving them the LANGUAGE around that problem — and then making them aware that there IS in fact a solution. Finally, the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself, is to let them know that there is a Product that is the perfect incarnation of that solution.
26. Ok, there’s one wrench in all of this. Peak content strikes again. With so much content, the number of products / brands that people are thinking about at the Product Aware stage of the lifecycle is bigger -- and it’s possible for upstarts to disrupt all that nurture you’ve been investing in. In fact, studies have found that people are looking at between 2 and 4 brands even at the very final consideration point of the Product aware stage of their awareness cycle. So, you’ve got competition.
27. But here’s the silver lining: When there are too many choices, most of us in MOST purchase categories will just default to the old standard that we know and trust. If you’re in there early (Unaware to Solution Aware), you’re 3X more likely to win out, even as new players interject themselves at the Product Aware stage of the Awareness lifecycle.
28. Bonus mini framework for you to help remember that. 90/10 Because most of us will get exhausted and fall back on our original consideration, here’s where content comes in again. Great content is about 90% nurture and 10% conversion. It’s important to be there, consistently nurturing, for that moment of “decision exhaustion” when the customer is ready to fall back onto the original consideration — you!
29. Customer awareness mismatch is your enemy — don’t make your customers deal with too much, too soon! We talked about the Customer Awareness Lifecycle Framework for Content — Unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product ware. And that’s why it’s important to educate before you sell. And primarily educate. Because early awareness triples your chance of winning the final conversion. And a final bonus framework to make sure you can cash in on early awareness and be in both the fallback and active consideration positions — 90/10. Make sure you are spending 90% of your efforts nurturing so you’re right there when it’s time to convert.