The Death of Marketing as We Know It & The Rise of the Content

Engineer

Adapting Marketing to Changing Customer Behaviors & Demands

Pelin Thorogood, Principal Schulman+Thorogood Group

Pelin is a new media marketer and entrepreneur, with success in both venture-backed startups and public companies. Throughout her career as a high technology executive, she has consistently been in the forefront of emerging technologies and trends, leading the go-to-market strategy for WebSideStory's on-demand online marketing suite (acquired by Omniture/Adobe), extending Peregrine Systems' enterprise software business (acquired by HP) into the web-based employee self service (ESS) category, and in the mid 90s, launching one the very first mobile B2B applications designed for the Windows CE platform.

A principal in Schulman+Thorogood Group, Pelin sits on boards and advises new media and cloud computing companies. In 2011, Pelin was named one of the “20 Women to Watch” in sales lead management, and is a regular speaker and author on “Social Selling”, “Social Marketing” and related topics.

She also serves as a guest lecturer and a virtual Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. Pelin holds a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research, M.Eng and MBA degrees, all from Cornell University.

What Will You Get From This Preso

How Online Marketing & Social Media have changed everything… and not!

Understanding the Social Customer

Evolution of Marketing and Marketers

The new tools and tactics to engage the social customer

7 Steps to Being a Content Engineer

Customers Driving the Conversation

“…social media has become massively more important because customers have stopped listening to vendors and analyst/reviewers. Think about that.

Most of your marketing and press/analyst relations are being trumped by customers talking to customers. ”

Geoffrey James BNET

6 Keys to Marketing to the Social

Customer1. Listen before you talk

2. Engage in the conversation

3. Invest in the Content Engineer

4. Create a Virtuous Marketing Cycle

5. Build a culture of measurement

6. … and Repeat!

Listen Before You Talk

Listen Before You Talk

Engage in the Conversation

Create relevant content

Go where your customers are

Empower your community managers

Leverage different social channels for different purposes

Power the community!

Emergence of Inbound Marketing

Outbound v Inbound

Interrupt-drivenTalking

Program $$ Push

Business-Generated Press releases, seminars,

videos, collateralBusiness Connections

Building WebsitesSales Cycle

Organic / Findability-basedListeningPeople $$ PullUser-GeneratedBlog posts, podcasts, LinkedIn & Facebook groups, YouTubeSocial ConnectionsBuilding CommunitiesBuying Cycle

10

2011 Marketing Trends

Era of the Content Engineer™

The cost per lead for inbound marketing is 60% less than outbound marketing1

Investment in People-dollars Investment in Program-dollars

Content Engineer = One Part Creative Director + One Part Data Analyst

• Both LEFT and RIGHT Brain Required!

1 IDC 2010 and Hubspot 2010

Relevance is Key

Relevant content is key to findability

SEO & link-building

Relevant content is key to customer engagement, stickiness and community building

Relevance Engagement Conversion

Creativity w/out Conversion = ZERO

Relevance!

Who’s Doing What Today?

Content Curation - Roberts & Durkee

Original Content – WebSideStory (Adobe Systems)

Content Optimization - ebeanstalk.com,

Mobile Content – Whole Foods

Video – InboundWriter

Content Curation

Source: “Content Rules”

Content Curation

Simplifying the Complex

Goal: Generate leads

Strategy: Demystify webanalytics w/free download

Result: 8K leads

Video Content

Video Content

7 Steps to Being a Content Engineer

1. Understand Business Goals

2. Create a Content Strategy

3. Unleash Your Inner Data Analyst

4. Know the Right Tools

5. Create Relevant Content

6. Get it Read

7. Measure & Optimize

1. Understand Goals

What is your company trying to accomplish?

Who is your target audience?

Are you in alignment with marketing?

2. Content Strategy

What is your content strategy based on your objectives?

What types of content do you need?

How will you measure success?

What can you ‘re-imagine’?

Create an editorial calendar to keep you on track

Relevant

Who are they? Demos. Who are they? Demos.

Why are they valuable?(connect to your goals)

Why are they valuable?(connect to your goals)

How can you help? How can you help?

Personas

Source: Bridgeline Digital

‘Lifecycle’ ContentAcquisition Conversion Retention

Blogging White papers Email newsletters

Online press releases Explanatory videos Social media content

Infographics Customer video testimonials

Customer support content

Surveys and trend data Case studies Product tours

Video content Data sheets Webinars

Social media content Product reviews Blog

Podcasts Webinars Contests

Blog and forum comments Advertising and search copy

3. Inner Data Analyst

Familiarize yourself with web and social measurement

Understand how content drives results based on your objectives

Know how to establish benchmarks

Use data to optimize and create better content

Leveraging DataMeasurement can be used to help in the

following areas:

Planning: Which content drove past results – traffic, conversions, ‘shares’

Reporting: Is the content meeting your objectives? Which type of content is best?

Optimizing: How can we move the needle above benchmark?

4. Know the Right Tools

measurement distribution production

5. Create Relevant Content

Use data to understand what your audience is interested in and what types of content work best

Marcus Sheriden: “Your customers’ first 50 questions should be your first 50 blog posts.”

Be creative

Make it consumable

Tell a story

Call to action

6. Get it ReadLeverage your Community: Social channels, customer advocates, influencers, paid advertising, etc.

Work w/marketing and public relations

Leverage employees

Measure!

7. Measure & Adjust

Measure impact of content based on objective – leads, sales, etc.

Measure most effective type of content

Use measurement to drive content decisions

Remember: creativity w/out conversions = zero

Establishing a Culture of Measurement

www.schulmanthorogoood.com

@stgroup