Developing a Strong Content Strategy

Similar to the weather, everyone’s talking about CONTENT, but no one’s doing anything about it. Seriously, how many pages of fresh, new client-interest content did you create for your website last week. Last month? Last year?

In the broad list of priorities every marketer has, website content development has a difficult time competing with more immediate and measurable tasks.

I’d like to propose a four-step process to get past this inertia:

1. Complete a journalistic review of your current content.

Read your Top 10 most trafficked pages. Then, go to your favorite magazine’s site and read a few articles. Notice a difference? Journalists are trained to write content that pulls you deeper in to the story. Their sites—commonly referred to as “editorial”—have much longer engagement times than most marketing sites. One article leads to a blog or reviews, which lead seamlessly to another. Would your company benefit from users spending more time on your site?

A good first step is to engage a professional journalist or a journalism student to evaluate the editorial quality of your site content. Have them grade the top 100 pages, and use these evaluations as a starting point for your work.


2. Consider content in different forms and formats

While you were on the editorial site, you probably noticed that the content comes in many formats—long-form articles, short punchy quotes, polls, videos, images, reviews, etc. It’s been proven that the more variety you offer, the more users engage.

This year, try to add two new forms of content that would be relevant to your users.


3. Create an annual editorial plan with monthly benchmarks

One of our clients recently started getting serious about refreshing content on their site by creating a biweekly homepage refresh schedule. Working with the broader marketing team on these refreshes drove a greater sense of urgency to refresh content throughout the site.

Try this, or a similar tactic to get the organization focused on fresh content for a fresh year.


4. Find efficient development resources

Interns. Freelance journalists. Two great sources for content development employed by editorial sites to publish the huge volume of content they create on an annual basis. You probably won’t get your management team or fellow marketers to write content to a level you need, but you can probably get them to sit down for an informal interview with a trained writer on your staff.

What tips are we missing? Please share your own content strategy in the comments.

Online Contest Advice

This month in the "Making the Most of Digital" feature, DMNews promised that they'd tell us how to Navigate the Online Contest Trend. Trend? Sweepstakes and contests online have been around for a years. Granted, they've generally become more truly interactive with time, but 'trend' is a stretch. Okay, okay, the trade mags need to pump up the article...

The article was interesting enough, but didn't really provide much help with 'how to', so I'll provide some guidelines based on implementing six or eight over the past four years.

Things you should know:

1. Contests take much much more time and resources than you would imagine. You'll need a program manager, creative staff, site builders, legal advisors, an online 'prize' agency, and maybe a fulfillment house. Oh, and prizes too. You'll need to start 4 - 6 months before launch, and then you'll be fulfilling for months afterward.

2. You need a specialty agency because they have built fool-proof algorithms to ensure that the prizes are being awarded correctly according to the rules. And they also have researched the rules to make sure they're fully legit in all states. They'll also indemnify your organization against any issues, which your legal staff will appreciate. All of this does not come cheap.

3. Make sure to involve your counsel / legal department the very first week you begin discussing a sweepstakes or contest. There are an incredible number of legalities to these things, and this being a litigious society... well let's just say that if you don't get them in really early it could be very unpleasant.

4. Generally a 'sweepstakes' is much easier to get through legal as they're based on random luck and chance, while a 'contest' implies that you are somehow selecting the 'best' something. That selection process can be the subject of litigation.

5. When you total up all the costs and explain that to the CMO and she explains it to the CFO, you'll want to have a very firm determination of the expected return. Realistically, you can see a good number of new emails for your house file, your current customers will probably 'tell a friend', and you may be able to get more visibility for a new product or offering. (CPG manufacturers always sell more product at retail when the packaging mentions a sweepstakes. I do not know why.) That said, I've had clients spend up to $15 per new-to-file address, which seemed steep. Keep in mind that there are numerous sites online that will pass your program around and there are people who participate in endless sweepstakes, so many of your new addresses aren't all that valuable.

6. Unless there is an amazing brand linkage to complicated or expensive grand prizes, you'll probably get just as much action from free product or gift cards. And your ROI becomes much more viable.

Hope this helps. Please tell me if you have more tips, or radically disagree!

Coordinating Marketing across Channels

I just finished reading a rather interesting article in this week's DM News, discussing a variety of interesting cross-platform programs that have recently launched.

They suggested some tips for coordinating cross-channel programs... which I didn't much care for. Here are mine:

• Begin every marketing effort by profiling how your target customer will be reached. What are their natural touch points with you? Is this something that they are logically seeking... so may pull information, such as doing research on our website, or searching on Google? When can we legitimately push communication at them, like sending an email, or placing TV ads?
• If your agency can't come up with Big Ideas that have natural 'legs' cross-channel, they should be fired. In the 21st century people are engaged in multiple types of media on a nearly constant basis. Your message simply must be communicated in numerous ways to gain resonance.
• Understand that many strong marketing strategies can be implemented without force-creating tactics for every possible medium. In fact, investing in a few tactics in a strong manner is probably better than spreading resources too thin. The desire to build a microsite to house little more than TV commercials is a classic misuse of the online medium and a waste of money as very few people TV commercials online in their spare time. (see point one...)
• Successful cross-channel programs are the result of quality planning and preparation. You simply must start months before launch as so many tactics have long lead times. So many expenses could be amortized across mediums.. if only it was planned.