Building A Content Marketing Machine - Vertical Measures Webinar

Building A Content Marketing Machine

John DohertyFounder, GetCredo.com

@dohertyjf

Who am I?

Currently: Founder of Credo (GetCredo.com)

Growth/inbound marketing consultant for hire

Blogger: johnfdoherty.com

Previous:

• Senior Growth Marketing Manager at Trulia Rentals

• Senior Marketing Manager at HotPads

• Senior Consultant at Distilled NYC

@dohertyjf

Let’s talk content marketing

@dohertyjf

Some of the results I’ve seen and heard ofContent marketing:• Changed a site from buying $15k of links a month to earning links

from sites like REI• Grew an audience by tens of thousands from scratch and contributed

meaningful conversions to a business• Personally made me over $70k from one product launch and the

marketing around it• Obtained millions of visits and earning shares from some of the

biggest celebrities (for free!)

@dohertyjf

But some of you are probably thinking

“We gave content marketing a shot and it didn’t work.”

@dohertyjf

But some of you are probably thinking

We gave content marketing a shot and it didn’t work.

@dohertyjf

Let’s think about some types of content

Infographics

Whitepapers

Blog posts

Data visualizations

eBooks

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Email drip campaigns

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Content Marketing Has Exploded In Popularity

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Much of it is meh

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What is a content machine?

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If you’ve ever said “we tried content marketing and it didn’t work for us”, you didn’t have a machine.

@dohertyjf

Content Machine Formula

((Ideation+creation)*promotion) + measurement

@dohertyjf

A machine is a sum of its parts. Every part works together. If one part isn't working, then you're wasting gas or worse, not even on the road

anymore.

Rome wasn’t build in a day. Neither will your machine. So let’s figure out where to start.

@dohertyjf

From Idea to MVPLet’s build a skateboard.

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First, “What is an MVP?”

@dohertyjf

An MVP is a working first iteration based off a hypothesis. In content marketing, your hypothesis can be informed by data and observation.

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Who’s the content competition and what are they doing?At HotPads, we looked at our competitors. They all:1. Had blogs, but not great content2. Some were cranking out a lot of content,

others not so muchSo we asked:3. What are they doing well? Not doing well?4. Where are the gaps?5. What kind of content is available to us?6. What’s our unique spin?7. What will our users find interesting,

supported by keyword research?

@dohertyjf

Do an assets auditAt HotPads we figured out what assets we were working with. We had:

• A blog on a subdomain

• Consistent content on this blog (but minimal traffic)

• The ability to publish longer form content

• A budget for content

• A designer eager to help

• Pages onsite that had earned links in the past

Unlike this house, we had a solid foundation

@dohertyjf

HotPads already received *some* natural coverage

• "Sift through rentals...or homes for sale... You can study photos, floor plans, price comparisons, and even information about local schools. " WIRED

• "HotPads data is up to date and fresh and the map search is snappy and well featured." LifeHacker

…And yes, links too.

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What Can You Do Better Than Anyone? At HotPads, we did maps better than anyone.

@dohertyjf

How Do You Produce Content At Your Company?Varies by company but you have a mix of the following:

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Budget

Time

Expertise

People

What can you start today?Will vary by company, but here are some ideas:

If you’re design-heavy, create fantastic graphics

If you’re writing heavy, create the best damn ebooks possible

If you have a ton of data, take a fresh angle on it

@dohertyjf

There’s no promotion without creation, so nail creation before

moving on to promotion.

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Don’t Forget To Measure• You can’t win and build a cohesive strategy of what is working if

you’re not measuring• Strategies are not set in stone. They move over time. Start, measure,

refine to your ultimate goals.

Read: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/single-startup-metric/ @dohertyjf

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/single-startup-metric/

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/single-startup-metric/

From Skateboard (MVP) to BicyclePedal power! Still manual, but much much easier.

@dohertyjf

Figuring out production

Now you’ve started creating content and getting an idea of what’s working and what’s not.

You’re measuring and getting an idea if your current efforts will fit your goals for content.

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HotPads Case StudyWe had three real KPIs and goals

Audience Links

Build a brand

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What we knewUse what you already have

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No one had really cracked the content code with renters. We knew what didn’t work, but also didn’t

know from our competitors what did.

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But we knew from our parent company the kind of content that worked there.

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We had the following ideas for content

Location-specific content

Interesting maps with available data

Think pieces Graph data

PR stuntsBest hoods in (city)

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We had the following ideas for content

Couldn’t scale this within budget

Traffic, links, and brand!

No interest No interest

Traffic links and brand!Good traffic, no brand

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We went with these after a lot of testing

Location-specific content

Interesting maps with available data

Think pieces Graph data

PR stuntsBest hoods in (city)

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We decided on a dual approachConsistent quality content that would be useful for our target audience around topics of:1. Renting2. Living in cities3. Moving4. Life changes

Higher quality focused content including but not limited to:1. Data2. Maps3. Graphics4. Photos

@dohertyjf

We decided on a dual approachConsistent quality content that would be useful for our target audience around topics of:1. Renting2. Living in cities3. Moving4. Life changes

Higher quality focused content including but not limited to:1. Data2. Maps3. Graphics4. Photos

Which do you think earned more links, got more coverage, and ultimately drove more qualified traffic?

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Best Neighborhoods in (City)It might not be the sexiest content, but we had access to a lot of data around neighborhoods, like demographics.We also had a lot of opinions . If a good way to get people involved is to create controversy…

Easy to create, easy to scale. Won’t build a brand.

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Rinse and repeatLike taking candy from a baby. Traffic++

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Rinse and repeatWe also checked out other types of keywords like “most expensive neighborhoods in (city)” and found very little competition. So we created content there and voila.

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The Future of Construction SeriesWe had access to ALN data through a partnership. We took that data and displayed it in a new way, bringing transparency to an opaque industry in a new way.

Differentiated, process to create got faster, endless opportunities for topics to map.

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The Future of SF Construction

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The Future of SF Construction

This one didn’t get much play, but I got positive responses from the journalists I reached out to so I decided to do a few more before declaring failure.

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Rinse and repeat?

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Future of LA Building Construction

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Future of LA Building Construction

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Bingo! So we did this for all of our major metros and received links from all of them, as well as pickup from other related sites.

Now you can think about promotion

@dohertyjf

Set up other channels to workNo matter your team size, automation will make your life easier. You can automate these channels to have built-in promotion on every piece of content you publish.

@dohertyjf

Email marketing Social media

(Some) PRAdvertising

Basic AutomationFor every post you publish, you should automagically:• Email your content subscriber list• Post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn• If doing advertising, set up ads to promote on your platform of choice• If doing retargeting, make sure you drop a pixel on all visitors who meet

your specifications (and burn that pixel if they convert)• Measure your important metrics:• Views on the platforms• Traffic from networks and emails• Revenue

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From Bicycle to MotorcycleNow we’re playing with engines. Two seats even!

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You’ll Need A Dedicated Content ManagerThey need to be all of these. It’s a tough job to fill well.• Creative• Data informed• Organized• Biasing toward action• Understand promotion

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Productize Your Automated PromotionBecause you’ve set up some basic automation and are learning what’s effective, it’s time to not hack it together anymore and actually make it sustainable.

At a great company, your marketing and growth teams (they’re different) will also have engineering and design support. Meet with them to figure out what else you can automate and how to make your current automation better.

@dohertyjf

Put Together A CalendarNow’s the time to put together a calendar of when content will come out, so that you can also plan manual promotion. Multiple hands on a project means structure is needed.Some of the tools for this:

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Shared Trello calendar WP plugins

Google calendar Basecamp/Asana

Build Out More Promotion WorkflowsWith production figured out and automation in place/becoming stable, now you can throw more bodies at promotion.This flow worked for us:

@dohertyjf

Laun

chPrep

Idea

tionBrainstorm

Settle on topicBegin producing

Prospect for outreachFinalize contentSet launch date

Publish contentAutomatic marketingManual outreach to pre-created lists

From Motorcycle to Car

@dohertyjf

Bring In Dedicated Promotion (PR)

A dedicated PR professional won’t be fully leveraged until you have your creation and publishing process figured out. A good one will help you optimize that process for optimal outreach, however.

They are responsible for the Tier 1 (NYT, WSJ, etc) publications that need a relationship and softer pitch touch.

@dohertyjf

Layer On Scaleable Manual Outreach

Depending on your company size, this may be a separate role (or 3, as I had at HotPads) or could be another part of your content manager/marketer’s job.

Their job is to get the Tier 2-3 links and promotion (guest posts, social shares from mid-influencers, email list inclusions). Prospecting and pre-outreach should start about 2 weeks before launch.

@dohertyjf

Content we did after hiring PR

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Meth and Died In Houses

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Meth and Died In Houses

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Best Cities for Graduates

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Best Cities for Graduates

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Why it worked• We enlisted our other outreach employees into securing guest posts

on smaller sites to build more links.• We offered to write content, which 75% of the people who published

coverage wanted us to do.• We offered our economist/data scientist as a source. He hopped on

the phone with journalists (with our PR manager there) and explained the data succinctly. We practiced ahead of time.

@dohertyjf

We used this process

Laun

chPrep

Idea

tionBrainstorm

Settle on topicBegin producing

Prospect for outreachFinalize contentSet launch date

Publish contentAutomatic marketingManual outreach to pre-created lists

@dohertyjf

Scale It (With Quality In Mind)

We decided we could do one great research study every 2 months or so with 1 PR manager, 1 SEO manager, 1 content manager, 1 data scientist/economist, 1 email manager, and 3 link acquisition experts + me. That’s 8 people!

Any faster than that and we’d lose quality. To go faster we’d need more hands on deck.

@dohertyjf

Measure and Optimize Over Time

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Lift Off

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Have Some Fun

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House of Cards

#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

House of Cards


House of Cards


House of Cards


House of Cards


April Fools Alcatraz




Link from the parent company’s biggest rival.



Timely Content


Timely Content

Shared by an LA Times journalist and established a good media contact


Rapid Fire Lessons Learned

@dohertyjf

Big content >>>> small content

• When HotPads wrote a static piece that can live on forever, as opposed to just a blog post, it earned more links and was arguably more valuable than a blog post.• *Big content is also pushed out less

frequently, so promotion makes or breaks its success.• However, blog posts got more social

shares.

@dohertyjf

Give Embeddable Assets

Every post or article that did well for HotPads had an embeddable piece of content, such as images, graphics, or embeddable maps.If you offer something of value to a journalist, they are much more likely to write about you.

@dohertyjf

Content Lives and Dies by Outreach

• When HotPads executed well on outreach, both to small and large sites, they got great links and great coverage.• When they didn’t execute well

(or simply didn’t do it), they didn’t. Great content will get links with outreach, but rarely without.

@dohertyjf

Your Success Depends on Your Team’s Execution of Ideas• A small team of the right people

can do mighty things when given the right processes, but they also must work at the same pace to get things done.• Before hiring someone, ask yourself

how well they will fit into a culture you are trying to cultivate. If they’re a strategist and you need a doer, don’t hire them. And vice versa.

@dohertyjf

Keep Trying New Ideas and MeasureWe went through many iterations of HotPads content:1. City-specific2. “Best neighborhoods” and

“reasons to live in”3. Data graphs4. PR stunts5. Maps of data owned by others6. Maps of our own content

@dohertyjf

Launch around new things (rebrand here)

http://www.getcredo.com/should-i-do-seo/@dohertyjf

http://www.getcredo.com/should-i-do-seo/

Cheat with promo

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Get that bump

@dohertyjf

Play the long gameWhen I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals.

Gary Vaynerchuk

@dohertyjf

Questions?