Our Content Marketing Seminar took place at The Hospital Club, Covent Garden, on 19 February 2015. Discussions covered everything from creating and marketing great content to how recipes with squirrel, zombie fortification cabins and tweed can boost engagement. Joining us for this eclectic seminar were speakers from Branded3, Liberty Marketing, Great British Chefs, Search Laboratory and Museum of London.
Here’s what some of our delegates were hoping to get from the event
“We’ve got search nailed but we’ve just started on channels like email marketing and social. Primarily our content has been written by people within the business, so there’s no strategy behind it. We’re just trying to get into that space and do it a bit better than we are at the moment. Content is definitely something we need to take a look at. We need some inspiration really.” (Josephine Carnell-Phipps, Online Marketing Director at APP Wholesale)
“Events like this are good to meet other people doing similar jobs to me. It’s always interesting to hear what speakers have to say, but it’s also a great chance to meet other people who work client side.” (Alastair Douglas, CMO at TotalMoney.com)
Here’s what our speakers had to say
How Many Content Marketers Does it Take to Sell a Lightbulb?
Stephen Kenwright, Head of Search at Branded3
“The question isn’t what makes your content thin, it’s what makes your content add value.”
First up, Stephen at Branded3 takes delegates through the importance of creating content that adds value. If Google penalises “thin content with little or no added value”, then creating content that is useful and relevant will help your ranking and shares, and ultimately drive business value. Content is more important than the number of links you have.
Content Marketing vs Marketing Content
Richard Foulkes, Digital Account Coordinator at Liberty Marketing
“If all you do is hit ‘publish’, then your content is just a drop in the ocean.”
Ninety-one per cent of B2B marketers say they do content marketing, but only 42 per cent of those say they’re effective at it, says Richard at Liberty Marketing. This doesn’t mean that their content is bad, but rather that the right people are not being reached. More attention needs to be paid to marketing content, rather than just doing content marketing. The problem lies in your strategy. Don’t just set up content hoping it takes off. Set clear goals, understand your audience, then group them by persona and use this to tailor to their needs.
Content Marketing with Squirrels
Ollie Lloyd, CEO at Great British Chefs
“What is it that you can give consumers that others can’t?”
Ollie at Great British Chefs says that media/influencer partnerships are an ideal way to create and market effective branded content. An engaged audience is already in place, so you can afford to push the boundaries. Producing content at the margins may gain you the links and shares needed for your site to rank higher for other things too, because other brands would not have covered it. A recipe for Tandoori squirrel, although not necessarily designed to appeal to a wide audience, gained valuable attention for the brand from social media.
What is Quality Content and How to Create it
Ian Harris, Founder and CEO at Search Laboratory
“Unshackle your thinking. You don’t have to be on-brand all the time.”
Google’s principles of great content are just a list of mistakes not to make, says Ian at Search Laboratory. Quality content sits on your site, is valuable and shareable (rather than copyable), involves influencers in its creation, has a local and national angle, and answers a question or entertains. You don’t need to be on-brand all the time. Think of new ways to drive traffic and interest. For a company selling log cabins, a campaign around a zombie fortification cabin got them coverage across the media and plenty of social shares and engagement. If you’re aiming for links, “unshackle your thinking”.
Woven in the Stars
Andrew Marcus, Deputy Head of Communications at Museum of London
“We have a really sophisticated word-of-mouth strategy.”
For Museum of London to successfully inspire a passion for London, they had to think like a consumer brand, says Andrew. To drive interest in their Sherlock Holmes exhibition, The Man Who Never Lived And Will Never Die, during the typically slow month of January, they partnered with Liberty of London, Christys’ Hats and Patrick Grants to create the Museum of London Tweed, modelled by Tinie Tempah. The timing and design of the campaign was a result of clever trend forecasting, research into upcoming cultural events (London Collections: Men), and in-depth analysis of references to colour in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous novels. All of this resulted in huge levels of interest and social attention, which led to an increase in sales.
Written by Estelle Hakner.