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Interview with Jessica Gaumer, Marketing Specialist at BrandPoint
I recently talked with Jessica on the who, what and whens of content marketing campaigns. We talked about everything from why it’s superior, how brands can stay ahead of the game, and how awesome it is that content campaigns bring a 68% increase in traffic. Read the interview to learn more about how you can rock out your content campaign and what you need to do to get started. The numbers speak for themselves.
Average Results of a Content Marketing Campaign
Todd: When did you first realize that advertising through content campaigns would be the future of advertising?
Jessica: Brandpoint started in 1996 with our content syndication service. We started out writing feature articles, also known as the mat release, for brands. We quickly found out that story telling and softly selling, instead of pushing hard brand messages, resonated better with audiences. Building a relationship with the site or brand in turn leads to more sales. It’s all about the relationship.
But to be honest, content has actually been around a long time as a marketing tool. It used to be called “custom publishing.” Whether it’s through books, magazines or pamphlets (as in the “olden” days) or online these days (web content, blogs, social media) … the idea is the same: Give consumers information they want and need, and have them look at you as the topic expert when it comes time to make purchase decisions for products or services. It’s an investment, but it works.
Todd: Examples of some successful content campaigns your have seen recently?
Jessica: We have seen an increase in sales, site visits and time on site for online retailers using our product description and website content. Blogs bring more visitors in. Online retailers are finding that the quality content we provide with our strategy has been a great benefit for them. We’ve learned that by providing the shopper with information about the product through product descriptions pulls them further down the sales funnel, driving them to make a more informed purchase.
Todd: Why is content (campaign) reporting important to Brandpoint?
Jessica: Reporting is essential to demonstrate the “return on investment” for any content marketing campaign. Everybody knows content marketing works – but in today’s business environment “believing” isn’t quite enough. That’s why you need to measure the effect of the campaign. Our analysts report on organic traffic, top performing keywords and landing pages, Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rank, page and domain authority, inbound linking, likes and shares and social media chatter.
We want to develop successful campaigns, and analytic reporting demonstrates what affect our efforts had. Shares are important, but it’s getting to more readers that will help those shares increase. The piece of content is so important; the timely aspect of it, the theme, layout and the length all play a big role in grabbing more eyes to see it. The piece itself has to be written well, compelling, and include attention grabbing headlines to stand out among similar content.
Give your readers what they’re looking for. Build content that answers questions or provides solutions. We build strategy within our content marketing service. Every piece of content we generate here has a keyword strategy behind it, and our writers do a great job writing to both the reader and the search strategy. This is extremely important in knowing what your audience is searching for so they see your solution in organic search results. We monitor the terms and words used in search and what’s being talked about in social around the topic. Gathering that info helps guide our topic ideas and helps us give readers what they’re asking for. With these pieces in place, your content will be sharable, engaging and spread to more readers.
