E-tail Content Marketing: Customers want Credible Content

This is 3-of-3 in the "E-tail Content Marketing: Engaging Customers at the Point of Purchase" series of blog posts. A Content Marketing Program is designed to support the e-tailers by placing content at the point of the transactional purchase - a sale that does not require a sales person. The purpose of the content is to inform customers and prospects about what they should consider in making their decisions.

Today's customers look everywhere for great, relevant content in order to make smart buying decisions. Therefore, they need content that makes them smarter and more knowledgeable. Companies that provide great content, in the right places, will win. Whereas in the past, customers were wary about information that didn't come from a traditional media source, today's savvy buyers can sniff out the good content from the bad, and they don't mind if the information they engage in comes from your company.

There are many social media tools and social communities to choose from, and the list grows longer every day. By mixing your customer knowledge, your company objectives, and, frankly, your budget, you should be able to determine appropriate content mix using various social media tools. Remember, even though certain vehicles that I am about to introduce may prove to be the best options for your company, your content marketing efforts need to be well integrated with the content initiatives in my previous blog. A few more social media touch points for your consideration.

YouTube Channel: YouTube is the largest video sharing site to date and a perfect place for your company to establish a channel. The site receives the most traffic and the highest amount of users making it the definitive place for getting videos published and marketed. To maximize our video efforts and results:

1. Create compelling videos: You need to create content that addresses your audiences' needs and wants (company content value proposition standards). The primary goal is to create videos that are helpful and compelling to our prospects and customers. Video content may consist of how-to's, answers to frequently asked questions, expert interviews, screen video captures, slide shows, etc.
2. Make the videos findable: Videos often appear on the first page of search engines, and are a proven method of leap-frogging competitors to the top of the search results page - Google owns YouTube. To make your videos more findable, you need to do the following:
   1. Title: You need to use targeted keywords in the first few words.
   2. Description: Start the description with a full URL and be as description and keyword-rich as possible - we should not be stingy with our description.
   3. Tags: You need to add any and all related keywords in the tag field.
3. Company YouTube Channel: You need to turn the YouTube channel into a destination.
4. Use annotations to build subscribers: You can add annotations to the Company YouTube channel videos that include clickable calls to action - they can include links to other videos, playlists or channels, or include subscription options.
5. Post a bulletin and alert friends and subscribers: You need to create a bulletin and a link to the videos that will appear on the subscribers' and friends' home page - this draws extra attention and traffic.
6. Leverage other social media platforms: Every time you post a new video, we should create a blog post around it, post it on Facebook to reach a wider video audience, Tweet it, and submit it to StumbleUpon.

By creating video content that resonates with the audiences, building up a branded channel and using bulletins and ads, you can greatly increase the return on the company's investment in creating online videos.

SEO content: Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to techniques that help the website rank higher in organic search results, thus making the website more visible to customers who are looking for your products via search engines. You need to write content that your customers will find relevant and engaging. Aside from the topical nature of the content, the way format the web pages can have an impact on how the search engine bots digest our content. Every webpage you create should have a thought-provoking headline to grab the customer's attention, and should also include the keyword or phrase that the webpage covers.

Title tags and Meta tags: Meta keywords consist of an additional text snippet in the HTML that allows you to list a few different keywords that relate to the webpage. Meta descriptions are usually the first place a search engine will look to find text to put under the blue link when they list the website in the SERP. The Meta description is limited to 150 characters.

Customer product reviews: Recommendations from like-minded buyers build shopper confidence. More than just star ratings, customer reviews connect shoppers to buyers who share their interests - driving engagement and sales. You can make these conversations easy and productive, using innovative social and SEO solutions. A few key points for customer reviews:

1. Drive Sales: Help shoppers make better decisions quickly.
2. Increase Traffic: SEO puts fresh information from quantified buyers directly on the product pages - where search engines can see it and shoppers can find it.
3. Generate more content: Consistently proven to drive higher levels of content volume and product coverage. The customer review process generates the critical mass of content needed to power meaningful social programs.
4. Syndicate across the social web: An open social commerce network puts us in complete control of our review content, making it easy to share our user-generated content to social networks and channel partners.

Contests - for product reviews and customer purchases from an e-tailer: One of the best ways to drive engagement and build word of mouth about the brand is to run a contest via social media. Launching quarterly contests will help you achieve specific marketing and sales goals. You can do contests with your e-tailers to buy your products from their site where customers will be entered into a contest with the chance to win a cool prize with friends and family. Also, we can run contests to garner reviews on the company website.

Expectations

There are probably a fair number of ways to measure the program with Google analytics and other online analytical tools. We should manage these analytical tools, but we should focus on the numbers that give us the biggest impact on what we're doing. Key expectations:

1. Increase transactional sales through your e-tailers without sales assistance.
2. Obtain customer product reviews.
3. Most popular content - determine which pages on the website and our e-tailers are getting the most traffic - create more content that resembles the most popular.
4. Execute e-tailer partner contest promotions for customers to buy products on their site - did it increase sales?
5. Execute quarterly product review contests to get customers to write product reviews.

Content marketing can always be measured if you have a clear understanding of your strategic communication objectives. Just keep it simple and answer the question, "How will we know that the content plan is working?" This should lead you directly back to your company goals. A company that invests in content without investing in the measuring of that content doesn't truly believe in the content marketing initiative.

Are you implementing a content marketing program? How are you measuring your success?

Tags: awareness, blogs, Bob Maples, brand, building awareness, communications, Google search, Internet Directories, keyword research, local search analytics, local search content, local search marketing, local search strategy, maples, maples communications, marketing, online search, Orange County Social Media and Public Relations, press releases, public relations, relevant content, search engine optimization, search marketing, SEO, unique selling proposition, website, website metrics