How can content strategy help you to tell credible stories outside of your niche/vertical?

Heather Healy@heatherhealy

@stickyeyes

The things I hope you’ll learn today

1. How to avoid creating content for the sake of it. 2.How to take the guesswork out of content creation.3. It’s not too difficult to talk beyond your product or services.4. Brand advocacy is tough for nearly everyone.5. Commercial priorities don’t need to be forgotten.

Sticking to your niche.

Problem 1.

This new brand positioning changes everything!

“We’ve flown 867 million miles this year!”

Say hi to Bonnie, our employee of the month!”

Say hi to Bonnie, our employee of the month!”“We’re having an

office bake-off!”

“Just because it’s Tuesday!”

The attention span of humans has fallen to

eight secondsMicrosoft, 2015

73% of client side marketers are increasing their content marketing spend this year.

Marketing Budgets Survey 2015

19,947 digital marketing professionals in the UK

Source: LinkedIn

If they all produce a single piece of content a week…

( 19,947 x 73% ) x52 = 727,188

Brands that have a genuinely interesting product set or service that customers will rave about non-stop are few and far between.

The hire car isn’t a story.

Where it takes you is.

Going beyond talking about your brand, talking about travel is easy, right?

Wrong.

Talking about travel isn’t enough.

Problem 2.

Travel is so easy to talk about! Endless content streams, locations, customer stories, why did I ever think I had a problem with content?!

The Deluded Marketeer 2015

This video about the endangered wilderness of Guatemala changed my life!

The Solution

Make a start by following 3 simple steps

1. figure out your audience

2. Get to know them

3. Find a happy middle ground.

Let me show you how we’ve done it.

1. We start with with the audience. Find out who they are so we can ask them some questions.

Use all the tools at your disposal

HitwiseGoogle AnalyticsMarket ResearchCompetitor DataMosaicKeyword Research

Get a good gauge for who your customer is.

2. It isn’t enough to just know who they are. Find out what makes them tick to figure out what will work best.

Grab some dataGlobal Web Index, Facebook Insights, YouGov, Hitwise, Mosaic, Your Customer Data

What can this data determine?

Connectingdata sources

In-depth audience profiling

Online behaviour

Other insights

to producefully rounded audience insights.

demographics, location, politics, professions, disposable income etc.

Device usage,social network preference, time spent online etc.

hobbies, activities, outlook on live, brand role preference,values etc.

So what did it tell us?

Social platform usage.

Which of the following services have you used or contributed to in the past month using any type of device?

Online activity.Which of the following have you done online in the past month on your PC/laptop?

A consistent, above average interest index for :Nature, Tennis, Country Walks, Staying Active and Healthy, Visiting New Places.

…being independent & hardworking…

…and they believe that family is more important thana career.

Asking them outright works too.

Resonate with people who want to spend more time with their familiesTie into their clearly defined hobbiesLeverages video as a key content formatIs distributed on the social platforms they’re usingMeets X objectiveMeets Y objectiveMeets Z objective

Ideation sense-check.We need content that will:

3. We know who the audience are and what motivates them. But how can we make that work with our brand?

Hertz Together

The brand objectiveA way to bring our domestic to domestic locations to life without leaning on price promotion.

The customer interest“I want more time with my family, in the great outdoors”

So what is it?It’s a rich resource that suggests the very best events and locations each country has to offer on a weekly and monthly basis. From festivals and events to stately homes and beaches.Supporting all of the Hertz locations across Europe.

How is this connected to what Hertz as a business are doing?

• The Hertz Family Car Collection is tied to the campaign

• The pick-up locations and surrounding events / locations are heavily linked and focused on the domestic keyword set

• Engagement is further supported with appropriate ‘60 Sec Videos

• Activity mirrors the Hertz marketing calendar with suggested locations and events to maximise reach

• Tactical events and suggestions are seeded out outside of this calendar as further content

• Grouping the locations and events as a way of filtering the suggestions allows for ongoing awareness activity

By reaching outside of our niche, we created content that the sites our customers visit, want to talk about too.

And we did it for the U.S. too.

City Swap

The brand objectiveHow can we highlight the benefits of hiring a car in a major city?

The customer interest“I like to be in the know, if there’s a cool new restaurant, I have to know first”

In 60 Seconds

The brand objectiveHow can we create content to help our customers once they’ve booked with us?

The customer interest“I’m organised. I don’t leave things to chance. I know the details of my trip before I go”

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdpcYbaTq88

Wimbledon

The brand objectiveWe want mass awareness at a place where we can reach business and leisure customers

The customer interest“Wimbledon is the highlight of the sporting year for me”

We leverage Wimbledon as an opportunity every year to create useful content for the websites that influence our customers

....and the results of all of this?

Over Stickyeyes’ tenure, Hertz has seen significant improvements:

Organic Traffic - up 178%Conversion Rates - up 48%An audience of over 100M

The things I hope you’ve learnt today

1. No-one cares about your bake-off2. You don’t need to guess what content to create, your customers are clear on what they want, so use them to your advantage. 3. As long as there’s a clear link between your brand and what you’re talking about and what your customers want, you’ve found the middle ground. 4….even when it comes to Sponsorships5. It’s not about renting a car. It’s where it takes you.

Download our free whitepaper ‘How to get serious with content’

http://insights.stickyeyes.com/how-to-get-serious-with-content-marketing

Any questions? www.stickyeyes.com0113 391 2929@heatherhealy@stickyeyes