Introducing a new tool to help marketers review and improve the best options for promoting content

If you’re a regular reader of Smart Insights, it’s likely you’ve seen - or even better, used - our Content Marketing Matrix developed with First10. It has proved to be a popular infographic since it’s not just a nice visual of some interesting ‘facts and figures’ about marketing, rather it can actually be applied to get better results since it helps businesses brainstorm the best types of content to create as part of their content marketing strategy.

What is the Content Distribution Matrix?

This infographic is aimed at helping marketers review the effectiveness of different types of Paid, Owned, and Earned media to promote or distribute their content in generating site visits, leads or sales compared to the level of investment in applying the media measured as paid media costs or the costs of marketing…

A content marketing planning tool to help marketers generate a matrix of ideas for the most engaging content types for their audiences

We created our Content Marketing Matrix to help our members audit their content marketing assets as part of creating a content marketing strategy. It can also be used for content ideation, i.e. to brainstorm future content ideas to generate leads, nurture prospects, encourage sharing, and generate backlinks for SEO. Since we created it eight years ago it's been shared many times and has inspired many 'mashups' in different formats, as this Google search shows; great to see it's been useful! I think our Content Marketing Matrix is a powerful mindtool for marketers since it's a content mapping tool, structured to help you think through two key dimensions of which types of content will best support the path to purchase for your target audience.…

What’s the secret to a successful finance content marketing strategy? Find out with 5 foolproof tips.

The finance world can be a tough place for a marketer. Creating inspiring finance content marketing that communicates your brand's messages, engages customers and keeps the compliance team happy is a tough nut to crack. But fear not - there is a way to tick each of those boxes, and it’s all about taking a planned content-led approach.

Finance content marketing for brands

We’ve found that telling stories delivers particularly brilliant results for finance brands. Combining crucial strategic vision with user-friendly design opens up big possibilities for creative, shareable and high-impact finance content marketing. Want to know how you can achieve this too? Take a look at our eight best-practice guiding principles when creating any kind of content marketing for a finance brand.

1. Directly answer customers’ financial questions

Using search insight and research data to find out which finance topics…

Today, content marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing. Find out how digital and content marketing managers can boost their content strategies in 2022

Businesses are using content marketing as a strategy to reach and convert prospects. But are they getting the best results possible? To achieve these results, you need to focus on improving these 9 most important content marketing skills.

1. Content creation skills

Even though it’s obvious, very few content marketers can create the type of content that will achieve great results for their business. First, content writing is important for your blogs and other important website pages.

To improve content writing skills and eliminate blunders, a marketer has to learn about grammar. Grammarly is a tool that can assist writers to proofread their written content.

Content marketers need to improve their multimedia content creation skills to connect…

Audit your content and SEO with our content strategy tool to get more from your content marketing

One of the biggest appeals of digital marketing is that it's data-driven - we can readily review the effectiveness of our activities and make informed improvements. This is particularly true for using content marketing and SEO to attract and convert visitors to lead or sale. Yet, the tools that are available within analytics to help us visualize and optimize our content haven't really changed since I've been involved in digital marketing. If you dig into the Behaviour reports in Google Analytics you still see long lists of Top Content and Landing pages to try to interpret. Using content groups in Google Analytics can help simplify by grouping related content. Although you can sort the lists, it's not easy to identify which content is performing well and can be enhanced and which is under-performing…

With every company keen to climb Google’s search rankings, it is easy to lose perspective by simply churning out fresh content that seizes on the zeitgeist or otherwise meets current demand

It is difficult to overstate the importance of evergreen content for modern content marketers. Evergreen content is, by nature, time-proof, as relevant if read in a year as it is today. While Google does like to answer searchers’ queries with up-to-date articles, it also rewards high-quality legacy content created many months or even years ago – particularly if you update it regularly. Some blog pages have stubbornly hung on to a number one page ranking for eight or nine years now, bringing a constant stream of traffic to the page, as well as building trust (being the number one spot in search results will help make more people trust you and your business) and, consequently, boosting your conversions. By creating evergreen content, you…

Stand out, get noticed and engage your audience with the inverted triangle principle

To attract an audience’s attention, start with the end in mind. Brands embracing a content marketing strategy should study one of journalism’s key models: the inverted pyramid. This storytelling approach states that the most important elements of a story must come first, before tapering off into more detailed information later. The inverted triangle also helps content creators structure stories so that the most important information reaches the widest audience, whilst the least important information goes at the bottom. We see this all the time in newspaper articles. Consider this example: The headline is clear, succinct and immediately captures our attention. The opening paragraph summarizes the essence of the story. Anyone who abandons the article after three or four paragraphs can still come away with…

Repurposing content is an easy, often time-saving practice, that brings a plethora of benefits

Are you making the most of your content? Repurposing content – i.e. finding new ways to re-use your content – is an easy, often time-saving practice that brings a plethora of benefits. From reaching a new audience to saving time creating new content and improving your search engine optimization (SEO), repurposing content is all about using data and insights to make your job as a marketer easier! In this short guide, I’m going to show you how exactly you too can repurpose your content.

Set marketing objectives that align your content marketing with your company's business vision

There are so many components in a marketing strategy, it can be easy to lose track. But, to make the most of your content marketing, marketers know that integrating your content strategy with your existing marketing activity goals is a sensible way to strengthen the…

You need better content marketing metrics - ones that your executive team really care about, calculate your return on investment (ROI) to demonstrate the value of content marketing

Data-driven digital marketing today relies on a lot more than just individual, unconnected metrics like click-through rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS). To justify investment, marketers must demonstrate to management and c-level decision-makers how these metrics translate to the bottom line. For content marketers, ROI measurement is more important than ever. But are you doing it right? Keeping in mind the goal of marketing: to grow your business at the lowest possible cost. So, for brands whose growth depends on acquiring and nurturing leads, your content marketing (CM) metrics must align with that goal. Every activity you do, campaign you execute, or A/B test you run, needs to produce a solid return on your marketing time and tools investment…

A simple process for weighting your content prioritization

The rise of always-on content marketing has led to a content tsunami, making cut-through more difficult, so teams need tools and approaches to balance their content priorities. In this post, I'll share our 'ABC process' which we use to simplify the process of content marketing prioritization and planning the most effective content to meet our clients' goals.

Marketing common sense ≠ common practice

It’s easy to get immersed in the joy of creating content and lose sight of the bigger picture. (I’ve been there too). The challenge is that when we as marketers put our heart into the job (and as much as we may know the truth is different) it’s easy to lose our heads and act as if our target customers are eagerly searching for what we have to offer.

The inconvenient truths…