Content Marketing: the only marketing that’s left?

A practical guide to building a Content Marketing Engine to create, engage and convert customers.

The recent rise of inbound marketing techniques has been the natural reaction to diminishing returns from traditional, outbound, broadcast-style marketing communication.

With customers no longer responding to poorly targeted, badly segmented, interruptive messaging it has been content marketing that has emerged as the most effective inbound way to engage customers, build trust and improve loyalty.

Overview

Customers are taking ever great control of the buying process, wrestling it away from brands with their increasingly ineffective traditional marketing and selling approaches.

Content marketing is now the ‘go to’ strategy for marketers who are trying to cut through the noise and clutter of the market place and generate real engagement. But few people actually know what ‘content’ really is, let alone ‘content marketing’ and simply recycling sales materials and calling it ‘content’ is not the route to success.

As every marketer is being asked to make content key to their marketing strategies what are the key questions we should be asking of our content marketing strategies? Is content marketing really the ‘only marketing left’ as Seth Godin suggests?

In this day long interactive workshop we explore how to build a Content Marketing Engine to plan, create and manage content that engages customers and builds long term client retention and revenue opportunities.

Presented by Geraint Holliman, just in from his talks at Content Marketing World, Sydney and the B2B Marketing Summit London.

What You’ll Learn – overview

  • How content marketing works
  • The crucial relationship between inbound and outbound marketing
  • How content can help build a trusted brand relationship
  • How brand storytelling fits into content marketingHow to build an effective content marketing engine
  • What approach to take in evaluating content marketing

What You’ll Learn – detail

  • The latest on content marketing usage and trends
    • Content marketing usage, tactics and stats
  • Why has content marketing come to the forefront of engagement marketing?
    • The good old days of marketing – whatever happened to them?
    • The death of interruptive marketing
    • The role of content in the buying process
  • What really is ‘content’?
    • Defining ‘content’
    • The history of content in marketing
    • Why content matters
  • What it takes to make genuinely effective content
    • What content isn’t
    • The characteristics of truly great content
    • How to make content truly effective
    • Content segmentation by role
    • Relative value of content types
  • Practical ideas for atomisation, reimagining and repurposing content for maximum ROI
    • The content wheel of love
    • Content sharing
    • ‘Boring’ brands and brilliant content
  • How does ‘content marketing’ work?
    • Content marketing usage stats
    • Content marketing definition
    • Content is king but….
  • Content marketing and inbound marketing
    • Inbound marketing definitions
    • Is content marketing part of inbound or vice versa
  • How content marketing builds brand trust and an authority position
    • The key components of trust in a brand/customer relationship
    • Factors important in determining trusted content
    • Content marketing is like publishing
    • The relationship between content, social media and SEO
    • Storytelling in content marketing
    • Why tell your brand’s story?
    • What a story isn’t
    • 3 scientific reasons why storytelling works
    • Great storytelling brands
    • How the brand story is expressed
  • What makes a great story?
    • 7 magnificent concepts and 11 mental tools for brand storytelling
    • The structure of a brand story
    • Brand story examples
  • Content Marketing ROI
    • Measurement and accountability
    • Content marketing metrics
  • Building a Content Marketing Engine
    • Why you must have a formalised content marketing strategy
    • Why you shouldn’t build a content factory
    • Fuel your content marketing efforts
    • Ignite your content marketing with highly effective content
    • Accelerate your content marketing engine w to produce more, better content
  • Content marketing automation and technologies

About the Trainer

Geraint Holliman is a senior consultant and trainer at The Digiterati.

A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Geraint is a Chartered Marketer with extensive international experience. As well as client–side roles for Thorn-EMI, ASDA and Unisource he had a high calibre agency education with J Walter Thompson, Leo Burnett and Grey, followed by 14 years as an agency Managing Director. He is the author of one of the first ever academic papers published on Content Marketing: ‘B2B Digital Content Marketing: marketers’ perceptions of best practice’ (JRIM October 2014).

A regular blogger and speaker at industry events including Content Marketing World, Sydney and the B2B Marketing Summit London in 2015, Geraint has been researching, practising and training Content Marketing for some of the biggest technology and B2B brands around.

He has been a marketing trainer for over 15 years specialising in branding, strategy and content marketing and holds a Masters in Digital Marketing from Manchester Metropolitan University.