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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Champion, Justin, 1986- author.
Title: Inbound content : a step-by-step guide to doing content marketing the inbound way / Justin Champion.
Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018000766 (print) | LCCN 2018005631 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119488972 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119488965 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119488958 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Marketing. | Relationship marketing. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Marketing / General.
Classification: LCC HF5415 (ebook) | LCC HF5415 .C482433 2018 (print) | DDC 658.8/02--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000766
Create value before you try to extract it.
—Dharmesh Shah
I must be frank: I have a love/hate relationship with the phrase “content marketing.”
Why?
Well, let's start with the hate part.
As a small business owner and entrepreneur, I learned an important reality many years ago: If you want to get something approved in business, you call it “sales.” If you want to get it rejected, or at least tabled for another day, you call it “marketing.”
Yes, it's the truth. And if you've been in the business world for any period of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
No CEO is ever going to wake up one morning and say, “I want to be the best content marketer in the world.” Not going to happen.
But once someone gets past the “marketing speak” and truly understands what content marketing is, then there's so much to love. The fact is, I owe all my business success today to the principles of content marketing. But to understand where I'm coming from, you need to know where it all began.
In 2001, fresh out of college, I started a swimming pool company with my two dear friends, Jim Spiess and Jason Hughes. Those early years were quite difficult, but we managed. Over time, we started to figure out who we were and how to be successful. But just when I thought we were finally going to make headway, 2008 happened, and everything changed.
You remember that year, don't you?
In what seemed like an overnight turn of events, the U.S. economy collapsed. Banks were foreclosing. The stock market plummeted. And with it, consumer confidence tanked. The economic collapse of 2008 was brutal for the entire swimming pool industry. Many contractors had to close their doors. Others were forced to make drastic cuts to stay afloat.
River Pools and Spas was by no means immune to this pain. In fact, by January of 2009, my company was staring bankruptcy square in the face. But, as is often the case with trials and tribulation, this incredibly hard period proved to be a godsend. It forced me to finally look around and accept what I already knew: Buyers had changed.
Yes, the Internet had become the ultimate educational source for most consumers. Yet we at River Pools had not yet responded to this digital shift.
It was during this difficult time that I started to throw myself into learning about using the Internet to build my business. I read such phrases as “inbound marketing,” “content marketing,” “blogging,” and many others. But the more I learned about all of this technical jargon, the more my simple “pool guy” mind interpreted everything back to this simple point:
“Marcus, if you obsess over the questions your prospects and customers ask every single day, and you're willing to address those questions honestly, transparently, and consistently on your website through text and video, you just might save your business.”
Yes, it was really that simple for me.
I knew our new goal would come down to our ability to teach and communicate with today's digital buyer in a way that would (hopefully) garner trust, traffic, leads, and sales. And, as you might have already guessed, this is exactly what happened.
Over the next two years, despite the difficult economy, somehow we survived as a company.
Not only did we survive, we thrived.
When we became prolific teachers on our website, the traffic and leads started to take off. And as things worked, I became more and more bold.
On our website we addressed any question you could possibly think of with respect to a fiberglass pool, most of which had never been addressed by other swimming pool companies. Whether the question was good, bad, or ugly, we were going to address it, without bias, and with the reader or viewer in mind.
Well, to make a long story short, River Pools landed back on solid ground. And when I say “solid,” I mean really solid. In fact, by 2016, we averaged 600,000 visitors a month to our website, making it the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world.
Not only did this explosion in traffic and leads catapult us to be the largest installer of fiberglass pools in the United States, it ended up creating an interesting “problem”—we were getting leads from all over the country, leads that we couldn't service because they were out of our area.
It was at this point we took all the revenue we had built since our digital shift and invested it back into the business, building a manufacturing facility for fiberglass swimming pools.
In 2017, just over a year later, we built roughly 200 fiberglass swimming pools—something unheard of for such a young manufacturer. And within the next 7 to 10 years I expect us to be the largest manufacturer of fiberglass pools in the United States.
So do I love content marketing? Oh, yes. Clearly, I do.
But to reiterate, to me, it's not about marketing. In fact, what we're really talking about here is trust.
Trust is the one commonality every business shares. Trust is the battle we're all in. And our ability to gain trust in the marketplace is what content marketing is all about.
So does this book apply to you and your business? Well, if you're in the business of trust, then yes, it does.
But let's say you do buy in to what I'm saying here. What's next? How do you even begin to climb this mountain?
Well that, my friends, is exactly why the book you're about to read is so powerful.
In fact, after every chapter you read, you're going to discover action items that you can immediately apply to your business and start getting results from. Pretty cool, huh?
Essentially, what you have here is a textbook. It gives you the framework and corresponding exercise needed to truly get stuff done.
And that's exactly why I wanted to write this foreword. Because at this point, no one needs another book that simply “inspires” them. Rather, we need books that help people know exactly what to do, how to do it, and why it matters. Frankly, it's all about action.
That's the essence of Inbound Content. And that's why I think this book is so very important for business owners and marketers around the globe to not just read, but embrace.
So read on. Discover the teacher within. And watch the results follow.
Marcus Sheridan
Owner/Partner at IMPACT
Author of They Ask You Answer
www.impactbnd.com
twitter.com/TheSalesLion
I've been a digital marketer for nine years; I've been a HubSpotter for four years; and I've been working on the road as a digital nomad for 12 months.
On June 30, 2017, my wife, Ariele, and I completed a 10,700-mile trek. We traveled across the United States in 100 days in our Airstream truck camper.
I'm the content professor for HubSpot Academy. HubSpot Academy's purpose is to educate and inspire people so that we, together, transform the way the world does business. The purpose of this 100-day journey was similar to the Academy's purpose: to educate and inspire people to create more effective inbound content for their businesses. Little did I know that I, too, would be educated and inspired to create something special: a resource that teaches people how to become effective content marketers with activities that actually help them transform into one.
I wrote the first draft in six weeks while we traveled 6,714 miles from Southern California to Front Royal, Virginia. How'd I write it so quickly? I repurposed and expanded teachings from the HubSpot Content Marketing Certification, which I launched in November of 2016. Plus, I channeled my inner Brian Halligan (HubSpot's CEO) and flexed my thinking time more than usual.
Driving 10,700 miles allows for an abundance of reflection time. And I put it to good use. When we weren't traveling, I was writing the content; when we were traveling, I was reflecting on the content and organizing and planning the next steps. Talk about getting some serious stuff done in a short amount of time.
It's not easy living and working from the road, but it is possible and can be rewarding when done with the right mindset. Ariele and I learned a lot from our journey. We even created a page on our website that provides resources and education on becoming a digital nomad: wildwewander.com/digital-nomad. Check out the page if you want to learn more about how to be inspired and create value by working from anywhere and everywhere. Content marketing can be done from any location.
As you read this book, take the time to be in the moment. Know that the content came from a good place with a specific intention: to help you and your business grow and succeed. Take in the energy of every word, and immediately apply the knowledge you acquire to your business.
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you find yourself with questions or just want to say hi, connect and engage with me on Twitter (twitter.com/justinrchampion). I'd love to hear from you.
Seek out people who care about what you believe in, and find ways to work with them to create something memorable. The finished product will be more complete than anything you could have created yourself.
The content in this book was a team effort. Big thanks and much love to everyone who contributed in some way, shape, or form. These people include Rachael Perry, Lindsay Thibeault, Guillaume Delloue, Casey Linehan, Joseph Del Bene, Jami Oetting, Kit Lyman, Markiesha Ollison, Tori Zopf, Julie Kukesh, Ty Stelmach, Eric Peters, Chris LoDolce, Ken Mafli, Ryan Malone, David Arnoux, and Sujan Patel.
Justin Champion has been a digital marketer for nine years, working with clients like Majestic Athletic, Wrangler Jeans, and Pendleton Whisky. He has always enjoyed building brands that consumers can relate to by creating compelling content. He now works as HubSpot Academy's content marketing professor, which has brought this passion full circle, because he is now able to teach anyone how to grow a successful business through content marketing best practices. Justin is the creator of HubSpot Academy's Content Marketing Certification, which is a globally recognized course.
Justin is a digital nomad—a full-time remote worker who lives and works from the road in his Airstream and truck camper. This book was written during Justin's 2017 U.S. inbound content workshop roadshow. Follow him and his journeys at instagram.com/wildwewander.
Welcome to Inbound Content. This book will teach you content marketing concepts that you can apply to your business, turning yourself into a lean, mean content marketing machine.
By the end of this book, you will:
If you're like me and are a visual learner, watch the content in video format by signing up for a free HubSpot Academy account. Sign up for your free account now: hubspot.com/cmc.
Ready? Let's do this.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing and business process focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content. This content is meant to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.
Even though content marketing has grown in popularity in the past ten years with the rise of Web 2.0, content marketing is not a new concept. Early signs of content marketing date back hundreds of years—from Benjamin Franklin creating his annual Poor Richard's Almanac to promote his writing business in 1732 to, more notably, John Deere's ever-popular magazine, The Furrow. Deere's publication launched in 1895 and is still running strong today with a dedicated website that has more than 38,000 inbound links.1
And although the medium has evolved over time, the framework for content marketing is pretty much the same. It's all about your audience, what they value, and how you can help educate and entertain them. When done correctly, content marketing creates a relationship with your audience that leads to trust. And if your audience trusts you, they'll be more willing to do business with you when they're ready to make a purchase decision.
To communicate with your audience, they need to first find you online. And for your audience to find you online, you need to publish content. The process of being found (and achieving results), however, is a marathon, not a sprint. There's a lot of consistent conditioning needed to achieve success. As an example, see Figure I.1 for a graphic of data security company Townsend Security's organic, nonpaid traffic coming from search engines.
Figure I.1
Townsend Security created content consistently, for years. Their results grew over time, not overnight. The process was similar to that of a marathon, not a sprint.
This company is not alone in understanding how content can help grow their business. Although content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, it generates more than 3 times as many leads.2 Think about that for a minute.
Content has the important job of pulling people from one stage of the inbound methodology to another.
It plays an integral part in the attract, close, convert, and delight stages (see Figure I.2).
Figure I.2
Your content should attract the right people to your site, convert those people into leads, and nurture and help close them into customers. But it doesn't stop there—your content should delight your customers, turning them into promoters of your brand.
In a nutshell, content marketing is really just the art of communicating with your prospects and customers without having to sell to them. Instead of marketing or advertising your products and services, you're creating helpful, entertaining content that your prospects and customers can enjoy and learn from.
If it sounds like inbound marketing and content marketing are similar, that's because they are. They both focus on empowering potential customers, building a lasting relationship with your audience, and creating valuable content that both entertains and educates them.
But what's the difference between the two, and do you need both?
Think in terms of “and” not “or” when it comes to the content marketing–inbound marketing relationship. Success relies on both. Content may help fuel your inbound engine, but there are similarly valuable inbound projects—like technical search engine optimization, product or services trials, marketing automation, and interactive tools—that may exist outside the scope of a content marketer. This is where inbound marketing comes in as a valuable counterpart.
If you aren't opening yourself up to the wide range of inbound practices, you're limiting the potential growth and impact you can have as a marketing leader. In other words, your inbound plan should be a superset—inclusive of your content assets but not limited to them.
It's important to know the landscape of the journey you're about to embark on in this book. Let's review each chapter and get a sense of what you'll be learning.
Now that you know how content marketing can help you build a better relationship with your prospects and customers, what steps should you take to create a successful content marketing plan?
You'll start off by learning how to create a content creation framework in your organization. If you really want to create great content, you need to have a process in place that's more advanced than just writing and publishing content. You need to be able to identify campaigns, set timelines, and review and edit content before it goes live, all of which will be discussed in Chapter 1.
You'll also learn about the tools and responsibilities of team members needed to build a successful framework for creating content.
Once you've built this framework, you'll learn about the power of storytelling in Chapter 2.
We just talked about how content marketing is about a relationship. Every company has a story—you need one to survive. What do you stand for? What message do you support? These are all concepts we'll discuss.
Then, once you understand how important storytelling is to content marketing, you'll learn how to generate content ideas to support your content creation efforts. One of the differences between good and great content marketers is that the great ones have a process they rely on to consistently produce high-quality content ideas.
In Chapter 3, you'll learn the techniques to research and uncover an idea and expand on it, whether you're doing it yourself or with a team. Sometimes ideas aren't easily apparent.
Once you're confident in generating content ideas, you'll learn how to plan your long-term content strategy.
In Chapter 4, you'll learn how to create realistic goals for your audience, also known as your buyer personas. You'll learn to perform an audit that will identify content needs and gaps to build a helpful, relevant journey for your personas. You'll also learn how to create your long-term content plan by mapping your content creation road map. This way, you're not wasting gas and you can focus on getting to your destination while circumventing roadblocks along the way.
Once you've learned how to plan a long-term content strategy, you'll learn how to become an effective writer.
In Chapter 5, you'll learn how we get ideas out of our heads and format them into effective pieces of content. Additionally, you'll learn some grammatical pitfalls to avoid. Sometimes a simple incorrect use of “it's” and “its” can deter your audience.
Once you've learned how to become an effective writer and you're ready to start creating content, you'll learn how to create an effective blog post.
In Chapter 6, you'll learn how to format your content in a way that communicates what you're trying to say to search engines while keeping the reader's experience in mind.
Once you've learned how to create a blog post, you'll learn how to extend the value of your content by repurposing it.
In Chapter 7, you'll learn how to proactively identify repurposing opportunities before a piece of content is created, as well as how to repurpose content after it has been created.
You'll also learn how to republish the same content across multiple platforms—a great way to extend the value of your top-performing content.
Once you've learned how to repurpose a piece of content, you'll learn how to effectively promote it.
In Chapter 8, you'll learn how to promote content through distribution channels like email and social media. We'll show you specific tactics to promote your content while making sure you're effective in your approach.
Next, you'll learn how to analyze and measure your content.
Chapter 9 will help you understand various metrics and data points you can track and measure to see if your initiatives are successful. This way, both you and your business will be constantly growing and learning.
You'll also learn how to communicate the results of your content efforts to the rest of your team.
Once you've learned how to analyze and measure the impact of your content marketing efforts, you'll learn how to develop a growth marketing mentality.
In Chapter 10, you'll learn how to instill a growth marketing mindset in your organization and how to manage your growth funnel. This is especially important with the ever-changing landscape of digital media.
Once you've finished Chapters 1–10, you'll be ready to take the HubSpot Academy Content Marketing Certification final exam, earning yourself a valuable industry certification and joining a network of more than 112,000 (and growing) certified professionals that are transforming the way the world does business with HubSpot Academy.
But you won't stop there; once you've acquired the knowledge needed to create an effective content marketing process, you'll be ready to learn about topic clusters and pillar pages, which will take your content process to the next level.
Search engines and the habits of searchers are changing. We're in an age in which people want to binge content; they want it now and lots of it.
In Chapter 11, you'll learn how to construct an ungated website page with a relevant conversion point, thereby creating the best experience for searchers as well as search engines.
We've got a lot to cover, so let's get to it.