A content preferences survey in 2017 found that 78% of buyers prefer to use case studies over all other types of content when researching purchases. It’s easy to understand why they are such a valuable content format, but as many marketing managers could attest, the process of planning and writing case studies can be challenging. If you haven’t had to plan and write case studies before, or you’ve found the process challenging, I hope our seven tips below will make the task easier. How to plan and write case studies Click To Tweet What is a case study? A marketing case study is piece of content that showcases a successful project. It typically sets out the commencing situation, the solution recommended by the company creating the case study, how the solution was implemented, implementation actions, along with challenges encountered and how success was achieved. Why do case studies work so well? A case study provides an overview of a positive business transaction with a client. Unlike a testimonial, it’s not just a review or report from a customer who supports your business. It’s a success story. A detailed account of how you were able to successfully solve a problem your client faced. If you are targeting particular industries, writing case studies that resolve challenges unique or highly relevant to those industries, can help you gain the confidence of prospective clients. They’re often a key part of the content strategy for B2B products or services. Case studies can attract new customers, build trust in your business, and make the work of your sales team a bit easier. They also provide...
Are you aiming to write articles or blog posts that demonstrate thought leadership? Writing thought leadership articles has become a popular strategy for professionals, consultants and business owners, to increase visibility, build credibility, increase connections and even generate high level leads. But thought leadership writing isn’t as easy as it sounds, as you might have already discovered if you’re writing your own content. There are content marketing services in Melbourne and Sydney that will do the writing for you, but if you’re keen to persist and do it yourself, here are our tips for making that work. How to write a thought leadership article The following 7 tips briefly cover some of the topics included in our recently launched Thought Leadership Writing Course for professionals, consultants and business owners. 7 Tips for Thought Leadership Writing Click To Tweet It’s the thought that counts – don’t forget to include yours The term ‘thought leadership’ defines itself, but I’ve recently created my own definition: Thought leaders are individuals who are forward-thinking experts in their field, who by sharing their views and perspectives, have the capacity to change the way we see something. To be a thought leader means you must stand out from the crowd of topic experts, by having a unique perspective, or be sharing something of greater value than most ‘experts’ are sharing. So if your aim is to write thought leadership articles, simply repeating other people’s ideas won’t cut it. Being a thought leader means you’re not locked on the current way of doing things in your role or industry. You want to improve the way things are...
If you’re a service based business, you need to generate leads. But if you have no means of lead capture on your website, or for other lead generating activities, you’re probably allowing many prospective clients to slip away. Perhaps you’ve come across the term ‘lead capture’ while reading up on content marketing, but aren’t quite sure what sort of difference it would make to your business, or how you would implement it. Let’s take a look at what lead capture is, what the benefits are, and what’s involved in doing it. What is lead capture? Lead capture is the practice of inviting website visitors to register their details in order to receive content and/or further communication from you. In the simplest form, lead capture is that ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ or ‘subscribe for updates’ option you see on many sites. However, unless your content writers are turning out highly unique material and you have droves of people signing up, this doesn’t go far enough. One reason this isn’t sufficient for most service businesses, is that not all their prospective clients have precisely the same interests, challenges, pain points and buying motivations. Unless you’re able to segment your database into buyer types, and deliver the most relevant content to each, results with a newsletter subscription alone are likely to be mediocre. Another issue is in the timing. When someone subscribes to your blog or newsletter, that action doesn’t indicate what they’re interested in right now, or how you might help them. However, if they download an eBook related to a specific challenge, it’s a different story. What you have then is often...
You’ve got a new inbound marketing campaign to roll out and a hard deadline because the campaign is associated with a set event. You need to brief the content writer or your content marketing agency. But there are so many things to organise – the eBook, some related blog posts, landing pages, automated workflows and email copy. As always, you’ll have to fit it in around the other marketing activities and internal meetings on your calendar. You think: that’s OK…the writer is switched on. I’ll just send a quick email letting him/her know what I need, and then I won’t have to think about it again until the content comes back. To be on the safe side, you leave a good few days between the content writer’s deadline and launch date, in case you need amendments. Stop! If it all goes horribly wrong and ends up in a last-minute panic to make it right, chances are it will be because the writer didn’t understand your brief. Because there wasn’t one. Sure, you ‘briefed’ the writer, but you didn’t create a clear brief for the content. A clear content brief saves time – and amendments Assign a clear content brief to a competent journalist or experienced content writer and the first draft you receive is likely to be very close to the mark. Give the same writer a short or vague content brief, and the result can be a frustrating series of amendments, as draft by draft you add instructions and information that should have been communicated in the initial brief. Writers need a good brief, whether you’re outsourcing to a...
It’s a common challenge. The content team at US headquarters pumps out volumes of great content, and the US or global marketing director doesn’t understand why you want to engage an Australian content marketing agency to create localised content. Can’t you just tweak it? Maybe, you reply cautiously. Some pieces of content can be easily touched up for an Australian audience. Other pieces will have so many issues you don’t know where to begin – or how to explain the problem to someone who might not understand how delightfully different we are Down Under. Aside from the Australian English versus American English issue, there are other factors that come into play, like differences in buyer motivation, cultural attitudes and the suitability of examples used in American content. Here’s a handy guide to help you identify the issues involved, or perhaps to more easily explain the scale of the content localisation problem to US HQ! How are we different? Let us count the ways: Spelling – American English vs Australian English Back in the 18th century, English spelling was somewhat inconsistent. Two influential chaps decided to put an end to that, and each published a dictionary. Unfortunately, they were different. The English began to favour one dictionary, but Americans favored the other, so now we have inconsistency on a global scale. Australia followed the English, as we often do. A few examples: OUR (AU) versus OR (US): Our Aussie humour can be a little colourful. We’re sure American humor can be colorful too, even if we don’t find all of it funny. ISE (AU) versus IZE (US): That wouldn’t stop...
Heading into the New Year with a resolution to step up your marketing efforts? If you didn’t get the results you wanted in 2016, here’s a quick checklist you can use to identify weak spots in your content marketing. Assuming you’ve made some effort to publish content during 2016, here are the four top mistakes we see that diminish the results: 1. Putting Little Effort into Content Creation With so much content online, if you’re not making a big effort to create content that hits home with your audience, you might be wasting your time creating content at all. Short shallow articles that state the obvious won’t hold audience attention even if a catchy headline entices people to click through to read it. And what’s the point of attracting visitors to your website or LinkedIn article if they’re going to roll their eyes and click the back button? The bad news: good content takes time and effort to create. The good news: even one or two excellent articles a month, properly promoted on social channels, can increase your audience, and help you connect with prospective clients. If your team can’t devote the time, there are content writing services who will be happy to help! 2. Failing to promote content on social media Many business owners believe that simply publishing regularly on their blog will drive additional traffic to their websites and deliver extra business. If you undertake your keyword research and publish well optimised posts, you might indeed garner some extra traffic to your website. But you’ll bring in more if you’re drawing people’s attention to your content via social...
