Blogger outreachDavid CumingsForth Metrics

Outline

• How to be visible

• Blogger outreach as a solution

• The process

• Benefits

• Measurement

Issues

• Route to market

• General visibility

• International markets

• Great stuff not seeing the light of day

How do you achieve the required levels of visibility without Hollywood

dollars?

Spray and pray?

Lord LeverhulmeFounder of Unilever

“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half”

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Why blogs matter

• Engine that drives ideas on the Internet

• The realm of experts

• Panda/Penguin updates

Proposed solution

• Blogger outreach as part of organised inbound content marketing campaign

Marketing has changed

• Outbound marketing

• Inbound marketing

• Content marketing

Outbound marketing

• Cold calling

• Direct mail (press releases)

• Email ‘blasts’

• Print ads

• Radio and TV

Outbound marketingTrying to find your audience using;

Interruption

Inbound marketing

• Through search

• Through social media

• Through blogging

Inbound marketingBeing found by your audience

Permission

Be visible to your audience using content

Content marketing

• Be visible to your audience and attract them with content

• Think like a publisher

• Don’t be dull

• Educate, entertain - and be relevant

Content marketingTeach, don’t sell

Marketing is Dead

Marketing is Dead Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi) 2012

Content marketing is the only marketing left

Marketing is Dead Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi) 2012

Content marketing is the only marketing left

Marketing is Dead Kevin Roberts (CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi) 2012

Seth Godin 2012

Benefits of blogger outreach • Cuts straight to the chase

• Precise and targeted

• Reliable

• Measurable

• SEO performance

• Gets better the more you do it

Important points

• It's about developing friendships

• You need to be creating compelling content

• It's a two way process

• You have to have a lead capture strategy

• It requires an investment of energy

Preparation

Objectives

• Know your business objectives (how much money do you want in the bank by what date)

• How many physical conversions does this translate into (total money needed / unit cost price = conversions required)

Example:

• Business Objective is to generate 4K of sales for ‘Our Well Received Debut Album’ by the end of September 2012

• Campaign Objective is to get 571 people to download ‘Our Well Received Debut Album’ by the end of September 2012.

Customers

• Know your target customers

• Who are the people who are going to deliver the business objectives by actually spending their cash?

• Where do these people ‘hang out’ on the Internet?

• Have some sort of a clue about why this audience is going to care about your offer

Lead capture

• Every campaign requires a lead capture strategy.

• People don’t buy when you want them to buy. They buy when they’re ready to buy.

• Capture the leads and follow up with them

• Use a landing page

Process

Find the influencers

• Find the influential bloggers that your customers follow

• Estimate the visibility they might achieve for you

• Use this to estimate conversion rates based on reach. Are the numbers high enough to achieve the objectives?

• Keep a Google doc recording your level of interaction with them

Reaching out• No spammy emails

• No press releases

• No cold calling

• Follow on twitter and retweet occasionally

• Subscribe to their blog and read it

• Comment sensibly once in a while

• Behave like a friend

Reaching out• Be sane and be normal

• Follow on Twitter

• Read their blog (really)

• Retweet occasionally

• Get to understand them

• Comment sensibly once in a while

• Behave like a friend

No spammy emails or press releases!

The content offer

The content offer• Devise and create a compelling content

offering that will appeal in the strongest terms to your audience (customers and influencers)

The content offer• Devise and create a compelling content

offering that will appeal in the strongest terms to your audience (customers and influencers)

• Teach, don’t sell

The content offer• Devise and create a compelling content

offering that will appeal in the strongest terms to your audience (customers and influencers)

• Teach, don’t sell

• Educate, entertain, and be relevant

The content offer• Devise and create a compelling content

offering that will appeal in the strongest terms to your audience (customers and influencers)

• Teach, don’t sell

• Educate, entertain, and be relevant

• Think about the expertise you have and how it will help your target audience.

The content offer• Devise and create a compelling content

offering that will appeal in the strongest terms to your audience (customers and influencers)

• Teach, don’t sell

• Educate, entertain, and be relevant

• Think about the expertise you have and how it will help your target audience.

• Prepare a content launch strategy that includes anticipation

Tip, monitor Google Analytics for the 'How, Why, What, Where' questions.

Create content that answers these questions

Types of content

• Video

• Infographics

• Ebooks

• etc. etc.

But, make it really genuinely useful. And make it compelling.

Lead capture

Lead capture

• Remember, you need a lead capture strategy

Putting it all together• Get your influencer friends to review content

• Even get them to contribute to it

• Then, plan a content release strategy

• Build up some anticipation

• Set a launch date

• Get you influencers lined up to talk about it

• Release, and watch the sales or leads come in

But, to re-emphasise, success is based on developing friendships and putting effort into

making really useful content

Neither of these is too hard to achieve

Example

• ‘The Best Practise Guide for Blogger Outreach’ eBook

• Released July 2012

• 11 main influencers

Measurement• Weekly meeting (not sit down!)

• Visibility achieved?

• Engagement achieved with the offer?

• Conversions to leads?

• Are the numbers going up?

• Discuss ideas to increase conversion

• Assign actions to improve now before next week

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David Cumingsdave@forthmetrics.com@davidcumings07725057500

inkybee.com