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The Spider Approach to Content Marketing
How it works & why it works
Contents
In this short guide, we want to
1. The Spider Approach: audience-first content marketing
show you the Spider approach to
content marketing and how it will
enable you to solve the main
2. Develop an audience-first, resource-sensitive asset
problems involved with content
marketing.
3. A strong pillar is a win-win for audience and marketer
We thought the best way to
introduce the method, was to show
4. Maximum flexibility guarantees big success
an example of how it works in
5. Why this approach wins
Join us to find out how to win in the
practice.
new content crazy, cross device
world.
1. The Spider Approach: audience-first content marketing
70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. 1 This is
understandable. Creating great content takes time. And the availability of
resource is the biggest barrier standing between marketers and the ability to
create content frequently, and to a high standard. How can we overcome this?
70%
of marketers lack a
consistent or integrated
content strategy
This is where the Spider Approach will help. The Spider Approach will enable the creation of assets that weave
together into a fully integrated campaign. Campaign assets are used to tell authentic stories that showcase your
organization’s expertise in your business or industry sector, while also delivering the best return on investment
and crucially, keeping your audience’s requirements first and foremost in mind.
The Spider Approach starts by gaining a full understanding of your audience. We’ll define your audience and the
channels they engage with, which is key to delivering the creative content that they want, when they want it.
However, it is also vital to match this up with business marketing goals. The result of an integrated campaign,
that is designed by channel, is a longer content lifetime that will maximize your investment, lead to higher
engagement and sharing, and demonstrate measurable audience growth.
Strategy: It’s not enough to just create content. You need a strategy to weave it together and promote it
across multiple platforms and channels.
Optimisation: Use data insight to make sure that it works for every audience, on every device, in every
context. Use contextual insight to promote the right story at the right time.
Measurement: Building a conversation with an audience takes time. The Spider Approach means identifying
and setting the right targets, measuring success against those targets and demonstrating ROI, while also
feeding back into strategy to ensure content matches audience requirements on an ongoing basis.
1. http://www.smartinsights.com/content-management/content-marketing-planning/the-state-of-content-marketing-2015-infographic
Different channels
of discovery
Different
devices
Different stages
of user journey
Different audience
segments
Audience
Different
ways of
reacting
2. Develop an audience-first, resource-sensitive asset
The key focus is to improve efficiency of marketing in a cross device world.
Content marketing only works if it matches to a visitor’s requirements. But
we can’t be all things to all people in all contexts. If content marketing is to
be a win-win, both for the marketer and for the visitor, we need to base it
on a solid pillar piece. Let’s take a look at an example in practice.
Challenge: Changing perceptions
Solution:
Netbiscuits is a leading provider of cloud based
solutions that enable digital marketers to improve
web experiences for customers. It’s been
providing mobile web marketing solutions since
the year 2000, but wanted to improve brand
awareness for its current mobile solutions.
Netbiscuits saw the audience-first approach as
vital for raising the awareness of the company, to
establish itself as the definitive thought leader on
all areas relating to the mobile web.
It was also seen as out of date, after many new
solutions for mobile web marketing had entered
the market.
Netbiscuits needed to re-establish itself quickly as
an influencer and increase the volume of quality
of traffic to its site to cement itself at the forefront
of the mobile web space.
A compelling integrated campaign based on
original research in the form of a survey was
devised in order to target the core audience of
marketers and tech media.
The pillar content needed to be strong and
relevant so that the audience would not only
engage with the content, but become promoters
themselves through their publications, blogs and
marketing research.
It’s important to identify audience and
one or two specific primary aims for
success measurement
Initiate up-sell
Educate existing
customers and
deepen loyalty
Create leads
and convert
into sales
Increase
brand
awareness
Drive traffic to
website and
improve
search
rankings
Attract
strategic
partners
3. A strong pillar is a win-win for audience and marketer
Choosing the right content that resonates with the customer, is flexible for
different consumption models and offers longevity to deliver the desired
ROI needs planning, planning and more planning. As Abraham Lincoln once
said, ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four
sharpening the axe.’
In this case, a survey was chosen as the most effective way of engaging the audience with relevant content, to
provide the industry with new data and findings that would position Netbiscuits as the primary authority on a
number of industry related topics, thus matching the goal of adding value to the brand.
We designed the survey questions around ongoing themes in Netbiscuits’ core industry area, the
mobile web. This made it topical and relevant to the audience and newsworthy for a press release.
The survey enabled the creation of an exciting whitepaper with new, unique findings. This fulfilled the
need for long form content. However, it was also straightforward to break up into lots of bite sized
themes and segments for blogs and short articles, to easily populate the editorial calendar.
Surveys create data and data creates the opportunity to create graphs and lots of other visual media,
including infographics, videos and animations. We created numerous assets based on the cuts of
different data, which were simple to share on social media channels. The various formats could
seamlessly cater for cross device contexts.
New and original research sparks conversation. This means coverage from trade press, journalists,
shares from social media channels and most importantly, lots of user generated content. Coverage
and feedback makes it increasingly easy to engage the audience and fill the content calendar with new
thoughts and ideas. It makes it more than a one-off campaign.
The Netbiscuits People’s Web Report is
an example of how a survey can be used
as an effective piece of pillar content for
ongoing success.
It was based on twelve questions
relating to topical market trends that
explored the views of 6,000 respondents
across six countries.
4. Maximum flexibility guarantees big success
An asset such as a survey provides a great deal of ideal media for multiple channels and
contexts based around visitors’ different smartphone, PC and tablet use. It’s far too tempting
to try and re-use or re-purpose content in an entirely ad-hoc way, which is initially quick but
highly inefficient. The Spider Approach, however, puts multi-purpose outputs at the core of
content creation.
Here’s why the survey resulted in a highly successful, efficient set of results:
•
•
•
•
•
•
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A report for download: For those looking for an in-depth study, a report was created that was
downloaded over 5,000 times, leading to sales leads and multiple conversions
Five infographics that could be released over the following months, further driving the number of report
downloads
A wide array of themes to explore that could populate multiple blogs based on single chapters from
within the report. This encourages ongoing conversation and user engagement
Different themes for publications that focus on different audiences, including mainstream publications
such as The Guardian; trade press such as The Drum as well as niche and technical publications
Lots of themes means it’s easy to provoke discussion and produce video content, including six talking
head videos and ten consumer vox-pops for use on the website, in articles and on other video channels
such as YouTube which collectively secured over 1,000 views
Creation of a ‘stats bank,’ which can be drawn upon to form advance Tweets, LinkedIn and Facebook
updates with minimum effort – while giving the sales team material to begin new conversations
Social media helped broadcast the People’s Web Report to over 32,000 influencers with 100% of the
tweets being of a positive sentiment across EMEA, NA and APAC.
This is an example of an asset that populated the editorial calendar for months to come. It grew Netbiscuits’
brand influence, allowing it to comment on breaking news stories for more than six months. And even after
twelve months, the report continues to be quoted in relevant articles and blogs.
5. Why this approach wins
This approach wins because it has the audience’s needs at heart.
Meanwhile, for Netbiscuits it solved three of the top main issues facing all
marketing teams as they launch more formalised content marketing
approaches. These are, as voted by marketers: Lack of time or bandwidth
to create content (51%); Producing enough content variety or volume
(50%); Producing truly engaging content (42%).2
The Spider Approach, as used in this example, delivers the following benefits to marketers that
solves each of these top three concerns:
Time friendly
The approach facilitates the production of more content in a more timely manner and enables a
straightforward way to ‘mass populate’ the editorial calendar in a coherent, consistent manner.
Flexible
It can reach larger audiences, as it lends itself to being used in multiple different formats for maximum
exposure. It enables the marketer to capture key performance related data that can be used to form the
basis of future content decisions: what works and what doesn’t, for whom, when and where? If we want
to reach the goal of more personalised, more customised content, we need to ensure we base that on
sensible assumptions from real life experience.
Accessible
Not only was it topical, it was also available to the audience on all devices, so they could pick up the
story, or parts of the story that were relevant to them in their context. As such, it made it easier to share,
and therefore easier for them to take part in a conversation about the piece. This made recording the
success and proving the ROI against the original planned targets a synch.
Let us show you how to beat the content dilemma and start winning an engaged, cross device
audience.
2. http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-statistics-the-ultimate-list/
Device Preference data from comscore.com
Lots of formats mean many chances to customise for context
-Phone users like short form content. Short form articles based on
this survey are promoted on social media in the morning
-Desktop users favour whitepapers. This aspect is therefore
pushed in the lunchtime email campaign.
-Tablet users prefer visuals. A series of talking head videos are
created and promoted in evening social media
Applying this approach led to overall growth in total web traffic.
Mobile overtook desktop traffic, driven by more engagement at
the weekends.
About Spider Marketing
Spider Marketing is a London based boutique content marketing and strategy agency. Spider Marketing create
strategies that weaves different content assets together across multiple platforms and channels. They
understand your visitor’s context and journey across multiple devices from micro moments on smartphones to
video on tablets and downloads on PCs and create bespoke campaigns to engage your mobile visitor so your
conversions soar. Find out more at spidermarketing.london or contact us at [email protected].