Content Marketing training with Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measures – SMX London 2015

Content Marketing is today one of the best channels to build brand-customer relationship that can be used on the Internet. It’s good to keep in mind that these are not just articles or more generally – the written word, but also infographics, video, webinars and a few other. We have to remember, however, that simply writing an admirable text does not make your small key cutting shop shoot straight to the top positions in Google. What you need is a strategy that you need to think about – and you could learn how to build it on the Content Marketing Workshop during the May SMX London 2015 conference. Which I of course attended 😉

SMX London conference and Content Marketing workshops

SMX London is one of a series of SEO and SEM conferences organized all over the world, whose purpose is to provide the participants with practical techniques and tips on how to improve marketing efforts on the Internet. Today it is normal that among major conferences there are trainings and workshops which can give you a lot of interesting facts about the actual marketing efforts. This is why I took part in the Content Marketing Workshop.
I think I’ll start with presenting the trainer, who mentioned the word “SEO” only a few times during the entire workshop, even though it theoretically was partially devoted to this field. As a curiosity I will also add that this time as well – as it turned out later – I was the only one in the room who was dealing with seo. This had already happened before 😉

The workshops were led by Arnie Kuenn, the founder and CEO of Vertical Measures. At his company he’s engaged in helping his customers generate profitable visibility growth on the Internet through content marketing. Arnie has been working in this field for about 20 years – e.g. he led marketing actions for Arizona Super Bowl in 2008 and he has founded the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA). Moreover, he is a frequent speaker at SMX conferences and a university lecturer.

The workshop itself took place before the conference and can be praised for its great location in the centre of London, a small number of participants (approx. 15), which brought good climate for more loose talks and asking specific questions, as well as for the training materials that each trainee received. These included a bound presentation, a speaker’s book and a certificate confirming participation.

The training was scheduled for a whole day, from 9 am to 5 pm, with networking breaks. The workshop plan covered 8 essential points: development strategy, formation of the main idea, content creation, optimization, promotion, distribution, lead maturation measurements. Everything was well thought out and clearly presented. So much for the theoretical information, let’s get to the more interesting part, so what the training has given me and whether it has given me anything at all.

What did I gain from the content marketing training in London?

What is striking and confirmed in absolutely every training, conference or workshop held outside of Poland is the fact that you can see the differences between SEO in Poland and the foreign SEO. Furthermore, I now see that there is also a difference in the surfers’ behavior when using the search engine. In our country, the phrases typed into the search engine are very general – so much that the matched search results are not necessarily consistent. My reflection is that Poles often type something into a search engine mindlessly, without considering specifically what they want to find. In the US people often give 5-6 phrases queries – their questions are very detailed.
Secondly, what I most recall is a very interesting solution presented by Arnie’s company, which they use for information purposes used in the idea and content marketing promotion. If you are interested, visit the following site: http://www.howtoconvinceyourboss.com/

It would be nice if someone used this idea and made a similar Polish version. I am convinced that all of us would benefit from it. Maybe it could be Whitepress, which is known for its innovative approach to CM…? Just suggesting ?

As for me, it is an interesting and probably working solution which could help traders and marketing departments convince potential customers to invest in content marketing promotion. Let’s say straight away – it could bring particular investment, not just agreement on any action with a great result for the minimum possible price ? This site really describes all aspects and benefits of CM very broadly. These are very good arguments for marketing departments and retailers – they show very specifically what content marketing gives, how much it costs and how its effects should be measured. The site offers ready presentations and videos with the statements of famous people on content marketing and its importance in Internet promotion.

A few facts I learnt at Arnie Kuenn’s workshop and what I liked about it:

• it’s worth segmenting the audience by eg. their intentions/seasonality/location, depending on promoted product;
• a ready template “calendar for Content Marketing” http://www.verticalmeasures.com/content-editorial-calendar-template/
• through the whole training Arnie repeated and emphasized that CM is not a 30-day activity – all the strategy requires consideration and a careful analysis, because without it the content won’t be effective. The first effects may occur at earliest after 3-5 months;
• it is a good practice to adjust the tone of our content to the target group (a funny tone, a serious or specialist one);
• half of the budget allocated to CM should be dedicated to content distribution through various available channels;
• I enjoyed the way the full life cycle of content in the consumer buying process was described
• the leader showed how to draw ideas for content marketing on the Amazon’s Q&A’s example;
• showing the importance of research before building a content marketing campaign – did you know that according to research conducted in the US, the most frequently asked question in the hotel reception is: “Can we have a late check-out? ” Not: is there Internet, or a bar, what time is breakfast. How would you know that if it weren’t for research? Contrary to appearances, this information is pretty useful – not everything that’s obvious for us turns out this way in reality;
• content marketing is not suitable for small businesses, like Xerox services/key cutting etc. Local seo helps in these cases. To make Content Marketing for companies with a small budget, you have to look for subcontractors for different phases in the strategy to reduce the costs of the project (creation of infographics, testing of the target group by external company, etc.). Many costs already appear at the distribution level which absorbs a lot of the budget – and we have no influence over it;
• it is a good option to teach the company’s employees to write briefs and content (at best it would be done for bonuses in renumeration, through internal competitions). Customer service knows best what people ask about and what problems they have. Warehouseman knows best how we should maintain the product and where to keep it. Complaints department knows what the customers’ problems are. Sales department knows exactly what people are looking for. You have to use this information – you can create internal mail and competition within the company, for which employees could “anonymously” give ideas of content based on their experience. In the end, the entire content marketing is meeting the needs of customers;
• I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t ask how much such a pleasure costs, that is such an expanded campaign. The Phoenix company in Arizona (where the leader of this training works) does not take clients below 2k dollars. A minimum contract is signed for 6 months. They don’t serve the clients for $500, because it requires passing a lot of work on them, which would not always work. For small budget companies they offer activities of developing content on the site on their own, without a bigger strategy or research;
• people still look for lists:
  “10 ways to pick up a girl”
  “30 places to visit before death”
  And other similar extremely interesting news ?
• people still look for ready comparisons:
  “What’s the difference between McDonald’s and Burger King”
• they showed how to use slideshare to promote content;
• forms of planning and reporting content marketing efforts were widely discussed

I will also mention that the role of video marketing was discussed fairly extensively during the training – interviews, reports, product presentations, humorous content, webinars, free trainings etc. It was also highlighted what harms content marketing campaigns – this issue was often overlooked during trainings I attended. They mentioned e.g. duplicate content, title and description, lack of thematical structure of internal links and anchor policy, as well as content cannibalization within the domain offer/blog.

Am I satisfied with the Content Marketing training with Arnie Kuenn organized before the SMX London 2015 conference?

I rather am – I will definitely be going back to the information I received and use some of it as well. It just so happens that I currently read a lot about this topic and draw knowledge from a variety of sources, which is why fewer and fewer things surprise me when it comes to CM. We try to start more and more activities of this sort for our clients, so all subsequent information from the meetings of this type is useful. Generally I recommend this training and yet now I invite you to peek at the blog – soon there will be the next reports. Not far from now, because on June 1, I am flying to the USA again, on SMX Advanced, where I will take part in the conference and – what’s easy to guess – in another training. So I invite you to visit the blog in a while.