Digital-News on Scoop.it today

Thought provoking on many fronts. The notion of need of predictive models (and other tools) to link content with visitors.

(From the article): Content Marketing is a tricky idea. You need to create authoritative content, but just enough that community is forming comfortably. Talk to much, in the wrong voice or at the wrong time sand you kill your fledgling community (easy to do). 

Interesting stuff, not for regular posting

Interesting stuff, not for regular posting

Interesting stuff, not for regular posting

Another proof what we call 'time' isn't chronological but spatial, the leap change in short period.

The great title of this scoop says it all. Everyone is creating content marketing but no one is sure how the top of the conversion funnel, those things we do like blogging and social media that drive traffic, and the bottom of the funnel, the magic land of conversions and ROI live, are connected.

There are several problems trying to connect traffic generation to ROI and conversion including:

* Attribution.
* Lack of accurate tools.
* TIME.
* Lack of predictive analytics.

Attribution, knowing where converting traffic came from, can be a bear. Conversion funnels can be peppered with visits; content and referring URLs What was the magic combination that actually created the conversion? Sophisticated analytics model attribution and assign some weighted value, but this is riff with bias and accurate enough (generally) to calm the riot. Some modeled attribution still beats NONE since no modeled attribution can lead to cutting off your websites proverbial nose to spite its face.

Time is part of the attribution problem. Some content lasts for a day and that are all its ever going to do. Other "evergreen" content can last for a year sending converting traffic all along. How do you know when you have short or long term content? By how it behaves and that is defining a bard door after horses are already out.

There is a missing algorithm in all of this. The magic QUANT math that can accurately connect funnel tops to bottoms. The problem is that QUANT math better be flexible and have some Artificial Intelligence-like flexibility or it isn't of much use since the web is a constantly changing sea of data, attribution and time.

We will master these complex FACTORS and find a way to better connect our funnel tops and bottoms someday soon. In the meantime bailing wire and chewing gum ROI systems will continue to rule our content marketing investments.

So true!

Amazing

"Struggle upon the development" is a TRUE statement. Nice graphic here that describes what quickly becomes an intuitive process.

I think the most important step in this formula is the one most often ignored: 

Interesting stuff, not for regular posting

Interesting stuff, not for regular posting

Another proof what we call 'time' isn't chronological but spatial, the leap change in short period.

Ad Serving is so much more than you think. If our we design future is a series of contingent creative modeled to display based on predictive analytics then the existing very close to that idea is sophisticaed ad serving. 

Ad serving is knowing who is looking at what and how often they've seen it, but ad serving also forms the core of predictive modeling. When we show this ad to this person aor segment in this kind of environment it converts and that is exactly the way we will think of our content soon (as either converting or not).

The problem now is the top of our content marketing funnel  insn't connected to our bottom so traffic generation isn't related to conversion. Traffic is such an interesting problem.

When I sold my house only one person looked at it. Traffic LOW but converison HIGH. When I was an Ecommerce director we needed 12,000 unique visitors a day to sell 400 or 500 customers. so  Traffic HIGH but conversion LOW.

In our new GOOGLe world washing 12,000 uniques a day through for so few conversions would slowly lower your website's value. These days you want your heuristic measures (time on site, pages viewed, conversions such as downloading or signing up for something or buying something to go UP). 

Better to move LESS traffic through your website and get more from them. Sales were interestingly tied to traffic. On the one hand traffic reduciton move the conversion needle down, but that was only because our analytics weren't sophisticated enough to know who to court and who to let go.

By "court" I mean use sophisticated ad serving to model and convert the visit. With Google's new thinking about value and content marketing any websites HEURSTIC measures must improve and in an ever increasing pattern, so can't we use sophisticated ad serving to focus the right content to the right audience and so move heursitcs up.

I can see a financial person doing the, "Sophisticatd ad serving costs X, what does it get us?" Thing and boy do I hate gatekeepers like that because we are on the BLEEDIG EDGE now talking about something that cost NOTHING in relation to its potential benefits such as:

* More Page Views Because More Relevant Content Presented.
* Lower Bounce Rates As You Model Out Crap Traffic.
* Faster pattern recognition on content (ads) that are working.

 Last idea is very important because what is our content OTHER than long form ads? A: Our Content Is Exactly A Long For Ad. what DMers used to call "advertorial". The role of our content in an inbound marketing world is the same as advertorial. It doesn't look as "sell you a a used car", but don't kind yourself if your company is spending millions there better be some clear ROI somewhere. 

Clear ROI is why I want to speak with ADZERK about sophiticaed ad serviing for http://www.curecancerstarter.com.  I suspect we will find so many unintended benefits that building a ROI case won't be a problem. Stay tuned. 

When I scooped the Content Marketing study showing a narrowing gap between B2C and B2B content marketing it struck me to share 10 ways B2C content marketing is different than B2B. I spent 7 years as a Director of Ecommerce and the last two as Marketing Director for Atlantic BT, a B2B web and software Development Company in Raleigh so can speak intelligently about both camps (one would hope :).

Here are 10 Ways B2C content is different than B2B:

* More User Generated Content.
* More contests and games.
* Less content creation.
* More content .
* More snippets and keywords less paragraphs and white papers.
* More social content less evergreen.
* Visual support important to both, REALLY important B2C.
* Content has to be FLATTER (less linked, less words, more bullets) and more visually support of immediate conversion.
* LESS YOU (website owner) more THEM (community formed around brands or products or your website).
* Money is ultimate judge of success.

You could argue money is the ultimate litmus test for both, but B2C is about money today and B2B is about money tomorrow.

Do people actually read the content? Will it keep them following you?