View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Theseus Content Marketing Duc Le M Bachelor’s Thesis DP in International Business 2013 Abstract 2013 LIBBA08K Author or authors Group or year of Duc Le M entry 2008 Title of report Number of report Content Marketing pages and attachment pages 49 + 9 Teacher(s) or supervisor(s) Suvi Kalela The purpose of this thesis was to introduce the new trend in today’s marketing world: content marketing. It has been employed by many companies and organizations in the world and has been proven success even when it is still a fairly new topic. Five carefully selected theories of content marketing proposed by experts in the field has been collected, compared and displayed as originally and scientifically as possible in this thesis. The chosen theories provide a diversified perspectives of content marketing from differrent experts.
Thus, this gives a bigger picture of how marketers around the world are perceiving and experiencing with this new form of marketing. This research examines the use of content marketing in both consumer and corporate business sectors. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three different experts and representative of companies employing and going to execute their content marketing strategy. The findings of the research has proven the theories correct.
The three interviewees’ firms operate in three distinguished business industries, yet found similar positive results when employing content marketing. It is safe to conclude that content marketing is a success proven strategy based on the research. It is advised that there should be more research to be done to investigate further in this new topic as this thesis can only provide a limited level of knowledge about content marketing and its application. Keywords Content marketing, online content, social media marketing, Internet marketing Table of contents 1 Introduction.
3 2 Theories of Content Marketing .1 Termniologies and Definitions .2 Other terms used in this thesis .2 Why businesses use content marketing. formula & The Four Pillar theory .5 The killing content .6 The science of virality .7 Measuring the effectiveness of content marketing .1 Key Performance Indicators .2 Return On Investment.8 Summary of the theories .1 Conclusions based on the interviews. 55 1 Introduction Social media is the new power horse of marketing in the world. More companies use it nowadays and it has proven to be a powerful tool.
Using social media correctly will results in better brand image, sales and customer satisfaction. However, social media marketing is still a new topic which challenges every marketers and business owners. This paper will discuss a new trend emerging from the internet industry business in recent years named content marketing. Content marketing is, most of the time, mistaken with viral marketing or similar terms like buzz marketing or word-of-mouth 2.
People who are familiar with the industry often mention successful cases of viral pieces of contents. Those who are not expert in the industry or have not studied a content marketing campaign before would not rec- ognize the patterns of virality in these contents. Experts have researched the most viral contents the internet has seen, or in other words, given birth to. These contents have gone from a domestic scale of one website then spread to the whole World Wide Web through social networks and other means of communications.
Some of the viral cases have made their own appearance on tradi- tional media such as television. However, a piece of viral content is not the same as popular content. This paper will not discuss this particular topic but the use of content to make them “go viral”. Contents-based marketing activities are already being implemented around the world for years.
This paper aims to be one of the first academic researches to look into this trending marketing strategy and tactics with input from the experts in the field, involv- ing with content marketing, or to consider implementing content marketing in the near future. Figure 1 below shows general statistics about content marketing in the current business world. General statistics of content marketing usage by companies (Demand Metric 2013) 1.1 Research Questions This thesis will be written to find the answers for the following questions: How to form the content marketing strategy? How to make use of the website’s own contents to attract internet users? What types of contents are most effective in marketing? How to implement the strategy? By answering these questions, this thesis will contribute to the marketing world a proper guide of content marketing as a whole. Marketers around the world in both B2B and B2C sectors can refer to this paper during the process of building their own marketing strategy involving content marketing and social media marketing in particu- lar or digital marketing in general.2 Case Company: Taymay.vn website is a Vietnamese micro company based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
There is a minimal initial capital and no investment to be called for in the foreseeable future. The owner would like to build up an initial plan to first market the website with no budget then the business plan will be completed in the near future if the website is a success. (Founder 2013) This micro company is chosen as a case company because the website itself is content- centric. So content marketing is most likely the most suitable strategy for Taymay.
This strategy will accelerate its name and reputation. The latter part of this paper will discuss the implementation of a content marketing strategy for this micro company and hope- fully will be applicable for other organizations of similar nature as well. 3 2 Theories of Content Marketing Marketers around the world are getting to know content marketing. There are many theories of content marketing available.
Most of them are quite similar so the author will list a few for discussion. Nathan (2012) suggests that viral content is a hyper-effective mechanism to expand one’s subjective lens of one’s prior experiences. He proposes a theory that what makes people share a piece of content is because viral contents “represent or uncover something pleasurable that we could never have conceived with our own minds.” This proposal is proven by Berger and Milkman (2012) in their scientific research about virality which is discussed later in this paper.1 Termniologies and Definitions 2.1 Content Marketing Since the term is relatively new, there are many similar definitions of content marketing. According to Mandloys Digital Agency (2013), content marketing is: “The creation of content that is relevant, compelling, entertaining and valuable and this content must be consistently provided to maintain or change the behavior of customers.
Content marketing is an essential marketing activity that helps retain customers, acquire new ones and helps companies to build a strong brand.” (bold intended) This agency suggests that the purpose of content marketing is to educate consumers by providing valuable information. Then the content will create brand loyalty and purchases will be made in the future. They also state that this relatively new form of marketing normally does not involve direct selling. Instead, the audience is encouraged to make the purchase from said company whenever they are ready.
4 Content marketing can be described vaguely by this figure below: Figure 2. Content Marketing Definition (Mandloys Digital Agency, 2013) However, there is one thing Mandloys Digital Agency does not mention in their defini- tion of content marketing that Copyblogger (2013) does, that is: “Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.” They think the content should be free to encourage the audience to access, consume and share. Copyblogger also think the content that is shared should be related to the field and category of the business so that the audience is educated. Then they will “know, like and trust” the company to be able to do business with in the future.
Here are relevant terms that are often interchanged with content marketing, in other words, very similar to “content marketing”. The list is provided by Pulizzi and Barrett (2009, 6): Custom publishing Custom content Custom media Branded content Corporate content Branded editorial Corporate media Branded editorial content 5 Branded story telling Contract publishing Information Marketing Corporate publishing Advertorial Corporate journalism Private media Member media Customer publishing Info-content Customer media 2.2 Other terms used in this thesis Viral: is today's electronic equivalent of old-fashioned word of mouth. It's a marketing strategy that involves creating an online message that's novel or entertaining enough to prompt consumers to pass it on to others — spreading the message across the Web like a virus at no cost to the advertiser.) Pipeline: is often the warehouse for the collection of active leads that have had some level of follow-up qualification (InsideSpin 2013). Pipeline Value: $ value of all of the sales opportunities in your pipeline (Gladen 2008).
Funnel Conversion: is a technical term used in e-commerce operations to describe the track a consumer takes through Internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website and finally converting to a sale (Ozolins 2012). Click-through rate (CTR) is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of an email campaign by the number of users that clicked on a specific link (American Marketing Association 2013). Qualified leads: Prospective customer who has a demonstrated interest in the prod- uct or service being sold, the ability to pay, or the authority to make a purchase deci- sion (Answers Corporation 2013). 6 Quantitative Social Media Measuring: is a methodology that focuses on counting the volume of specific types of content on the social web (Barker et al.
Qualitative Social Media Measuring: is the process of accessing the opinions and beliefs about a brand (Barker et al. Sentiment analysis or Opinion mining: uses computer algorithms to automatically detect the basic mood, attitudes, or emotions of the creators of content on the social web (Barker et al. Net Promoter Score: is a qualitative measurement used to gauge the loyalty of a com- pany’s customer relationships. The score is obtained by asking customers how likely they are to recommend the company to their connections.
The scale is from 0 to 10, where those who score 9-10 are Promoters. Those with 7-8 are Passives and the rest are Detractors. (Barker et al.) Reach: is the percentage of people in a target market who are exposed to an advertis- ing schedule at least once (Barker et al. Frequency: is the number of times an individual views a commercial in a particular advertising schedule (Barker et al.
Impact: is to be understood as raising people’s awareness of a brand and influencing their perception of the brand through engagement (Barker et al.2 Why businesses use content marketing Social media is proven to be successful when implemented with content marketing. Native contents on social networks will increase engagement with target audience and the possibility to reach a desirable viral scale. That is why businesses are making the change to content marketing. 7 Figure 3 below by Demand Metric (2013) sums up the four main reasons why companies worldwide are increasingly adopting content marketing into their marketing strategy.
Why companies are using content marketing (Demand Metric 2013) However, it is necessary to discuss further about the benefits, as well as drawbacks, of content marketing. Pulizzi and Barrett (2009, 9-20) explain six reasons businesses are making the change to content marketing: 1. There is a change in buyer attitudes toward traditional media and the credibility of content: Buyers need content that makes them smarter and more knowledge- able. Traditional media sources can’t be counted on to assist you in reaching your customers: Social media tools can provide better and more buyer data than tra- ditional media partners.