S ET YOUR Words on Fire CONTENT PIPELINE PLATFORMS Studio Hyperset’s master guide to content, platforms, and the contemporary marketing pipeline. a Studio Hyperset expression studiohyperset.com v.1.11 | July 2016 studiohyperst.com/connect introduction This eBook includes information on: • the major types of online (marketing) content • the contemporary marketing pipeline • the pipeline stage to which each type of content is best suited • the major contemporary content platforms • the pipeline stage(s) to which each platform is best suited SH uses this as a sort of "choose your own adventure" resource, one that allows us to build custom marketing stacks for our clients. For example, if we know we needed to raise awareness about a client among 18-34 year-old male sports fans, we'd do very well to create some sort of video game and share information about this game on YouTube. We'd also know it best to avoid Pinterest and Vine entirely. When it came time to engage this audience, we’d do well to start a sports-oriented podcast on SoundCloud and share information about this podcast on Twitter. Again, there wouldn’t be much of a need to spend time working with Pinterest and Vine. In essence, this document allows us to take a marketing need ("raise awareness," "increase engagement"), combine it with a demographic variable (gender, age), and determine: (a) what kind of content we should create and (b) where we should circulate it. We hope the document helps enhance the impact of your own online marketing efforts. studiohyperset.com !2 why content? At a high level, we might say mass media marketing and traditional, SEO-/PPC-driven online marketing hope to attract the one by shouting at the many. Content marketing works quite a bit differently. We might say it attracts the many by whispering to the one. We create content for idealized demographic types, use highly personal channels to share this content with individuals who fit this type, and build awareness and interest from the individual up rather than from the group down. Using content, SH helps businesses build, activate, and manage reliable, scalable, and measurable frameworks that allow organizations to: • connect with new leads • transform these leads into an audience • engage this audience with content • use awareness to increase revenue opportunities There are no longer buyers, customers, or users. There are only audiences and the content that engages them. The modern world huddles around great content — around glowing film screens, phones, tablets, televisions, and computer monitors — the same way our ancestors did cave fires. And that archetypal experience, woven deeply into our psyches, allows Studio Hyperset to use content to build meaningful communities for our clients. studiohyperset.com !4 types of content eBooks, guides, case studies, and Because they require registration, reports are powerful lead-generation and webinars are powerful audience-building thought-leadership tools. and lead-generation tools. Since they include audio, video, and textual Effective vehicles for long-form content, elements, they also cater to a wide these polished, professional, research- variety of learning-styles and can be used and data-driven forms are perfect for to generate “child” content. We can connecting with c-level leaders. harvest a video, podcast, and supporting eBook report from one webinar. Web videos are, arguably, the most Episodic podcasts offer important powerful forms of media currently subscription opportunities and circulating in the world. They allow us to encourage routine, periodic communicate important messages in engagement. However, even single entertaining ways and present important audio files offer highly-portable engagement and viral awareness connection opportunities. Since this sort opportunities. Longer-form films, of content doesn’t require any visual documentaries, and episodic, TV-style interaction, users can listen to audio files serials offer similar advantages. while they work, drive, or exercise. studiohyperset.com !5 Interactive tools and other “growth Since they often feature marquee hacking” mechanisms allow us to members of a particular field, interviews, communicate value, connect with new reviews, and other types of online leads, and feed automated awareness-, discussions offer important opportunities retargeting- and other conversion- to connect with well-known brands and oriented workflows. thought-leaders and their professional networks. Organic interest in interview Here’s an example we built for our client targets drives search traffic and can Infer: infer.com/score-o-matic/ create exponential, viral awareness loops. Blog posts and landing pages use important keywords to increase the Rivaled perhaps only by videos, visitors organic discovery rates of other content eagerly share and enthusiastically engage offerings. However, both offer important with infographics. content opportunities in their own right. Like videos, they also allow content Great blog posts can include creative creators to share complex information in (non)fiction, reportage, reviews, how a visually-engaging way. to’s, and a variety of different lists, and great landing pages entertain and delight visitors before converting them. studiohyperset.com !6 Whether they stand-alone or offer CMS plugins, API-driven add-ons, and backlinks to blog posts, landing pages, SaaS/mobile applications offer amazing and other types of content, social media opportunities to build audiences, posts are your organization’s primary on- leverage existing networks and user ramp to the global data stream. Use groups, generate goodwill by improving them to contribute your voice to existing systems, and demonstrate humanity’s on-going, always-on expertise. Often, these can even become conversation. revenue-neutral or revenue-positive awareness generators. Like plugins, add-ons, and applications, Whether they contain cold, outreach web, mobile, and console games offer messages or warm, subscription-based, organizations the opportunity to colonize content, email is a workhorse that carries existing frameworks and even generate enormous amounts of water for other revenue. Like other interactive tools, types of content. Like landing pages and they’re also significant engagement social media posts, however, email also mechanisms and have the potential to presents important engagement benefits connect your organization with users for and data-driven decision-making long periods of time. opportunities (usually documented in marketing automation solutions). studiohyperset.com !7 Matt Hebermehl, Migration (2015) - hebermehl.com Public art installations and murals offer extraordinary awareness and viral sharing opportunities. They allow you to leverage the public’s interest in, and ability to share, interesting things they find in the world; make and engage important local community connections; and link your brand with the arts. studiohyperset.com !8 pipeline overview Whee! The contemporary marketing pipeline has seven main stages. Awareness All platforms and types of content can be used at every Interest stage of the buyer’s journey, Consideration of course. However, you’ll find many are especially helpful at Intent the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. Evaluation Purchase Evangelism studiohyperset.com !10 Upper-funnel content is focused on raising awareness about, and interest in, your organization and attracting potential subscribers, leads, and audience members via organic discovery and social sharing. infographics CMS plugins and (API) add-ons blog posts single audio files social media posts smartphone and SaaS applications text, video and/or audio interviews video/mobile games viral-style videos art installations and public art murals films and documentaries cold emails “Ask Me Anything”-style forums reportage and creative (non)fiction studiohyperset.com !11 Mid-funnel content is focused on connecting with leads in meaningful ways and converting them into kinetic audience members and customers. webinars landing pages episodic podcasts testimonial videos episodic, TV-style serial narratives branding/narrative/marketing videos interactive "growth hacking" tools training videos newsletter emails eBooks, guides, case studies, and subscription content series emails reports studiohyperset.com !12 Lower-funnel content is focused on engaging and delighting existing customers and audience members, turning them into evangelists, and driving referrals. newsletter emails forum discussions subscription emails and content series special offers video testimonials special events testimonials, reviews, and comments on referral and affiliate programs social media, blog posts, &c. reportage and creative (non)fiction series studiohyperset.com !13 platforms Think of it like this: content is a surfer, and platforms are the waves moving him about. Cowabunga! studiohyperset.com !15 methodology Individually (eg., “Instagram”) or as a collective taxonomy (eg., “Link Sharing Services”), the platforms listed generally have at least 10 million or so active monthly users (or visitors), and we’ve verified these statistics in at least two references. Because the modern media landscape is so diverse, and because it offers marketers so many interesting and exciting opportunities, we’ve also followed a rather liberal definition of platform. For the purposes of the following list, a platform is “any framework that allows our clients (or ourselves) to: • distribute content • have that content discovered (and/or shared) by potential