Welcome to the Funnel (Jason Miller)
Content marketing may be the most overused buzzword of this year (or 
was that last year as well?).
As many of us know, the idea of giving away some content (back in the day a print brochure) for free to begin to build a relationship with a prospective customer is not exactly new. However online has completely changed the game – in my opinion vastly improved it, made it easier to measure, increased ROI and the list goes on.
This guy (Jason Miller) really knows his stuff. He previously worked at Marketo and is now the content marketing boss at LinkedIn.
His book (full title Welcome to the Funnel: Proven Tactics to Turn Your Social and Content Marketing up to 11) covers some of the amazing content he has produced – like the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn – and offers fascinating peek-behind-the-scenes on how the content was produced (inhouse vs agency), the budget behind it and how they were able to measure the ROI.
One of the core ideas Jason covers is the idea of producing a ‘big rock’ of content marketing (such as the LinkedIn guide) and then using this ‘big rock’ again and again across different channels and in different formats. For example taking the guide and creating videos, fact sheets and info graphics.
He describes this method as like carving up a bird… “I use a Thanksgiving analogy. You cook up this giant bird to serve up on one glorious occasion and then proceed to slice and dice this thing for weeks on end.”
Here is Jason’s advice on creating big rock content
(headings = mine, all quotes directly from the book)
On tone and writing style
“If you can inject your personality into what you do and the message you share, you’ll be one step ahead in the content marketing game.”
How big can you go?
“A great example of Big Rock content is Marketo’s Definitive Guide series. They have created a series of eBooks clocking in at close to 100 pages each.”
Carving up the bird…
“Out of this one Big Rock piece of content, we had carved out 25 blog posts, two infographics, two webinars, two videos, two SlideShare presentations, and some cheat sheets.”
Talk to others outside of your organisation
“Since you are creating the “definitive” guide on your topic, it’s important to include voices outside of yours for validation.”
On the ROI
“The Sophisticated Guide I created for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions drove an incredible $4.6 million of business in the first half of 2014. That’s from ONE piece of content, my friends.” (The total cost for the project was around $25,000.)
Interested? You can grab Welcome to the Funnel here on amazon.
Happy reading,
C x
The Marketer's Bookshelf 