Step 1:
Home in on your target audience and brainstorm on their characteristics and needs. Determine the brand impression you will like to create
On average, buyers engage with 11.4 pieces of content before making a buying decision (Forrester, 2013) 
What is content marketing and why is it so popular ?
Content marketing broadly refers to creation of content in the form of video, articles or posts for distribution via search engine, social media or email marketing to achieve business results. All or part of it can be serviced by agency.
Huge corporations such as Coca-cola, Linkedin, Expedia have adopted it and swear by its effectiveness. In U.S, if you run a business and don’t do content marketing in some form, people will think you come from Mars. Slowly but surely, Asia is catching up. Content marketing is trending largely due to the change in consumer behavior following rapid technological changes over the last few decades.
Fact #1 : About 60% of the sales process is already complete before a prospect ever speaks or has contact with a salesperson. (Harvard Business Review). In the internet age, this statistic shouldn’t come as a surprise. Unlike in the past, people no longer rely on salespeople as the main source of information. Where do they go?
Fact #2: A study by Forrester found that that people engages with 11.4 pieces of content on average before making a purchase. Instead of appearing infront of customers only when they are about to buy, companies that step in earlier in the buying process get a shot at building trust and getting the sale.
Fact #3: Traditional branding activities are relatively expensive. A study by Moz shows that the cost per thousand impressions on newspaper/magazine is about 20-40times that of on Google/Facebook. Companies looking at an economical way to reach out to alot of people over time should consider content marketing.
Common mistakes
Companies that consistently get daunted by the challenges of content marketing make these 3 common mistakes.
Ignoring marketing
The idea that publishing great content is the end-all-be-all in content marketing is largely a myth. ”Content marketing” is composed of two words, neglecting either one will not work. Corporate blogs, created in the name of content marketing, collecting dust is one of the most common occurrences in Singapore.
Ignoring social needs
Not all content lends itself to marketing. One of the most deadly mistakes is to take your existing content and plaster it wholesale on your blog or social media profile. Most common ones include the company brochure, press releases, news and other dry content. Sometimes, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of social media users and think of what they want.
Ignoring vital metrics
Content marketing is great for brand marketing but it is also a perfect tool for leads generation. Another common pitfall of content marketing is the focus on only traffic and impressions as success metrics. When seen as a money burning activity, content marketing is unsustainable. Start focusing on ROI as well.
Digital Senior case study –
A content marketing example in Singapore
DigitalSenior.sg is a portal built and owned by IceCube, in the education space. It has monthly organic traffic of 40k. Apart from search engine traffic, Digital Senior’s content has went viral several times, with one particular article bringing in 80,000 visits from social media and generating 10,000 Facebook shares in one week.
Our approach
Remarketing for ROI
Think of content marketing as a funnel where the audience go from awareness of your brand to purchase of your products. Instead of stuffing prospects with sales messages from the get-go, we use content that appeal to their general needs at the awareness stage. The readers of the content are added to a remarketing list and then sent to a landing page where the offer is made. This ensures that business results are tracked .
Services we provide
FAQ
Why can’t I just buy ads on Google and Facebook instead of going through all the hassle?
The power of social media lies in its sharing ability. Unless you are running an incredible promotion, people generally do not share sales messages. However, people do share content. The organic reach of content is fabulous. Not to mention that it builds trust with your audience. When other businesses are just busy selling on social media, you can stand out with a different message.
Can B2b businesses do content marketing ?
If you are in industrial B2b, say oil & gas, maybe it works but I have not seen a success story yet, as the audience is too niche and hard to reach. If you are in commercial B2b, no doubt you have to go into content marketing. I highly recommend that because we are doing it here as well! Aren’t you reading our content ?
Do I have to take up everything from video to infographic to blogging ?
Nope. Content marketing doesn’t mean having to build a whole Straits Times publication. It can be done at various scale and still provide results. We are flexible to adjusting to your requirements.
Can you guarantee that your content will go viral ?
Nope. Neither are we able to guarantee that a piece of share in the stock market go up or down. Anything based on human sentiments and psychology is non-predictable, even though some ‘prodigies’ say they are able to. We only increase our chances based on our understanding of audience psychology.
What others say about us
Ted helped us rank no.1 in Google for numerous keywords that we are targeting and drove an extra 50,000 visits & counting to Singaporebrides in only a few months .
Ice Cube marketing has contributed significantly to helping us evolve a cohesive content strategy across our digital and social platforms. They have provided relevant research, conducted interview with stakeholders and shared best-practice insights into a variety of topics, all of which have informed and improved our content approach and output.
You(Ted) provided great insights into content marketing for the participants and were able to explain clearly how they could market their content effectively on search channels and turn them into leads for their businesses. The participants were delighted to learn new practices and knowledge that help them in their businesses.
Is your business suitable for content marketing ?
Talk to us to find out more !
Our Accreditations
