 I'm Stephanie Kolka. I am the Chief Marketing Strategist and Manager Director of CU3 Marketing. I'm an independent consultant. This is my company that I market so that I can help businesses with their marketing strategy and planning. Today I want to talk to you about content marketing and how we can use that to create customer engagement. It's really about for you, if you're designing websites and apps, how does that tool fall into the bucket of assets that a company might have to drive customer engagement? We're going to talk about a lot of ways that we have the customer journey. But first I want to talk about my journey and how I got to where I am today. So the first thing that I want to share with you is just the agenda of what we're going to cover. A little bit of what I told you about my journey first, so you'll know a little bit about my background. We're going to focus on the customer journey and we're going to focus on the customer first and then what are some key takeaways? I know that's important. And then how you use those to take action when you get back to your work. And then open up for Q&A. Hopefully you have some questions. I'd love to answer them for you. So here's a little bit about me. I actually started my background as a graphic designer. I went to Penn State and got a VA in visual arts. I graduated in 1997 and then websites were around but not as important as they are today. So my background is mostly in print design. I was actually a print maker and did lithography as my background. So I use that every day now as invaluable to me to have that creative background because I've transitioned now to be an independent consultant. But how it got there was for eight years I was a graphic designer and an art director. I worked for the Vanguard group. I grew up in Pennsylvania, went to Penn State. So I worked for Vanguard for eight years and just got a lot of experience with creating print materials and layout and that just visually for me started telling that story. Then we moved on to the Maryland area where that's when I started being more of an art director and taking on more responsibilities than just the design. We eventually moved to New York City and at that time in my career I was realizing that I wanted to do more of the design but I couldn't really figure out what it was. I knew when I could get away from my computer and actually be in a meeting with a client I loved it. I loved being able to ask why. When they said, we do this campaign every year, I need you to create postcards, I need you to create a brochure and we need some creative to do X, Y and Z and I would always ask, well why? And a lot of times I was told, it's not a really your job, just design. So when I got to New York, I freelanced for a year trying to figure out maybe it wasn't just that I worked in a corporate environment and I needed to try an agency environment. So I freelanced in different agencies, big, small, publishing, everything and after a year I just still knew that there was just something missing. So I brought my portfolio to Alpenheimer Funds and I did my interview and at that point I was calling it special projects. If I can be on a special project where I get to do more than design, I love it. And they said, love your portfolio, but we know you'll be bored because our designers sit at their desk and they design. Have a nice day. Four months later they called me back and said, you know how you like special projects? Well, we have an account executive position. I worked at the agencies and I saw what they did and it seemed kind of crazy. But I said, sure, if you're willing to give me a shot, I'll give you a shot. And they said, one thing we are worried about is that you might try to art direct our designers. And I said, well, I know not to do that because I know what that feels like. You want to own your creative and you want to show your passion through your work and you don't want someone really giving you that much direction. So I actually ended up being, Alpenheimer Funds had an internal agency. They had creatives, they had designers, but they had the account executives to work with all the marketing teams within Alpenheimer Funds. And Alpenheimer Funds, if you're not familiar, is a mutual funds, financial services, investments company. And so my account actually was Retirement, which was great because I had done a little bit of Retirement Marketing at Vanguard that helped me also get that role. But I ended up being all the designers' favorite accounts actually because I knew how to mark up my work and hand it in the way I would want someone to do because I had done that job. And that's what I really have kind of done through my career is learning if I have to pass something off, learning a little bit about what that person needs to do with it so that when I need to give it to them, I give them the information they need. And I've now been applying even that to the way I work with clients. So everything in my career I've been taking pieces to build where I am today. So ten years of being at Alpenheimer Funds, I was account executive for five, and then 2008 happened and the crash of all the craziness and Alpenheimer Funds took a big hit to the brand. At that time sales and marketing worked together, so they decided to break it apart, have a CMO come in and actually build a marketing department. And that was a huge opportunity to me because I was getting bored of being an account executive and I wanted to do something else and I was actually thinking of meeting. At that point I just said I'm not challenged and so I applied for a campaign manager role. That was something, they decided that to build a brand they were going to do it on thought leadership and basically that's just kind of the creative smart thinking of all the people that manage the money for the funds at Alpenheimer Funds. They were going to take their thinking, turn it into content and then use that to say look how smart this company is and rebuild the brand. And that's where content marketing was born at Alpenheimer Funds. It did not exist at all. Marketing was a sales support. Sales said we need to grow sure, marketing said okay we'll create it. There was no why do you need it when you have three other ones already. But we just did what we were told. That changed. And towards the end of those ten years, the next thing that happened with that marketing growing was digital because digital became even more important. And at that point I was creating all the content I was working with was out in advertising. It was working really, really well because the website was not built for marketing. It was built to check my account and invest in a fund, services. There was no marketing so everything was built on microsites. So then they said well this team, Stephanie is working on content marketing and it's really important but it's all happening outside with third party partners. I was working with Forbes and we were putting our content out there but it wasn't on our website. So someone finally said no that's not good because we need people on our website. Then that's where they brought our whole team and me over to the digital group. So at the end of my career at Oppenheimer Funds I was able to go from that relationship manager, project manager and then try to just build on content and then all the digital. So I've taken all of that since I moved here in 2015 and decided that I'm going to not work full time, have more time with my kids and use all of that experience from being a designer all the way up to now that experience with digital and help small companies help nonprofits consulting with more of a larger consulting firm because from New York I'm able to use all of those connections. So that's a lot of where I am today and I decided to incorporate as CO3 marketing and the CO3 stands for Collaborate, Communicate, Connect. And the way I pitch it is that I collaborate with my clients because I love partnerships, I love working with people and helping them so that's where the Collaborate comes in. And then I build marketing strategies and plans that help communicate communicate that message and in the end we want to connect. So I connect with their audiences to help achieve their goals. So that's a little bit about me. Now I want to start talking about focusing on the customer. I'm sure all of you in here have to use Google once or twice maybe to solve a problem. That's where it's really, that's where it's at. I mean if you have a problem you're going to Google it. I mean it's become a verb, you know, and my kids say search it up. I don't know why but my daughter always says I think we should search that up to the point where I will tell them something and they don't believe me unless we search it up. Do you think mom there might be a YouTube video on that so that we can make sure you're right? It's great. So the first thing that happens is people say well when you have a problem and you have a pain point first thing they want to know is well what are the solutions? What could maybe help me solve that? So that's really what the first question really is. And then the next part of that is well who has the solutions? You know there's tons of YouTube videos, blogs, articles but in the end I really want to know like who had those solutions whether it's a company or whether it's someone who's going to maybe inspire you to do something. But in the end you take those two things, you combine them together which one is the best fit. Which one of those YouTube videos am I going to use to put together that piece of Ikea furniture that's impossible? The instructions don't make sense. You know really honing it down to picking and choosing. Those are the way that I think about how people choose a brand and how they get to a website. And now taking those general ideas my first question to you is how many in the room are familiar with there's totally so many versions of this graphic but how many in the room are familiar with something similar to this? Okay, because I'm going to explain it and I'm glad there will be an opportunity to do that. So this is considered the customer journey. So when I talk about this, it's the same thing but this just really starts to dive into very separate steps and stages. So we're going to dive into each one of these. So this is where we apply what solutions are available. We're growing awareness. In the beginning you don't really care so much unless you are really dedicated to a certain company. If you're looking for a car, if you already have one you know you might skip this because you know you're going to go for that brand. But if you don't really care right now you just want to know the answers to the questions that you have and what solutions there are then you're just aware that you have a problem. Does that make sense? And again, this is the next part. Who has the solution? So now we start jumping into findability. People finding you. People finding the websites that you're creating and you're using search to do that. So we're kind of starting to take that next step. Which one is the best fit? This to me is one of the key areas because people are really in a research phase at this point. They are looking to combine the two first steps and this is reputation. So this is definitely where you're going to see people looking at me some Google reviews, Facebook reviews. This is a key step because the next one is the money step because this is where people are going to choose the solution and now they're going to take an action. They're going to purchase something. That is where we have conversion. Where they actually decide to not only is it the best fit I'm actually going to take an action to purchase or buy something or but it doesn't end there. And that is I think what people they think, especially maybe a sales force. Okay, sales done. We're good. But it doesn't end there because this is the key spot here because we want to get to advocacy. We want to create advocates of the brand. People who are going to write those reviews. People who are going to say something positive on Twitter. So this is where I like to focus and really educate my clients because people don't think about this part because they want people to share. Share the experience. This is all an experience for someone. You want to share it via reviews, social media, word of mouth. They click that. And in the end this becomes a cycle. So someone decides that they're going to share this experience then that goes back to possibly especially word of mouth. If your neighbor says that this is the best dish soap, you have to go buy it. And you might say, okay, that's good enough for me. I'm just going to go buy that. Or it could be a bigger purchase. But then they skip all those first steps. This becomes a cycle right here. If you can get really good reviews then no one needs to do all of those beginning steps. This becomes a concept sales cycle at the end. Google is a huge proponent to all of this because that's what we talked about, right? When you have a problem and a pain point you're going to search. So you need to develop a content strategy with a focus on SEO because when you're creating the websites that you create and the assets that you create it needs to be searchable and you need to make sure that you have a good optimized experience for Google to find it. And that needs to be found throughout the whole journey. So some stats. 72% of customers turned to Google during the awareness stage. That beginning blue stage, right? We talked about that question, what are the solutions? People are using Google for that. And 70% of customers returned to Google two to three times during their research because now they're diving into those pain points. So while Google is important in awareness it's also important all throughout but really in the second two stages too and they're going to go back. It's not just, I went to Google once. I found what I needed. I'm going to go look other places. They will go back. So making sure that you are creating optimized experiences for the search engines is really key. So I want to talk about how we apply this to the brand, to the companies that you're building these experiences for. It's really kind of now starting to dive into those tactics. So in the beginning there's a lot you can do with all of these tactics that are listed here. I'm not going to read them all off but obviously search advertising and social are key in this space. Email marketing, word of mouth, definitely big here too. Then we start, when we talked about before, findability. This is very important. Organic search. I'm a huge proponent of organic search. A lot of times I have clients that come to me and they say, well, let's just do some paid ads. Let's just do some paid keywords. What keywords? And I tell them, well, why would you spend money when we haven't even done any research and looked at your analytics to see what's already working? There's so many low hanging fruit we can attack before we start spending your money. First of all, give your money to me and then we'll work together. But obviously there's other. Near me is a huge search term. And then directories. Do you know what directories are? Do I say directories? The directories is like yelp. And even like a whitepages.com and things like that. It's funny, I've looked. Do you know the tool called Yext? So that tool, I just started looking at it a lot recently and it can manage. There's so many out there that you don't even know but it's amazing that that tool is just the directories are just looking for content and your content could be wrong in like 80 different places. And Yext is a tool that you could just if you put it in once, it'll spread it out and correct all of them and manage them for you. What's the name? Yext, Y-E-X-T. But next with the Y. That is one that I've been talking to a lot of my clients about. I mean obviously it's good if you have a working order because it's going to keep your address especially they think about it. And if you move from one to the other, you can't find every place where that address is. So that's a really great tool. Research. This is for me, it starts to become the sweet spot for my passion which is content. This is where the content that you're creating on the websites and experiences that you're creating is key and important because we need to know that there's blogs out there and reviews out there word of mouth again. I think word of mouth really plays through the whole scenario but by the time you're here word of mouth becomes now I'm looking. I'm starting to, okay I believe my neighbor, I believe my friend, my mom, whoever but I need to hear from other people. I need to go, if it's a product I need to go on Amazon and look at all the different reviews. I know that we do that all the time. Whenever we're in the, even just in the store we'll see a product but then we'll go on Amazon and read the reviews about that product and the price matching and things like that. That right there and that research base is key because that's again, that's the sweet spot. Once people are here then they're going to jump to purchase. They're taking all that information from those stages to decide their purchase. And again this is where the website is key because if you have a shopping cart you know you need that experience to be very easy for someone to convert and jump to the cart and then the shopping cart experience is really simple because that's when people are going to talk about it. If that experience from here to here is simple now they're going to talk about it and they're going to write a review. If it's someone who is a blogger they may include that in one of their blogs but it's really important to make sure that the website experience you're creating is something someone will want to talk about and they don't have any issues because the worst thing is they're also going to use all of this for negative feedback, right? Talking about after the purchase they expected their experience to be one thing but that's what really happened. If it did, great, they're going to give you a thumbs up they're going to write great things if it didn't, look could happen and they start doing lots of nasty tweets to the brand and that's not good either because people can see that too. Does that all make sense? This is really where, you know I work with my clients strongly and that's creating that marketing strategy because you need that plan and you need to combine all of these tactics choosing which one is the right is really the best one I mean you're not going to do this it's a laundry list of things you could do and that's one thing my clients come to me and they've already picked something from each of these categories and they say, okay I'm going to hire you you need to help me do one, two, three, four, five where are we going to do those things we haven't even, you know it's really looking at that experience we're going to create and then we pick from the thing of what we're going to do to create that experience and that's really about having the right content in the right place at the right time you need to be, your websites and your social, you know you need to be where your audiences are because they're not going to come to you you need to be where they are so some key takeaways from this journey really simple make it easy for them to find out about you right, so that first stage is awareness they're finding out just about you that you're, they're even aware that you exist now you want to make sure that they can they can find you so once they've looked at all of these solutions that are out there and they found out that your brand exists as an actual solution to the problem they're having they need to find you so let's make sure that the sites and experiences are optimized for search so that you're appearing in a high ranking so they can actually choose you this trust is a huge buzzword that I use with my clients this experience is all about gaining trust because they are not going to trust you with their money and to make that conversion if they haven't had a good experience up to this far and if they need to find you but building trust through the content that's there so let's say that you have a blog they've read and then they look for another piece of content and you actually have more content about the problem or pain point they have now they're building trust this person actually understands this problem that I have this company, this brand they understand my problems and now you're building that trust for them to actually convert and get what they're seeking they need to make that purchase so they need to trust the experience you've created from them so far when they go to make that purchase it's going to be the reality and we've talked about this a couple of times but sharing, sharing that experience they have so I think about find trust, get share I mean I've bolded all of those because those are really the key things that need to happen through the experience and I just want to really hone in to this cycle we talked about before because once you make this golden then they don't have to do so much work and you can just convert and have more customers because you have a solid experience they've trusted you and now through the experiences other people have had they've talked about it and other people are relying on those experience to make this happen over and over again so how to take action it's essential to just anticipate people's expectations we talked about what do they expect the experience to be before they even decide to engage with their brand they're going to have an expectation and that's challenging it's very challenging to do to even know what to expect but there's ways that you can work on that one of them is just knowing what your customers' standpoints are a lot of times my clients come to me and they say well this is what I think we should do and I, I, I, I my products are great and everybody should want them things like that it's not about you it's about your customer and that's why I go back to that first slide it's about identifying what people are searching for what are the pain points because that is where we can start creating content around solutions for those pain points really trust so I trust that you know what my pain points are so I'm going to start engaging with you more come to your website start engaging with the content there because I've trusted that I'm going to choose your website to start to move down that journey so that you can see that what my needs are looking for content that maybe even educates me more on why I would choose you and make that decision to purchase and then that you get that engagement so without a solid plan you're just throwing darts a little bit mystic because that's where I usually start with clients and I said you know what have you been doing less far and they're like oh well I've got a couple ads out there and I just write a blog and it's just stuff there's no plan there's no reason why these things are there it's just well I know I need a blog really why why do you need a blog again go back to that question I love to ask why because it's hard it's a hard question sometimes for them to ask they just well I just know that my friend has the same type of company and he's doing great yes but around your audience is the same or your price point is the same it's not apples to apples all the time so when you do have it then you can connect your brand with the target audience and you can convert them to customers and then you know then you can build those advocates and get referrals and that sweet spot that cycle so I'd like to just open it up for Q&A