NEW! Achieve "Critical Mass" in Marketing Campaigns Critical mass is achieved when all marcom channels are fully synergized in terms of ideas, imagery and timing, and operate with the Web as their nexus. Read more about how you can make it happen! The Econiverse TXSystem is a complete original content solution designed to strengthen your brand and spur significant growth in 'mind share' and market share. The TXS approach offers website visitors the one thing they want most from any media source: relevant original content. And since you're dying to ask: "TXS" isn't software, hardware, or a strategy for buying Web banners or television commercials! Content to Cash: Drive Revenue Growth with Original Writing by John Woodbury, CEO, Econiverse Samuel Johnson—a peerless wit as well as the compiler of the first English dictionary—once deflated the pretensions of a generation of self-enamored poets and long-winded travel writers with this observation, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." In an age of global blog-headedness, with more texts being created and published by more writers than at any time in history, corporate communicators should ask a basic question: What is the business purpose of online content? For the past decade I have argued that content on corporate websites should have the same purpose that Johnson recommended in 1791: to earn a profit. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against blogs. In fact, your CEO (and your top guys & gals in sales, marketing, R&D, HR, and public relations) should probably get themselves set up with Blogger and trumpet the resulting URLs to all appropriate readers. Not only will it convey the same aura of cutting-edge coolness that your now-kinda-ho-hum corporate website did in, say, 1995 or '96, it's also a quicker/cheaper/more efficient way to rocket top-of-mind ramblings out onto the Web. And I'm also not suggesting that "paid" content is the only way to go. There's nothing wrong with Meta, Giga, Forrester, IDC, etc., selling research reports for $25k—in fact, it's great for the authors of such tracts, who unlike fiction or screen writers can sell their texts to an infinite number of buyers. But the overwhelming majority of corporate communicators aren't hawking pricey research. Rather, they have materials of various kinds that tout, explain, support or justify their products, programs and services. THIS is the content which a business can—and should—convert to cash via the magic of the Web and a range of coordinating technologies. What Magic? Using the Web, data forms, HTML e-mail, and a steady stream of compelling, original branded content, your organization can create a closed loop that attracts, holds and repeatedly touches interested readers (a.k.a. "customers"). Your reader/subscriber base will increase in size, month after month, like the viewing audience of a great new television program. And as you convert eyeballs to sales leads, revenue growth will follow. Here, a key point must be understood: "Nobody buys on the first sales call." OK, rarely someone might . . . but network television advertising execs have known for decades that the average television viewer has to see a commercial nine times before heeding its call to action. The same thing is true in online marketing—a single visit to your company's website or a single HTML e-mail is highly unlikely to lead to a sale. Rather, visitors must be enticed back again and again, over weeks or even months, before enough sales momentum accrues to spur them to action. Therefore, it's vital to create a loop which brings users back to your site again and again, to be gradually won over and converted into "leads," then customers. What's the draw that keeps them coming back? A steady stream of relevant original content. Here's an example: PricewaterhouseCoopers Security & Privacy Solutions—the largest security practice among the global IT services firms—asked us to multiply website traffic and fill up their leads pipeline. We teamed with their subject matter experts to create "The Secure Solution," a monthly online magazine that offers case studies, research and thought leadership articles, partner profiles, Webcast and events information, and more. We promoted the new PwC e-zine with graphical links on the site home page, and offered readers the chance to "subscribe" online—which guaranteed them early notification by HTML e-mail when new issues were published. Subscriptions data (names, e-mails addresses, phone numbers, company affiliation, ***job titles***, and other info) were saved in a back-end database, and the e-mail addresses rolled up into a bulk mailing list. Subscriptions took off from day one, and when the first HTML e-mail blast went out a month later, promoting the second issue, PwC logged an immediate spike in Web traffic. Within 90 days the online leads pipeline was pumping in a steady stream of qualified prospects, who had read 2-3 issues of "The Tech Spotlight" and had been won over by the depth and insightful quality of the articles. A fluke? Hardly. We achieved similar results for Accenture Financial Services with their monthly e-zine, "The Point." The tactics are the same: offer site visitors the chance to "subscribe" to receive early notification of new original content, drawing them back to the site again and again to be further won over and made aware of the range of the firm's offerings, solutions, success stories and events. Anyone who followed the transformation of the former Andersen Consulting into Accenture knows it as perhaps the most successful re-branding exercise of the past decade—one which arguably saved the life of this 75,000 person firm, given the grim fate of its progenitor, Arthur Andersen. Our Web strategy for accenture.com not only established Accenture as a preferred source for high-quality original thought leadership (in this case in the areas of banking, capital markets and insurance), but also reinforced the unique brand values & characteristics of the re-named, re-imagined firm: innovation, industry expertise, collaboration with clients, and the creation of "high-performance" businesses. What about the real world re$ult$? Like PwC, Accenture saw its Web traffic soar, and revenues for its Financial Services unit grew 24 percent in the last quarter. As a firm, Accenture will report revenue for FY2004 of roughly $14 billion—double the gross receipts of five years ago, when it was still "Andersen Consulting." Case Studies: The Gold Standard of Online Content Suppose your organization wants to start converting content to cash—where and how do you start? Without a doubt, the shortest path from Web content to the cash register is a solid customer case study. Dozens of marketing research studies have shown that the single most powerful "content persuader," in the minds of Web visitors looking for products, programs or services, is a client success story detailing how well-known industry competitor achieved significant ROI and real business benefits from a particular product or service initiative. The speed and decisiveness with which this works can be amazing. In 2003, our client PwC Sustainability Solutions contracted with us for a complete website revamp and build-out, leveraging their rich store of internal content. Case studies figured prominently in the site architecture. Within days of the launch of the revised site, an oil company in Houston called PwC to say they needed environmental impact services identical to those described in the Web piece. Within six weeks, PwC had personnel on the ground in Siberia, at work on a $750,000 contract for the Houston firm. Another recommendation: nothing sells like full-motion color video! That's why television advertising outperforms print, for most consumer goods. Online, the use of Flash and streaming video can add terrific "sizzle" to the steak of your case study. Our recent text-and-multimedia case study on the Accenture Microsoft Solutions website, "World Rally Championship," shows how all of the elements can come together to maximize the impact and persuasive power of online content. Here's the Catch So what's the catch? Indeed, there is one! Quality content emerges from real world experiences and detailed information on your products, programs and services, filtered through the lens of the writer's eye. It takes a trained professional writer to craft effective Web content (or any marketing or advertising content); it's not something to be taken for granted or turned over to personnel whose main responsibility is organizing events, making PowerPoint presentations, or managing sales or client accounts. Where do you find writers who can create and shape the online content you need—keeping in mind your budget limitations, brand values, and (especially) audience preferences? Call Econiverse. We have highly experienced writers, with hundreds of published articles, case studies, newsletters, white papers, and virtually every other type of marcom content to their credit. Let us show you how compelling original content can emerge from your company's stories, and how it can be transformed into new and expanded revenue streams. Read another Econiverse article on Web marketing: Achieve "Critical Mass" in Marketing Campaigns Contact econiverse at 800-795-7144 or jwoodbury@econiverse.com for complete details. To Top