Committing to content quality over quantity. Striving for relevance and resonance. Ensuring tactical integration. Building credibility for all by elevating influential voices.
Marketers know the rules of the content marketing game, but the gaming environment has never been more challenging. From ad blockers and growing consumer distrust to content shock and organic search and social challenges, many marketers are wondering how they’ll ever take their strategy to the next level—let alone win the game.
Since its inception, Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) Content Marketing World conference has given content marketers the opportunity to up their game through learning and networking with the best and brightest marketing minds. And with content at the core of everything we do, TopRank Marketing has partnered with CMI since 2012 to deliver content marketing players with actionable insight and tips to power up—and build awareness around the event.
Each year, we’ve collaborated to design an integrated influencer content campaign featuring a fun theme that matches the conference theme, and we’ve seen great results. This year we pushed play on the campaign in a slightly different way.
With a theme of “Game On” for the 2018 edition of Content Marketing World, we decided to create a video game themed campaign including an anchor asset ebook, long form interviews, video animations and plenty of game-ified social content.
The results? A 258% increase in eBook views for starters—and that was just within the first 30 days.
Pushing Play on Influencer Integration to Up the Content Marketing Game
Every year, our work with Content Marketing Institute to promote the Content Marketing World conference is designed to engage event speakers to share their expertise and get them excited about the upcoming conference. At the same time, we also use the campaign to engage the marketing community in a fun way to create event awareness and engagement.
But, marketers—like all consumers—don’t want the same old digital content. They want interactivity, visual appeal, or immersive experiences—all elements video games bring to the table. So, with the goal of bringing fresh, forward-thinking tips and insights to our audience and paying homage to history, our theme was centered on the 8-bit visual style of some of the earliest video games.
With the participation of a whopping 36 leading players in the industry, we crafted an eBook that was embedded in SlideShare and served as the main anchor of the campaign.
As part of an integrated effort that tied the “game on” theme with content marketing and the CMWorld conference, the tactical mix included:
- Launch of a 48 page eBook featuring 35 industry influencer contributors: The Ultimate Guide to Conquering Content Marketing
- Blog posts announcing the eBook on both the CMI and TopRank Marketing Blog sites
- 6 long-form interviews with featured CMWorld speakers/influencers
- 2 additional blog posts featuring repurposed content from our influencers
- Organic and paid social promotion
- Influencer amplification across their social networks
- Promotion to CMI and TopRank Marketing email lists of marketers
- Custom graphics tailored to influencers and social channels
In addition, we launched five “8-bit” game themed videos that teased each of the five major themes within the Ultimate Guide eBook and highlighter each influencer with their own vintage video game avatar. This was a new addition to this year’s campaign.
What Were The Results?
Within the first 30 days, we saw nearly 15,000 SlideShare views, which was a 258% increase compared to the 2017 campaign benchmark. Now at 90 days post-launch that total is over 23,000 views and counting.
In addition, in the first 30 days, we also saw:
- More than 2,000 blog post shares amongst 8 posts.
- 29 of 36 influencers activated for an 83% amplification rate.
- More than 4,400 video views on YouTube and native social.
After 30 days an additional promotion of the 8-bit game videos were promoted on LinkedIn resulting in 10,152 additional views by business professionals – a very qualified audience for the CMWorld conference.
All of the blog post content continue to receive social shares and views on a daily basis, complemented by increasing levels of organic search traffic. The TopRank Marketing team provides ongoing promotion through recycling social shares and cross linking from related content published post-campaign.
What We’ve Learned:
After implementing influencer content marketing campaigns for 5 of the past 6 years for Content Marketing World, there have been many lessons learned. For 2018, the value of creativity, personalization and continuing promotion after the campaign launch stood out the most in terms of impact on our goals – reach and visibility to increase awareness of the event.
Once we implemented the creative 8-bit video game animations featuring influencers as 8-bit characters, we saw more emotional and enthusiastic reactions from activated influencers. Promoting the videos after the campaign launch also provide over 10,000 additional video views at a time when most campaign marketers would have moved on to the next task. The personalization of messages to influencers and showcasing them in the videos as characters also inspired more sharing and engagement.
Are You Ready to Level Up Your Content Marketing Game?
Push play on an integrated influencer content campaign or program from TopRank Marketing and contact us today for a consultation.
The post TopRank’s Influencer Content Campaign for #CMWorld Scores 258% Increase Over Benchmark appeared first on Newsroom.
