Owned Media - Part II

Content Strategy

We will focus on the third pillar of SEO: content. Content strategy and content optimization are critical to ensure that your site is relevant to consumers’ searches. It also allows you to engage customers with compelling stories. Content can take many forms—images, videos, or text—and can appear in various channels, such as websites, blogs, white papers, and social media. We will discuss the fundamentals of content strategy and then show how OOFOS formulated and executed its content strategy.

Content is key when it comes to SEO and owned media more generally. This is why developing a content strategy is critical for making effective use of these techniques. To develop an effective content strategy, you should start by asking these six questions.

First, who will be reading or watching your content? In other words, who is your target audience? For example, if OOFOS wants to appeal to young Workout Warriors, its content might be very different than it would be if its target audience is older consumers who suffer from chronic foot pain.

Second, what problem are you trying to solve for consumers? In other words, what might your target customers be searching for? For OOFOS, Workout Warriors may be looking for a comfort or a recovery shoe after an intense workout. Or they may be looking for a shoe while recovering from an injury. These keywords are critical for you to know, and we will return to them shortly.

Third, what makes you unique? Remember that your competitors are also trying to attract your target customers. Therefore, your content should highlight your unique value proposition. This is your chance to convince potential customers to consider your product. For example, OOFOS may decide to highlight its unique OOfoam technology that makes it a superior "recovery" shoe.

Fourth, what should be the format and nature of content? The content could be a blog post, a description on your website, a video, a podcast, an image, or a testimonial. The options are numerous, and the choice depends on the format that best allows you to tell your story and is most suitable for your target customer. For example, Home Depot, a hardware store, creates how-to videos to educate their customers on home repair without overtly pushing them to buy from the store. Similarly, a medical insurance company may publish white papers to educate employees on medical insurance options after they retire.

Fifth, on which channels do you plan to publish or distribute your content? The content may reside on your website, on your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, or other channels. This choice depends both on the format of the content as well as on where your target customers are likely to visit most often.

Sixth, how will you refresh, measure, and optimize your content? In this step, you need to decide how often you should refresh your content, how you measure its effectiveness, and how you optimize the content over time. The frequency with which you refresh your content depends on the nature of your business. For example, a tax software company may want to update its content every time there is a change in the tax policy. Companies like Adobe provide software to create and measure the effectiveness of your content. These might include the number of monthly viewers, number of downloads of your white paper, number of clicks, et cetera. Content optimization also requires making changes to the content to improve its effectiveness on relevant metrics. This often requires frequent testing.

In the end, content strategy is a combination of art and science. And your content needs to be closely tied to your overall marketing strategy, in particular your target audience and value proposition. One final point to note is that the content you produce will be useful not only for your owned media properties, but for paid and earned media as well - a topic that we'll discuss later.

Let’s review the steps for an effective content strategy. Let’s say that e.l.f. Cosmetics, whom you met earlier, wants to pursue an owned media strategy. In this example, e.l.f. will need to think about the content strategy for this campaign.

• Who will be experiencing the content?
  • Gen Z makeup enthusiasts
• What might your target customers be searching for?
  • Searching for a makeup tutorial
• What makes you unique?
  • Premium quality at affordable prices
• What should the format of the content be?
  • A social media video
• What channel(s) should the content appear on?
  • The e.l.f. TikTok page
• How will you refresh, measure, and optimize content?
  • Track likes and views; produce similar content if popular

The first two steps of content strategy involve deciding your target segment and identifying what your target customers are looking for during their search process. The choice of target segment is a strategic decision that a company should make even before it embarks on digital marketing and owned media strategy. For example, recall that OOFOS wants to focus on Workout Warriors.

Next, keyword research becomes critical to find what these target customers are looking for that may form the basis for your content. You saw the result of this research in the Duckworth example, where Duckworth determined that keywords “merino wool” were a priority.

Here is Rodrigo discussing keyword research.

One of the predecessors to writing and creating content on the web is keyword research. And it's an incredibly important first step because you need to know what people are searching for. If there's an opportunity to generate web traffic, it has to be substantial because you could ultimately convert those visitors into revenue or into leads for a business. But if the size isn't there, it really may not be worth the investment and the time that it takes to create the content.

Keyword research is a very large process and discipline in itself. But one of the best ways to start with keyword research is to think of a funnel. And in marketing, we think of marketing funnels. Well, the same applies to keywords.

At the very top of the funnel, you have your broader terms. Maybe it's "vacation," "family vacation," or "trip ideas for families." As you move down the funnel, you begin to pre-qualify yourself. You may type in something like "family vacations to Mexico with a four-year-old" or some other type of syntax in the query itself that identifies you as a user, as a business, or as someone with a family, the destination you want to go, et cetera.

As you move further, you start to show purchase intent. So maybe it's things like "near me," "last minute," "deals," or maybe you type in a brand like Orbitz, et cetera. But as you move to more specific keywords—and, generally, not always, but generally—the keywords go from short, maybe one or two words at the top of the funnel, to very long phrases as you move down.

Generally speaking, in SEO, you should start at the bottom and work your way to the top. The top of the funnel is generally much, exponentially, more competitive than the bottom of the funnel because at the very top of the funnel, everyone's trying to go for the volume. That's where the majority of the searches are. At the very bottom of the funnel, it gets narrower as you go down. The volume isn't as high, but the conversion rates can be exponentially higher at the bottom than at the top.

Whether you start at the top of the funnel or the bottom of the funnel doesn't necessarily vary by the company size, but it can vary based on the nature of your business. For example, there are certain keywords that are very agnostic to enterprise versus a small business.

For instance, a small business may only be able to handle a certain amount—maybe it only has two sales reps and a very simple website and can only handle a certain amount of business. I know we like to think that some companies can handle any size of business—even if a large enterprise comes in as a lead, they can handle that. But many can't.

For a small business like that, there could be search terms like "insurance software." So "insurance software" is a keyword that could be optimized by a very large insurance software company and a very small insurance software company. And oftentimes, you have to be a little bit more selective in terms of which terms to target and try to avoid those ambiguous terms that could apply to both.

Oftentimes, with SEO, a very common challenge is bringing in the wrong kind of traffic. So a small company or a large company can do an incredible job of writing content, ranking the content, and everything else in that CIRCLE framework to bring in web traffic, only to find out that only 2% of those visits that come from that term "insurance software" are actually qualified for their business.

Rodrigo described the process of keyword research as akin to the marketing funnel. At the top are short, high-volume phrases, whereas the bottom of the “funnel” consists of lower volume, longer phrases with higher conversion rates.

Now let’s hear from Kate Laliberte about how OOFOS identifies keywords for content creation.

So we want to make sure we're hitting the keywords that resonate with customers. A customer doesn't necessarily go in search—if they don't know OOFOS, they're not going to search and Google for OOFOS recovery sandals. They're going to search for something like recovery clogs for nurses.

What we need to do is understand what keywords people are searching for and then optimize our site through content, through blog posts, through the stories that we're telling, the way we talk about our product, the way we talk about our technology. And what we're trying to do is making sure all our content, when a search engine looks at it, says, yeah, this is relevant. This is the right content for someone who's looking for recovery clogs for nurses.

So we first have to put all those content pieces onto the website. When we look at the things that are most relevant for us, we're really honing in on the "recovery" segment. So how do we own "recovery?" That's been our first step. Recovery sandals, recovery clogs, recovery boots, recovery shoes for nurses, shoes to wear after a workout to recover. So we're looking at all pieces of, How many ways can they say "recovery?" How can they search for "recovery?" And that's where we're really trying to own that from an SEO perspective. So those are the terms that we're honing in on.

When we look at some of the efforts we've put in year over year, what we're tracking with those relevant terms is, How much higher can we get in Google Search results? So, for example, are we on page one, page two, page three? We obviously want to move as close to page one as we can get. And then, on page one, are we in spots one through three? Are we in spots four through ten? All of our efforts are to get to page one, spots one through three.

And when we look at that year over year, some of the efforts we've done in this focus, we have 130% increase in the amount of terms showing up on page one in positions one through three. So it's just putting that effort in to say, OK, what do we want to own? You have to look at in the search engines, What are people searching for? You want to optimize for the right phrases.

I think then in terms of media, we also have focused on what's our blog strategy? How do we get more content out there? How do we refresh older blogs so that they stay relevant and there's more interaction with them? If other sites are linking to our blogs, that gives us more relevance in search engines as well. So there is a strategy of, What's the content we're putting out in the blog?

Remember that at the awareness stage, OOFOS is still trying to educate consumers who may not be aware of the active “recovery” category. For the top of the funnel, Kate may want to think about keywords like “post-workout shoes,” “comfy shoes,” or “recovery shoes.” In the consideration phase, consumers may already be aware of “active recovery” and “recovery” shoes, so good possibilities here could be “best recovery shoes.” Finally, consumers who are closest to conversion may use more direct language in their searches, for example, “OOFOS shoes sale.”

The third and the fourth steps of content strategy require you to decide on your unique value proposition and the form and nature of the content that would appeal to your target customers. Here is Darren Brown, OOFOS’s Head of Marketing, explaining how OOFOS thinks about these two steps.

So when I think about content creation from an owned media perspective, I mean, the first question we have to answer when you go to look at something that you're going to put in the market is at what level is the consumer going to interact with it. Is it going to be one of the first touch points they have, is it going to be a mid-funnel touch point, or is the goal you're hoping to achieve with said content to create a transaction or conversion? There's different types of content that fit each one of those parts of the consumer journey.

So if you're talking about the top of the funnel, we have three pretty strategic, key pillars that we talk about in creative. It starts with active "recovery." We're unique in that we're not just building a brand within a known category. We're creating an entirely new category. We're pioneering a space that people have to be educated on to begin with. So sometimes, you find yourself between this rock and a hard place of what comes first, the category or the brand. The reality is we have to build both simultaneously, so looking at how we balance that.

The second pillar is OOfoam technology. We can't talk about it enough because it really is what differentiates us. It's also the piece that people can't copy. It's the piece that is unique to us, that is also our foundation for what creates such a meaningful impact for the consumer.

Then the third part is authentic testimonial and authentic consumer voice. We feel as we get to a point where the brand is more trusted and more well-known, we'll be able to implement and insert the brand voice more often. We also find that we can insert the brand voice more often when we move lower down the funnel and people already have an introduction to us. The brand's voice can only be as strong as what people say about the brand, at least at the highest level when you're introducing something for the first time. So we've leaned into that. Because the other thing that also does is it takes one of our brand values, which is experiential, and it brings it into a communicative space. If you can communicate somebody else's experience with the product, we found that there's a lot of value in that because people can relate to that.

So at the highest level, we've leaned into those three pillars, which is going back to active "recovery," building our category. It's talking about OOfoam technology as our differentiator. Then it's telling those stories through validated communicated experiences of other consumers, some of our partners, et cetera.

As you move further down the funnel, education becomes really important. You've got to dive deeper into what our technology is doing, how it's going to benefit their body. You have to start to actually get a little bit more customized in your communication. You've got to build flows pertaining to what customer is coming into the brand, coming into the funnel, what journey they might be looking for.

Darren cited three pillars for OOFOS’s content strategy—building the “recovery” category and associating the OOFOS brand with it, highlighting OOFOAM technology to differentiate OOFOS from competitors, and using authentic testimonials. The company wants to lean heavily on real customers to communicate the value of the product rather than relying on the OOFOS brand, especially while the OOFOS brand is still establishing itself. Essentially, even though OOFOS is using its own channels to communicate, it is working hard to emphasize the customer voice in its creative content, rather than the company itself.

As you know, many of these authentic testimonials come from mOOvers—typically, professional athletes who have personally benefited from the product. What are some other possible customer categories OOFOS could tap for testimonials?

In addition to the mOOvers, Darren has also found that another kind of authentic testimonial has resonated with OOFOS’s target audience.

There's a study that was done that asked people who they trust. And so what that study revealed is that there might be influencers out there who pitch this product or that product, athletes at a high level just, in general, people see as influencers in the world, et cetera. And what it really came down to was people trust experts, people who truly have a skill set or an expertise that can talk to a subject matter. And they also trust other people like themselves.

And so when I talk about validating the product, I want to put those people in front of interested consumers. I want to put somebody who looks like them who they can relate to, who sounds like them, who's been through the same experiences as them. I want to put them in front of them. They don't have to be some high-profile celebrity, but they need to see themselves benefiting the same way that fellow consumer benefited, or they need to believe that who we're putting in front of them can be trustworthy, right, somebody with medical certification, somebody who's got years of experience. That's where I think for us, gaining validation through education of the research via the experts in the space or other consumers has really worked well for our brand.

The variance we find in the people we leverage to validate the product definitely does speak a little bit to the consumer state when they get introduced to the brand. What I think is really interesting that we've been able to find is there's a happy middle ground that talks to a wide swath of consumers that comes from a centralized point. So if you think about sports performance and sports medicine professionals as kind of this dual role expert and validator in the space, you can talk to a physical therapist who works with high-level athletes who might also work with an aging man or woman who just had a hip replacement, right. And that person is going to be just as important, going to be just as much a reference point, for each of those individuals, whether it's a first baseman playing for the hometown team or it's your neighbor who's recovering from an acute surgery. They may end up seeing the exact same physical therapist.

So for us, when we look at people who can validate the brand, we also want to look at people who can speak to a wide array of consumers because it allows us to be broader without having to put a ton of messages, a ton of content necessarily out into the market.

The fifth step of content strategy is to choose the channels where you want to publish or distribute your content, such as company websites or social media properties.

Let’s learn briefly from Kate Laliberte about which social media channels OOFOS prioritizes for its content.

I think when we look at the social media channels that we're using, it's going to constantly be changing and evolving. If we look at really the backbone of our social programs at this point in time, it's Facebook and Instagram, primarily. We also are on Pinterest. We're on Twitter. We're on TikTok. We don't have as much following there. And I think we're also still trying to figure out what's the best strategy and content for the consumers on those channels.

So really, if you look at the backbone, I would say Facebook and Instagram, but it's constantly evolving. People are moving from one platform to platform. New platforms are emerging. So we try to stay on top of that to see what's the next thing that we should be looking at. And it's hard because in social media, it comes up really quickly. And it might be something that once the new social platform comes up, you have to react. You have to understand how they're serving content. You have to understand how they're targeting customers. So we just always have to be on our toes in that area because I feel like that's the landscape that changes most frequently.

The sixth and last step of content strategy is to refresh, measure, and optimize content. Darren and Kate need to know if OOFOS’s approach to organic social is working and if the company is effectively engaging its consumers and differentiating itself from the competition.

What metrics do you think OOFOS should be tracking to know whether it’s been successful?

Now we will turn to Kate to learn about how she’ll know whether OOFOS’s organic social is delivering results. The term “organic social” refers to content posted on a company’s own social media sites that is experienced by the brand’s followers. This strategy is in contrast to “paid social” which refers to the paid advertisements that brands can place on platforms such as Instagram.

So when we're looking at our organic social and the metrics that we're tracking, we're really seeing what's our reach with our posts each week? How many people are engaging with our posts? How much traffic are we driving from organic social over to the website? How much revenue are we generating? What's our brand sentiment on social?

So we look at all of those things. We want people engaging with the stories that we're telling, with the content that we're sharing with them. We want to see more and more reach because if you engage with it, then in the social circles, your friends on that social platform are going to see it. If they engage with it, it just continues to grow. So that reach is something that we're really looking at of what's the content that reaches the highest percentage of customers?

Engaging Consumers through Email Marketing

We’ve examined some important dimensions of owned media, including search engine optimization and content strategy. To conclude our exploration of owned media, we will turn to another important dimension: email marketing.

You may be quite familiar with marketing emails; chances are you have many in your inbox right now.

Before the digital era, companies executed owned media through analog channels like regular mail. The invention of the internet allowed email marketing to take off, and it has quickly established itself as an essential tool for marketers.

Email marketing can have a variety of goals, but is commonly thought of by marketers as an important channel to build relationships and educate prospective and existing customers (often through personalized email content).

Email allows your audience to receive more information as its members consider your brand, and it gives them more opportunities to purchase.

Although often thought of as a tactic suited for customer engagement, email can be appropriate for customer acquisition as well.

According to a study done by MailChimp, the average click-through rate (CTR) for email marketing across industries was 2.91% in 2022. Industries that had some of the highest email CTRs include Government (3.99%), Media and Publishing (4.62%), Home and Garden (3.03%), and Hobbies (5.01%). These are relatively high numbers compared to the typical display ads that we discussed before.

Here is Kate with an overview of OOFOS’s email marketing program. Keep in mind that OOFOS’s email marketing program is used to target both existing and new customers.

So when we think about our email marketing, we've had great success over the past year, even just growing our email base and the list of active customers that are receiving our emails. Again, we know exactly who we're speaking to because these are people who have signed up for our emails. So we know who we're talking to. We control everything about the creative and the content that we're sending to them.

We really use that list to build a relationship with them, provide them with content that's going to position us as an expert in our field, and build trust with them. Our customers are engaging with our emails—they're not just sitting in the inbox or getting deleted. We have a very low unsubscribe rate. So as long as we keep giving those customers relevant content, they engage more with the brand. This is very important to us.

When we're doing email, we can target in different ways. For example, if we’re sending an email about a boot, we can specifically target people who purchased boots previously. We can focus on them that way. Additionally, with our email list, we can see their behavior on the site. If they’ve visited the site, looked at a product, but didn’t purchase, we can send them a follow-up email saying, "Hey, we saw you looking at this. Come back. These could be selling out quickly. These could be great for you."

This allows us to do very specific targeting based on the actions they've taken, which we can't always do with customers from other channels.

Let’s turn back to Kate once more to learn about how OOFOS is thinking about expanding its email content beyond product launch announcements.

I think there's still a lot we can do in terms of evolving the content. We're still a little too focused on product launch after product launch. While we might have promotional events going on, we now have our mOOvers campaigns, which give us additional content outside of just products. These campaigns highlight real-life scenarios of professional athletes or everyday people using our product and benefiting from it.

If we provide content that talks about the technology, explains why it's good for them, and demonstrates our expertise in that area, we could move higher in the funnel to the mid-funnel engagement phase. This is what builds trust with the consumer. They're learning about us, hearing about our technology, and understanding its benefits. Over time, this helps take them further down the funnel until they decide, "OK, I've heard these stories. I've seen the content. I understand the technology."

One of our best emails last year was right after the new year. It focused on resolutions for the year and explained how OOFOS could fit into those resolutions, helping customers as they start their journey into the new year.

In terms of metrics, the open and click rates we get are more than double the industry standard for our segment. So we know our audience is engaging with us. This shows we can produce more content as long as it is relevant and interesting to them. I believe we have an opportunity to continue evolving our content, telling more of our story, and highlighting our technology to deepen our connection with consumers.

The email marketing efforts that Kate has described thus far are broadly focused. Going forward, she hopes to see OOFOS incorporate more targeted, personalized email campaigns alongside those broader campaigns.

I think there are areas we can focus on to optimize our email program. We already have broad marketing emails going out to over 500,000 email customers multiple times per week. These emails are effective at reaching a large audience and generating revenue, but they tend to be more generalized, targeting a wide group of people.

Where we can really optimize is by digging deeper into customer behaviors and tailoring content to their specific actions. For example, if we notice a customer has engaged with the site by looking at a product, abandoned the site after browsing, or started the checkout process but didn’t complete it, we can follow up with targeted messages. These more personalized emails have lower send rates but significantly higher returns in terms of revenue per email because they feel directly relevant to the customer’s behavior.

It’s not just about sending them an email about a new product or color they might not care about. It’s about making those emails targeted and relevant based on what they’re doing. You need to balance both approaches. On the one hand, you have a broad marketing program that speaks to a large set of customers, highlighting products and the company. On the other hand, you also need to send targeted, behavior-specific emails to make the communication feel more personal and relevant to each consumer.

As with any marketing channel, email marketing can be very effective when used properly in the right context.

Email marketing serves multiple purposes across the customer journey, targeting both existing customers and prospects. Companies often encourage prospective customers to share their emails by offering incentives like discounts, exclusive content, or information on topics of interest. For instance, Duckworth provided website visitors a discount in exchange for their email addresses, effectively using this tactic to generate leads at the top of the funnel.

Email marketing is also effective for re-engaging consumers who abandoned their carts and for encouraging repeat purchases from existing customers. Unlike paid media, emails are cost-effective because they allow companies to directly reach their audience without paying for ad placements. As an owned media channel, email marketing provides complete control over the message content, format, and timing.

Marketing emails can serve diverse goals, such as announcing product launches, promoting sales, showcasing expertise to build trust, or providing personalized recommendations. For example, a real estate company might send an email linking to a blog post on real estate trends, while a streaming service might recommend shows based on a user's viewing history.

Effective email marketing often includes:

• Incentives: Offering discounts, exclusive content, or access to gated resources.
• Personalization: Tailoring content based on user behavior, such as abandoned carts or past purchases.
• Calls to Action (CTA): Prompts that guide readers toward a specific action, like visiting a sale page or exploring recommended products.
• Catchy Subject Lines: Essential for grabbing attention in cluttered inboxes.

Email marketing is a powerful tool for customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. By combining strategic incentives, relevant content, and clear CTAs, companies can build meaningful relationships with their customers while driving conversions and loyalty.

At this point, we have covered how to acquire customers through owned media. Let’s take a minute to summarize what we’ve learned before we move on to learn about acquiring customers through earned media.

Digital marketing strategies for customer acquisition consist of three main components: paid media, owned media, and earned media. So far, we focused on the first two.

Paid Media
Paid media involves outbound marketing, where firms actively reach out to consumers to persuade them to buy their product. Examples include search ads, display ads, and sponsored social media content. While effective for driving short-term sales and measurable results, it can be costly and relies heavily on budget allocation.

Owned Media
Owned media, or inbound marketing, takes a different approach. Instead of directly reaching out, companies create relevant and compelling content on their platforms, such as websites, blogs, and social media pages. To help their target audience discover this content, firms optimize it using Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Advantages of Owned Media

1. Cost Efficiency: Owned media is often less expensive than paid media, making it attractive for long-term strategies.
2. Content Control: Companies have full control over the content and messaging, allowing for consistent brand representation.
3. Brand Building: It helps build a company’s brand identity and foster deeper consumer relationships by providing valuable and engaging content.

In the next set of articles, we'll dive into the final component of customer acquisition, earned media, to complete the framework.