Better Content Marketing With Smart Funnels [Case Study]

Better Content MarketingThis article is part of a series of SmartFunnel case studies that provide examples of demand generation campaigns, which combine the best of inbound and outbound marketing strategies in order to generate great results.

Blogging is all the rage these days, but companies are struggling to see bottom-line results. Our “Better Content Marketing” SmartFunnel utilizes advanced retargeting techniques to extend the window of opportunity for a conversion far beyond the single blog post visit.

Case Study – Background

We assisted an industrial product distributor with the launch of a new blog. One article in particular very quickly became ranked #1 for an important keyword search and started generating significant website traffic. While the blog post contained a call-to-action to download a related case study, conversions were low. We devised a SmartFunnel that would take advantage of that traffic and increase the number of downloads.

Execution

We implemented a retargeting advertising campaign that targeted blog readers with ads on multiple networks, including the web, Facebook, and Twitter. This accomplished to objectives at the same time; It increased brand impressions and dramatically increased lead conversions for the case study.

Prospects who downloaded the case study were redirected to a sales page, which was a low-cost product directly related to the problem discussed in the original blog post and generated additional sales. Leads were also dropped into an auto-responder workflow that followed up with special product offers, also resulting in additional product sales.

Results

Relatively speaking, retargeting is much less expensive than traditional pay-per-click and has the added advantage of increasing brand impressions (as compared to search ads). This campaign gave a significant boost to overall conversion rate from a simple, 500-word blog post.

BeforeAfter
Download conversion rate7%22%
Cost per leadna$5.59
Cost per salena$40.20
Revenue$0.00$12,044
ROIna233%

SmartFunnel Template

This particular SmartFunnel has many different possible variations. The version presented in Figure 2 below depicts a workflow in which retargeted traffic is directed to a case study, but this step could easily drive them directly to a sales page as well. Here are the steps we utilized for this campaign:

  1. Blog Retargeting: Visitors who read the blog post are retargeted and shown specific display ads on the web, Facebook, and Twitter. The display ads should be company-branded and contain a call-to-action for the case study (or similar asset), which is closely related to the blog post they had visited.
  2. Case Study: The landing page for the case study also contained a retargeting pixel.
  3. Sales Page: Visitors who download the case study are redirected to a Thank You page that contains a sales message. Those who make a purchase are also shown upsell and down-sell appeals during the checkout process.
  4. Sales Retargeting: For those who do not make a purchase, the retargeting will continue to show them product ads for another 30 days. Using custom audiences, regularly update the list in order to remove customers from the retargeting.
Better Content Marketing
Sample SmartFunnel workflow to maximize the ROI from blog posts (click for larger image).

 

 

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