Content marketing is most commonly associated with KPIs such as brand awareness and traffic to site, but experienced marketers are driving actions at all stages of the funnel. The content tech (ConTech) space is getting more and more sophisticated and targeting tools which were commonly associated with the display space are now being used very effectively with content.
Marketers love the idea of reaching those who have previously visited their website but they also really want to expand on this and leverage other types of data, specifically audience segments from their data management platforms (DMP) audiences.
Indeed, as eMarketer indicates, marketers are more excited than ever about optimising their digital marketing by leveraging 1st party data, with 82% of them planning to increase their usage of 1st party data this year.
US home furnishing retailer One Kings Lane did just this and consequently reduced its acquisition cost by 50%!
In 2015 One Kings Lane decided to enhance their content marketing effort by promoting their Style Guide, an online magazine providing style inspiration from home decor experts in a rich digital storytelling format. Content is important to One Kings Lane and a point of pride.
“For us, the blog is the best representation of our brand. It’s a pride for us as a company that our editorial voice is so strong, and it’s important for us that this experience be a quality moment because of the thoughtfulness and quality of the writing and images,” says associate marketing manager Julie Zischke.
However content needs to also deliver results and like most businesses, One Kings Lane looked to optimise the performance of every dollar spent on advertising by ensuring they were targeting the right audience; those most likely to purchase their home decor offering.
So how does targeting work ? One Kings Lane partnered with Outbrain, and through our Custom Audiences tool we were able to target users who had already expressed interest in the brand by having visited onekingslane.com. These users then received content recommendation from One Kings Lane across sites such a Vogue and the New York Post. One Kings Lane continually refreshed their promoted content selection to ensure this target group received exposure to the full array of home decor offerings on hand.
Custom Audiences empowers marketers to reach consumers in different stages of their journey with the right type of content. Marketers can create unique audience segments for different types of consumers and accordingly target them with customised content.
For example:
- Re-engage past customers with an awareness message to stay top-of-mind
- Target newsletter subscribers with earned media to further drive trust and engagement
- Target people who browsed the marketer’s products with a transactional message
Using Outbrain’s Custom Audiences One Kings Lane were able to drive significant performance improvements through their content. Compared to previous campaigns not using Custom Audiences, this campaign reduced cost per acquisition by 50%, achieved a 4x increase in the conversion rate and increased the click-through rate by 1.5x.
For more Content Marketing tips & insights visit the Outbrain Blog
This advertisement feature is brought to you by Outbrain, sponsors of the Guardian Media & Tech Network’s Publishing and Platforms hub
