Content controls brand perception through various touchpoints, including social media, blog posts, website copy, and more. Bigcommerce ensures its content is coordinated across sales, product, support, business intelligence, and campaign teams to translate to sales. The company tracks how its content increases brand awareness, readership, and the conversion of readers into leads.

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Content Controls the Brand
An Inside Out Look at a Content
Marketer’s Many Levels
Tracey Wallace
Managing Editor, Bigcommerce

2. 1. Content Controls Brand Perception
2. The Various Branded Content Touch Points
3. How Bigcommerce Pulls it All Together

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“At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you said
or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou
Perception is Your Brand

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• 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated
• 80% of companies say they deliver “superior” customer service
• 8% of people think these same companies deliver “superior” customer service
• Americans tell an average of 9 people about good experience, and tell 16 (nearly 2x more)
people about poor experiences
And the stats agree with her…

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Branded content on publisher sites

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• What you say matters
• How well you say it matters
• And how well you prove that what you say is true, honest and human matters
Content is your brand, because customer perception is your brand – and customer perception
is shaped most significantly by your content.
How not to be a stalker…

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• Tweets
• Blog posts
• Decks
• Website copy
• Sales scripts
Everything is content.
What is content?

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Person Brand
You don’t have to be perfect – You do have to
be strategic

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HubSpot does this well…

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Bigcommerce Content: Old v. New

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2 The Various Branded Content
Touch Points

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And that involves the work of many different
teams:
• Sales
• Product
• Support
• BI
• Campaigns
Content must translate to sales…

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Content + Sales
“Social selling: When salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects.
Salespeople will provide value by answering prospect questions and offering thoughtful
content until the prospect is ready to buy.”

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Content + Sales
Convince them with data:
• 84% of B2B executives source social media to make purchase decisions
• 56% of B2B tech buyers research products on social, 54% use it to get answers from
vendor representatives
• Customers who are more engaged with a company's social media channels spend up to
40% more than other customers

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Content + Sales
Here’s a quick outline of what we are doing:
• Encouraging the sales team to set up time with the content/or social teams
– We’ll show them how to use the blog to find content they need, and how to request content they can’t find for
creation to help close deals
• Using Zapier to automatically setup RSS feed to Tweet posts, so all sales team members
are sharing out our content – without having to do any additional work
• Teaching them how to build their personal brands, making social selling relevant for them
within their own careers, not just their time at Bigcommerce

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Content + Sales

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Content + Product

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Content + Product
Here’s how we think through this to make it the most effective:
• Have product managers write the posts, with editing help from content team
• PMs will then answer and respond to any and all comments, which keeps them in the loop
as far as customer concerns and applause
• Goal is to publish anywhere from 2-5x per week – highlighting the work being done by the
product team in order to make sure our customers feel they have ample insight and that
the BC ball is consistently rolling
• Publish non-product news post for pre-seeding and post-explanation on how to use new
product offering
– We use partner teams to help us do this – Jirafe, Boostable, Square, Paypal, etc.

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Content + Product

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Content + Support

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Content + Support
This content is separate from our blog for a couple reasons:
1. We want our blog to be a “choose” platform. You come to us for thought leadership, for
updates about product and for ecommerce news and trends.
2. Our support is “use” content. It goes in depth about how to use the platform most
efficiently, and is written by expert, in-house team members who know the backend like
the back of their hand. Most of these authors runs their own stores on Bigcommerce, so
they are truly platform experts.

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Content + Support

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Content + BI

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Content + BI

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Content + BI

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Content + Campaigns
A content marketer must be able to turn content readers into leads. And one of the best way
to do that is through campaigns.

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Content + Campaigns

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Tracking: Content to Leads
Content marketing is measured by:
• Brand awareness
– Trackmaven
• Readership and subscriptions
– Google Analytics
• Content to leads
– BI + GA
So far in 2015, we’ve increase content to leads 133%

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Thank you!
Content team of one,
supported by many:
• Social media, sales liaison: @leahspector
• PMs + PMMs: @adellearcher,
@michaelburk @derrekpearson,
@michaelchorazak
• Support: @kateyferenzi
• BI intermediaries (also our PR team):
@lizkelley, @jyarbrough
• Campaigns team: @lizzie_liz30, @neanorth
• Events team: @m_obrien1
• Orchestrator: @cwinterbg
Tracey.Wallace@bigcommerce.com, @tracewall