What’s easy to overlook, though, is that the process of getting to know your audience can lead you to the unexpected. 2018 Content Marketer of the Year finalist Randi Bartelmie, now Symantec Corp.’s director of content marketing, has spent the last five years building a content operation and, ultimately, a content platform, around a key insight about the company’s customers. “We got to the point that our marketing campaigns were always about giving people 50 or 70% off our products,” she says. Although the piece didn’t generate downloads, all revenue attribution pointed to the e-book offer. With the help of Norton’s SEO staff, Randi and the team organized content around top search terms in the new location, and the Internet Security Center took shape. The move helped content load faster, enabled better use of videos and infographics, and improved conversions by giving visitors easy paths to product pages. Her team includes: Editor-in-chief Four writers Strategist/optimizer, who makes sure links aren’t broken and runs tests on banners, images, and headlines A simple strategy: Answer questions, especially when answers are needed most Randi and team approach the Internet Security Center with a simple mission: to help people understand digital security and how they can better protect themselves and their families. Though she can’t share numbers, this combination of content generated enough response to catch the attention of other internal teams. Some requests consist of pieces that can be planned and slotted into their quarterly work. To find out live who is named the 2018 Content Marketer of the Year (and lots of things to help your content marketing program), register today for Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Editor’s note: Randi Bartelmie is a finalist for 2018 Content Marketer of the Year. We’re sharing insights from all CMY finalists in this blog before the winner is announced at Content Marketing World this September.
Know your audience. That mantra is repeated in nearly every content and marketing discipline.
What’s easy to overlook, though, is that the process of getting to know your audience can lead you to the unexpected. And that can take your strategies in new directions.
Of course, recognizing the discoveries is one thing. Capitalizing on them is a longer process.
2018 Content Marketer of the Year finalist Randi Bartelmie, now Symantec Corp.’s director of content marketing, has spent the last five years building a content operation and, ultimately, a content platform, around a key insight about the company’s customers.
Through trial and error, Randi and her team hit on a content formula that works for the audience. They also doubled unique visitors to a key property compared to the previous year and attracted support – and even budget – from other departments at the security software company.
These lessons from her journey stand as reminders of what it takes to succeed with content.
Think beyond campaigns
Randi didn’t start out in the content world. She joined Symantec’s consumer business in a sales role in 2007. Once she moved into marketing, she found herself engrossed in campaigns.
There, she quickly saw the limits of a campaign model that lacked supporting content.
“We got to the point that our marketing campaigns were always about giving people 50 or 70% off our products,” she says.
During the 2013 holiday season, Randi had the idea to focus a campaign on the need for better device security when shopping online. She and her team introduced content, but it was a secondary thought in the campaign.
Content wouldn’t take a back seat for long. During focus groups for a new product, Randi noticed how the family-oriented features piqued participants’ interest. They wanted to know how to track their kids, see what they were looking at, at what time, and for how long.
That gave her the spark of an idea: Instead of focusing on product features and discounts, her team would create a family safety e-book to get consumers’ attention.
Using some undesignated money in her budget, she hired an outside agency to create the piece. The response to the gated e-book was, in her word, awful. “No one wanted to give up their email for it,” she says. Even so, its performance exceeded expectations in one crucial measure: revenue.
Although the piece didn’t generate downloads, all revenue attribution pointed to the e-book offer. And that was all the convincing the company needed.
“Not only did it spark people to say that we needed to create more content, they saw it needed to be a top priority,” Randi says.
The insight from the e-book project proved that offering content, not discounts, could help Symantec (and its consumer brand Norton) get people to engage and, ultimately, buy from them. And it would ultimately lead Randi to help develop the Internet Security Center in 2016, a major traffic driver for Norton.com.
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