One thing that’s gained a lot of momentum in the last six months, and I believe this is the future where online advertising is going – is the rise of content amplification.
Content amplification is where you create an awesome piece of content – not like a brief blog post, but an authority piece on the subject. For example, ‘The insider’s guide to Logitech Display Clickers – Everything you need to know from how it’s made to how to point and click it’. It should have photos, perhaps even a video and it’s really the authority-type piece.
Creating good quality content is the first step (and it might only be a couple of different pieces for your market) and then next amplifying that content. To amplify, you want to drive paid media such as Facebook ads or re-marketing ads to your content (not to a sales page).
The content is what Google wants, it’s what Facebook wants and it’s really where the web is heading, more and more. If you do a good job on content amplification you can have some really good success from it.
Here’s how it works
First, you create an engaging piece of content on your blog or your website and share it on your social media channel. You always start with something on your website first and then push it out.
Then from there you buy paid media such as Facebook Ads to promote the blog post out or the authority page. People engage with your content. Some of them will take action because of course, every page you design on your website should have a primary course of action on it.
Turning Your Content into Conversions
Every page you design on your website should have a primary course of action on it. For example, a banner that says ‘Enquire Here’ or ‘Your Next steps’. On every single page of your site, you should really need to be thinking about ‘what’s the primary course of action of this page?’ and then ‘What’s the secondary course of action of this page?’ Ask yourself: ’Have I designed it in such a way to do that?’ And if not, then, again you’re leaving money on the table. With a call to action available, prospects may take up your offer, or they may leave your site. And then if they leave your site, that’s still okay, because we just re-market to them again to the next piece of content.
Know your search volume – Using content to get ahead of the curve
There are certain businesses where there’s not a lot of search volume. If you know where there is low search volume, you can use content amplification to position yourself ahead of the curve by creating content on the search topic. One of the best ways to make money on the web is to know where things are going and then to position yourself ahead of the curve before it all catches up.
Getting Started with Content Amplification
So if this is where the web’s going, why not start thinking about: ‘what are the main messages that my market really wants to know?’ And then: ‘how can I write an authority piece on each of those or a video and then start content amplification?’
It doesn’t matter if people are not searching. If you can target them, you can start to position yourself now as a thought leader, then start to cookie and re-market to them and follow them around the web and when the message is right – if you’re doing a good job, it sort of ‘sorts and sifts’ itself. A certain percentage of people will put up their hand and say, “You know what? I’d love to talk to you guys more about what you do,” and other people won’t be interested and that’s fine. That’s just the way it works.
A Content Amplification Use Case Example
A use case that I saw that I really resonated with was for a security firm in the U.S. They got permission from a bank to do what’s called an ‘ethical hack’. So an ethical hack means basically, so for example, ‘It’s signed off by the CEO, our security firm’s going to break into your bank digitally and we’re going to do within the next 30 days. We’re not going to damage anything but we are going to tell you how we got in.’ So banks want to know that stuff and they do that sort of thing all the time.
The company that did this, then turned it into this content piece later. And they figured out who were the C-level executives in the bank and then they sent a USB mouse with a virus on the USB component. They packaged it back up into the mouse container, and then sent it off to this c-level executive within the bank. The C-level executive gets it in the post and plugs it straight in thinking “Oh, wow, far out! This is awesome!” Within 24 hours, they were able to send it to the CEO. Basically what happened when it plugged in, they had set it so that it sent an email straight to the CEO saying, “You’ve been hacked. And this was the time frame,” and it had a counter of how fast it happened.
Then, by turning that into an authority piece and then amplifying that content out into that security community, (obviously they didn’t mention the name of the bank), they were able to position themselves as a thought leader and demonstrate their ability. As a result of that, by doing that content amplification, they got a heap of other businesses.
