How online marketing agency, Louder Online, is getting its clients heard among the content marketing cacophony.
By Kath Walters
As every content marketer knows, it’s no good writing a brilliant blog if no one reads it.
And, with more than two million blogs published daily, according to statistics site, Worldometers, how can you help readers find your beautifully-written piece among the deluge?
That’s the question that tech-head, Aaron Agius, and his wife, Gian Clancey, a marketing professional with a blue-chip resume, answer for their clients.
The co-founders of Sydney-based online marketing agency, Louder Online, offer every service to do with online marketing – strategy, planning, editing and writing, social media et al – but their “special sauce” is their focus on marketing the content once it is published.
“Everyone focuses on writing content,” says Agius. “The huge focus for us is marketing the content. We spend a lot of time on ‘influence outreach’, and social media distribution.”
Using sites like buzzsumo.com, Louder Online identifies the influencers in their clients’ industry sector and the followers they have and then build a plan to market the content.
Eating their own dog food
Agius and Clancey are not keeping their ideas secret. Like every smart content marketer, they give away heaps of their knowledge for free, such as this 30,000 word book: The Complete Guide To Building Your Blog Audience.
Agius co-authored the book with one of the world’s content marketing legends, Neil Patel, founder of QuickSprout. “Like everyone else, I am a big fan of Neil’s,” Agius says. “When he launched his own forums, I reached out and offered to help him with moderation. Then I offered to do a joint venture on a longer piece, wrote a couple of those, and [our working relationship] went from there.”
It’s a lovely piece of positioning – and an impressive example of Agius using his own strategy to build his business.
Using content marketing to build its brand, the company has grown over the past eight years to employ 25 people, and started its expansion into the United States.
Agius has not taken on investors or venture capital; the growth has been self-funded.
A prescription for content marketing today
The problem with most content marketing is that it is not content marketing, Agius says. “People are just yelling their own message out rather than sharing and curating, engaging a community and being a valuable asset.”
Even those who are writing blogs appear to lack a coherent strategy and purpose behind their effort, Agius says. “I can analyse sites and end up wondering what the strategy was behind it. They are creating a blog with no idea of what they are trying to achieve, no calls to action, no structure or maintaining a voice through it. If they are active on social media, they are often not effective or efficient.”
One big amplification tip
Choosing the most effective channel is one of the keys to getting amplification and social media marketing right, Agius says. “It’s a matter of knowing the types of people who sit on different channels. For example, Google+ is more tech, LinkedIn is B2B,” he says.
Future
Louder Online has some blue-chip clients: its biggest is online cloud computing company, Salesforce, but its list also includes technology services company, IBM; financial service, MLC; broadcaster SBS; car makers, Kia and Ford; and insurance company, Million Dollar Woman.
The majority of its clients are medium-sized companies and above, across a range of industry sectors including education, finance, marketing and automotive.
Recently, the company signed up Canadian online accounting software company, FreshBooks, which will help sustain the company’s move into the US market with offices in New York and San Francisco as well as London.
Only a few of Louder Online’s staff are writers – most are doing “backend technical analysis and monthly reporting,” Agius says.
“We provide a positive return on investment for our clients’ online marketing spend.”