Content may be king when it comes to marketing, but there’s still confusion about what types of content are valuable, how to create effective content and how to share it with your target audience. Throughout August, we discussed the multitude of ways to improve your customer experience by developing targeted, data-driven strategies to meet the needs of your customers. This month, we’re focusing on the content you need to create to compel them to action.
The best content grows from a desire to meet your target market’s needs, and combines quality creative with data and insights to achieve this goal. So how do you know whether or not your content is poised for success? The answer is surprisingly simple.
When your content is doing its job, it drives action, including conversions. But conversions won’t be immediate: content nurtures leads and ultimately ushers them to the sales team by delivering progressively deeper, more targeted information. Successful content can be identified by the engagement it drives, and by whether it entices audience members to explore more of your website. Do your blog’s readers follow links or CTAs to other posts or deeper site pages? How long do they spend viewing your materials?
Downloadable content should drive email signups and entice your audience to share their contact and personal information in return for the value you offer. Content posted on external channels, such as guest pieces on news sites, should drive visitors back to your own site, and hopefully encourage them to become social followers and email subscribers as well.
Remember, your cross-channel content strategy must include pieces that all work together toward a common goal of brand building and audience engagement. The most important measure is not the success of any single piece of content, but rather the success of your cross-channel content strategy as a whole. After engaging with various pieces of content at different touchpoints, do your prospects contact sales? And do they become customers?
It’s important to learn to recognize the signs that your content isn’t working. Are you gaining social followers, but none in your target audience? You may need to adjust your content niche and retarget your work. Are you gaining leads that the sales team has trouble closing? You may need to build in more “lower funnel” content to educate prospects and nurture them toward a buying decision before they are handed off to the sales team.
Other signs of weak content that can be easily identified via Google Analytics include a high bounce rate and low amount time spent on your site. If the data shows that your audience visits your content but leaves quickly, you may need to invest in more engaging, higher-quality content, or you may need to work on delivering it to the right people in the right places.
Join us on the blog this month for a deep dive into how to use content to engage your target market, and a look at why great content is the key to breaking through in the crowded online marketplace.
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