Content Experience: Introduction for Beginners

Welcome to our introductory issue of the Content Experience Explainer Series.

We’re kicking it off with a short story about why marketers should care about content experience.

TL/DR: Not caring about the content experience is like saying ‘we don’t care about customer experience’. And of course, that's an impossibility in this day and age. (Although some customers may disagree!). Read on to see how customer-centric brands that get this are scoring in the experience economy!

CONTENT THAT CONNECTS: WHY INFLUENCER MARKETING IS THE FUTURE OF GEN Z ENGAGEMENT

Gen Z is a business opportunity you can’t afford to miss. As 40% of the population commanding upwards of $40 billion in spending power, modern marketers need to build compelling strategies to engage with Gen Z.

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Here’s is a familiar story, starring…you, dear reader, as both buyer and seller.

First, put on your B2B buyer hat.

You are looking to buy a new Search tool for your marketing team. The first thing you do is (let's be honest) Google some terms around ‘best search tools for SMBs’ or something like that. A bunch of content comes up. Typically a combination of explainer type content, list-based articles (top 10 search tools), community conversations (questions on Quora or similar) and branded content (vendors who may have paid/ organic search results show up). You also probably ask others about their experiences and recommendations - perhaps on social media, perhaps to known colleagues.

And then, your journey begins. Some brands start to catch your eye (repeated exposure still works; but good, relevant content works even better!), and as you read eBooks and white papers and reviews and forum discussions, your awareness levels keep evolving.

Next, you visit some of the websites of brands you think are possible better fits for your context. What happens next - the experience you have - will be the outcome of brand’s investment in content.

Before we see how it all turns out, let’s break down what happened this far in your search for the best Search tool.

Many brands that may be great Search tools never even entered your consideration set, because you simply didn't see their name pop up or pop up often enough, at the time when you were actively seeking information. Too bad. These brands didn't even start content creation, and if they did, they were poorly optimized, living in some island somewhere where no one can discover them.

Some Brands did pop up often enough and with good enough content. You fill in a few landing page forms and download some resources. You even visit their site, where they tell you more about their product, the solution, the team behind it, offer several great resources to learn more, and invite you to check out pricing plans.

Nothing wrong with that - in most cases it should serve the purpose - assuming of course, you had the time to check out multiple websites and search multiple resources to find what you need. Unlikely.  These brands did create good content, they even optimized them well for organic discoverability - but, unfortunately, didn't follow through with an engaging enough experience to keep you interested through your journey.

But one of the brands did go beyond creation and optimization. Let's call it Brand X. When you filled in their landing page form (which was surprisingly smooth), they didn't just identify you, they tried to understand you and build a personalized stream of engaging content just for you.

The website content, follow-up emails, social outreach and even ads seem tailored to your context. Content around why SMBs need an in-house Search tool, what outcomes they can expect, how they can measure success and examples of how peers are getting it right...you get the drift.

Its almost as if the brand was recommending a steady stream of exactly the kind of content you needed at each stage of your buying journey, without ever being irrelevant or pushy; and making it easy for you to consume it; perhaps even act on it.

You find it's easy to explore, discover, consume and share this content - irrespective of which device you use or platform you access it on. Bingo. This brand got it right, because they went beyond content and focused on the journey and experience. Your journey and your experience.

Now, let's think about what these brands did at the back end. (Quick, put on your marketer hat now!)

The first group just didn't invest in an authentic effort to address prospect needs with content. Perhaps they don’t need to generate leads at scale; or maybe they have other ways to reach and engage their prospects that we don’t know about yet. Let us leave them to it for now.

The second group probably focused on things like content creation and distribution, but missed out on organizing and personalizing content in a manner that is designed to keep the prospect engaged and moving deeper into their journey. They are possibly happy with their Search rankings and even their traffic and download numbers look healthy. But because they are focused on each piece of content as a separate entity with its own goals, they fail to engage the prospect purposefully through the journey. So close and yet so far.

Brand X did create content, but not a lot of disjointed pieces around an editorial calendar. Instead, they built a well-thought-out ‘stream’ of content around the buyer’s - your - buying journey.

They did optimize content for easy discoverability outside of their sites, but their end goal was not just to drive traffic to their site or collect a lot of email Ids. Their goal was to keep the traffic that came to their site meaningfully engaged with both - personalized content and timely contact.

For this, they invested in content organization - so prospects easily discover more relevant content at their convenience; and distribution - to amplify relevant content across the platforms and channels where the prospect lives.

They also put in place robust integration with marketing automation, to continue nurturing this personal relationship purposefully via email and timely offers tailored to prospect needs at each stage of the journey.

Finally, they invested in intelligent tools to make each subsequent interaction even more contextual and personal, to help the prospect make a better- and possibly faster- decision.

Instead of focusing only on metrics for each content asset or campaign ROI; they also focused on measuring the volume, frequency and depth of engagement and the resulting business outcomes in terms of lead conversion.

With such aggregated data, they are also now able to understand, at a macro level, which content paths drive the best outcomes for different personas, and keep refining both - the stream of content served up, and the actual ease of accessing and consuming the content. In other words, the content experience.

And now, its time to write your own story...

If you’d rather be the kind of marketer you wished your vendors were (like brand X), then that's one good reason to start thinking about content from an ‘experience’ approach rather than a ‘marketing’ approach.

And in the rest of this 6 part series, we’ will delve deep into every aspect of just how you can do that in the most efficient and effective way possible.

In subsequent issues, we’re getting down to brass tacks to help you chart out and win with content experience. Watch out for these titles on the 30th of each month from April through August 2019!

Issue 2

Winning with Content, Context, and Contact: building a personalized content strategy around customer journeys

Issue 3

Transforming Demand Den. Outcomes with Intent-driven Content Strategies: a Playbook for Inbound, ABM and Sales Enablement.

Issue 4

From Content to Revenues: Important Insights about Content Experience Attribution, ROI and Metrics

Issue 5

Engaging Audiences on their terms: How to Create Winning Content Experiences on Social Media and Beyond

Issue 6

Serving Connected Humans: Storytelling and Content in the Experience Economy.

Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading! Keep the conversation around content going on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook!