Optimizing Customer Online Engagement: Why your content needs a strategy
With the rapid acceleration of Gen AI as a content creation engine and campaign enabler, marketers have morphed from intermittent push campaigns to a continuous demand-generating loop to support the businesses’ appetite for inbound leads. The evolution was inevitable. Gen AI has changed customer journeys and forced marketers to meet client needs anytime, anywhere. It has also required more content, greater relevance, and audience focus to continuously attract, convert and close transactions.
This change has particular importance to many B2B marketers who understand the value of positioning their firms as thought leaders and leveraging content to strengthen client relationships and generate leads with target audiences. The challenge is that this can be “mission impossible” in firms where partners are the business generators and content is technical, often used to connect with small groups of clients or prospects.
As a result, marketers often find themselves with too many top-of-the-funnel assets that collectively don’t often grow mindshare or market share.
Now more than ever, your content needs a strategy. And your content strategy needs strong processes to support it. As firms harness the power of Gen AI, marketers need to double down on new ways to grab their customers’ attention.
A Bit of Context
Competition to get buyer attention is fierce. According to 2024 research released by email shop, Constant Contact, 61% of recipients spend eight seconds on email. While their initial attention may be brief, a majority will engage longer periods when content is compelling. The challenge is that we confuse what people have clicked on with what they’ve read. We also mistake sharing for reading.
McKinsey’s research on Brand Success and Digital Darwinism indicated that as more offline buyers shift to digital tools, the number of digital touchpoints has increased by 20% annually. In their sample, 39% of digital buyers engaged in the initial consideration of a brand; another 42% used digital tools for the consideration and evaluation stages.
Considering the proliferation of content and its importance for purchase, how can marketers connect and convert business buyers with purposeful interactions?
5 Ways to “up” your Content and Engagement Game
Content needs a strategic platform. In many B2B firms, and partnerships, in particular, content creation can be an individual sport. Occasionally, professionals work in teams or as a practice, but often the overriding interest of using content to generate leads encourages partners to develop their own, sometimes narrowly focused articles. Firms need to step back and think big and think brand. This involves creating a thought leadership platform that addresses c-suite issues for senior executive audiences that will position the firm for larger cross-functional opportunities.
Impactful content requires compelling points of view. If the end game is to engage and influence readers, content needs to convey new perspectives. Create articles that are memorable and easy to read. Take positions and provide actionable recommendations.
Engagement requires reaching the right audience with the right content at the right time. In a digital world, campaigns require distribution plans based on focus and targeted reach. Firms need to dive deep into their client data and ensure their growth plans link to a well-defined segmentation model that includes all prioritized contacts and companies. Develop a engagement plan for each segment.
Manage your CRM system; don’t let it undermine your efforts. There are many ways to get your content noticed, but it begins with reaching the right decision-makers with informed insights and customized messages. This requires a firmwide commitment to data quality with processes to involve partners and staff. It should also have enriched data to include company size, industry, related businesses or subsidiaries, and most importantly, partner relationships and contact trustees.
Content needs to spawn activity, which means partners must participate. Communications, subscription-based or otherwise, require follow-up plans. They can be as simple as arranging calls or meetings or hosting events and webinars, but without it, your content will hit the wall quickly and marketers will struggle to demonstrate real campaign ROI. Encourage them move beyond content creation to seize the subsequent relationship-building opportunities to promote their ideas.
Content can be a powerful tool to build brand and source leads. When effectively created, managed and shared, it can open more doors to accelerate consideration. The key is to give your content a better strategy and improved processes. Your customers will notice the difference.