Contributed by Victoria Hoffman, Content & Community Manager, Uberflip
Content marketers hear one question all the time: “So, did it generate leads?”
With targets to hit and a hungry sales team to feed, we’re constantly trying to figure out how to generate more leads and (more specifically) how to squeeze more leads out of a piece of content by adjusting the headline, experimenting with content length, and so on.
But what if your lack of leads isn’t your content’s fault?
You see, your content is only as effective as the experience in which it lives. Think of it this way: You’d probably enjoy drinking a piña colada on a beach much more than in your own backyard, where you can see your overgrown garden, hear cars down the street, and smell your neighbour’s trash.
Your content will be much more effective if it lives in an experience that’s designed to generate leads. With the average blog post taking three hours to create and costing $900 to produce, you can’t afford to let it sit unused — you need to put it in an environment that propels your audience down the funnel.
Aside from great content, here are some elements you need to consider when building a well-optimized content experience.
1. Responsive Design
By now, you should probably understand the importance of optimizing your content for mobile devices — after all, over 50% of content consumption happens on smartphones and tablets.
One size doesn’t fit all. Make sure your audience is able to consume your content — read it, watch it, share it, convert on it, and enjoy it — regardless of device, time of day, or any other external factors.
Consider all points of entry into your content experience, and cater to them so content consumption is easy, fast and intuitive for the end-user.
2. Strategic organization & easy discoverability
Imagine walking into a grocery store and finding all of the items piled in a gigantic heap on the floor. Odds are, you’d be compelled to leave and find a new grocery store where you don’t have to sift through everything to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The same concept can be applied to your content organization. Organize it strategically, and make it easy to find.
Start with the menu that structures your blog or resource center. Consider the way in which people go about seeking content — they want solutions, not types of content.
Despite the inclination to keep all of your eBooks and infographics sorted together in your menu, it makes much more sense to organize your content by topic as opposed to type.
In addition to having a well-structured menu, improve your content’s discoverability by:
- Enabling a search bar
- Using a content recommendation engine like BrightInfo
- Including internal links
- Using relevant and contextual calls-to-action
Which brings us to the final, and most important, element of creating a high-converting content experience…
3. Relevant and contextual calls-to-action
CTAs are crucial to lead generation, but they only work if they’re a relevant and contextual part of the content experience.
For instance, it makes no sense to have a CTA to download an eBook on beginner marketing tips placed beside a blog post about advanced marketing.
You’ll see far better results by providing a CTA that helps the reader continue on their content journey.
Similarly, you risk leads slipping through the cracks when you remove them from the content experience by sending them to a landing page. Consider gating content with an overlay or pop-up CTA that doesn’t disrupt the content experience.
If the CTA is gating a content asset that the end-user arrived at in a logical part of their journey, it’s far more likely to convert.
Put your content in a better experience
You could have the best content in the world, but it’s not going to do anything for you if it’s living in an experience that’s not responsive, disorganized, and doesn’t include relevant and contextual CTAs.
Start thinking less about your content as individual assets, and more about how your audience is consuming it, and the environment they’re consuming it in, and you’re bound to get better results from your content marketing efforts.
As a Content & Community Manager at Uberflip, Victoria helps to execute Uberflip’s content and social media strategies. When not on Twitter, Victoria enjoys blogging and watching shows on Netflix.
The post How to Create a Content Experience Designed for Lead Generation appeared first on LeadGenius Blog.