We in the marketing community have generally accepted that clients/customers shift in the journey they go on when making a purchase and that content plays a major factor that steers their path. However, the same ole passing content isn’t driving it home like it used to. Demandmetric. com posted a study that surveyed 244 marketers from enterprise businesses that handle $10 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. That study revealed passive content isn’t driving those buyers down the sales and marketing pipelines like it used to. You know what that study did show, though? Interactive content is taking its place.
Buyers are doing more research and educating themselves about the product before they actually make the purchase. In doing so, they’re looking through the oodles of content out there. As a matter of fact, Gartner predicts that 85% of the relationships between the consumer and enterprise will be managed without an interaction between a human being by the year 2020. What does that mean for business? Well, it means there is a rush to put out gobs of content based on the product your company is trying to sell. You need to have some type of organization, though.
Whether your company’s business is sales software, hardware, retail, etc. there has to be a way to keep track of the content you are producing and the possible customers you will have. The size of your business will also depend on what type of tools you need to organize everything. If you’re a small business, then a small business CRM will probably help you out the best. Large organizations may only need marketing software. The point is you will need some way to know what content is being produced, when it’s produced, and where it’s being viewed.
Once you have tracking measures, you need to do something that “wows†your prospective customers, and that is where the interactive content comes into play. What can these people click on? Is it animated? Let’s say you have a promotion you’re offering for first time buyers. There are several ways to go about this. There is plain text saying how incredible this discount is, and it has never been offered before. You can make an image of the product and have a little blurb about it, mentioning the awesome promotion. Those are decent, but what if we make a wheel that somebody can click on, it spins, and falls on the promotion. Once it spins and falls on said promotion, a short text blurb comes up, and then a button pops up that says, “Sign Up Here!†That sounds infinitely better, does it not?
Sandip
