Are you using content marketing to attract prospects to your business? More and more businesses are—so many, in fact, that it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out. What are businesses using content marketing for, and how well is it working? As prospects begin to suffer from “content fatigue,” marketers are discovering that more interactive content often works better to attract, engage and influence them, according to the Demand Metric Benchmark Report.
Here’s what the survey of marketers found, and what it means to your business:
It’s important to influence prospects early in their path to purchase. Some 90 percent of respondents say engaging buyers early on is somewhat or very important.
However, 58 percent of marketers admit the biggest problem with their content marketing is it “doesn’t create enough opportunities for interaction and engagement.”
What’s the solution? According to the study, creating more interactive content (for example, quizzes, calculators, apps, assessments or other tools) has a myriad of benefits for your business.
Comparing interactive to passive content, interactive content is somewhat or very effective at educating the buyer (93 percent versus 70 percent), differentiating a business from its competitors (88 percent versus 55 percent) and being shared (38 percent versus 17 percent). In addition, interactive content converted buyers moderately or very well 70 percent of the time, while passive content did so just 36 percent of the time.
What’s the problem? Just one-fourth of study participants rated their content as slightly or very interactive. By contrast, 36 percent rated their content as somewhat or very passive, while 39 percent rated it somewhere in between.
How can you create more interactive content? Here are some ideas:
- Ask yourself what problems your buyers typically face. Polling your sales staff or reviewing FAQs on your website are some ways to come up with ideas. Then create tools to help solve these problems. For instance, if you sell paint, you could create a tool that estimates how much paint buyers need for different sizes of rooms.
- Direct buyers to solutions. Radio-button quizzes or comparison tools that lead to different products or services depending on a buyer’s needs are a useful and fun way to engage buyers.
- Maximize user-generated content. Encourage prospects and customers to share experiences, questions and solutions on your website or social media page.
- Keep it simple. While they aren’t content marketing per se, adding interactive tools such as live chat, click to call buttons or “ask a question” areas of your website can help spur prospective buyers to take action and learn more about your products and services.
