According to statistics, about 70% of leads do not lead to sales; content creators can correct the situation. However, the section of Internet marketing dedicated to working with website content is shrouded in many myths. Secret knowledge about how to set up an advertising mailing, which advertising format will work best, and how to warm up a new visitor who is not ready to buy is known to every online advertising department, its managers, and marketing specialists.
Harvard Content Marketing Tips
And marketing experts at Harvard Business School suggest colleagues refrain from following the crowd. Almost 35 million customer interactions with content were analyzed, and the analysis results were the 4 Laws of Content Marketing published in the Harvard Business Review. All these tips are successfully used by many platforms, such as casinos or betting websites with big bamboo slot.
Over the past 5 years, online marketing has become widespread, and companies have begun to hire writers and journalists as guest and regular contributors to corporate blogs. Invited marketing executives convinced some salespeople that content marketing marks the end of the “cold calling” era in search of new clients. The game’s rules are simple: get potential buyers with materials corresponding to each sales funnel stage and expand offers that motivate website or social media page visitors to contact the sales department.
Online technologies and goal lists were supposed to make this formula effective for attracting new customers, increasing the conversion of an online store using a sales funnel, optimizing marketing costs by analyzing content by the number of open pages, reading materials, and comments, and saving. But, as practice has shown, even the most brilliant content sales strategy can be useless; looking at the work results is essential.
About 68% of content developed by marketers is never used by sales staff.
That’s why an identical percentage of leads don’t make it to the site. According to Harvard experts, not all marketing campaign performance metrics carry accurate weight. Based on tens of millions of customer interactions with web content, marketers have found these points to be important when evaluating content initiatives:
- the type of devices from which the content is viewed;
- how much time a potential partner spends reading;
- the time at which users most often interact with site content;
- and the most popular materials (text, photo, video, interactive).
Rule 1: Gadgets are overrated
The popularization of smartphones and tablets has strengthened faith in the need to develop mobile advertising technology and create unique mobile content for users making purchases using gadgets. However, research shows that when entering the funnel, content needs to be optimized and formatted for viewing on different screens.
Mobile gadgets are essential in establishing initial contact with a potential client. Before making a purchase, by contacting the sales department, an interested visitor goes to the site and studies its content on a desktop rather than a mobile device. That’s why rich desktop content will remain important, even as mobile visits increase. A complete website page analysis allows you to identify sections that need to be adapted to different screen resolutions.
Rule 2: The optimal duration for viewing material is 180 seconds, during which time the content should engage the user’s interest
Internet users are under a barrage of advertising messages: social networks, mail, and search engines bombard visitors with advertising offers. Ad blockers and banner blindness cut off the flow of advertising information coming online, so value your users’ time. Make regular counts of site visitors based on time spent on the site.
On average, a visitor spends about 2.5 minutes viewing site materials. In this short time, potential clients will form many hasty conclusions; what they will be depends on the quality of the materials and the form in which the content is presented. Will the prospect move on to the next step in the sales funnel? Yes, if the resource owners have done everything possible to fit the most valuable information into the site’s first 2–5 pages. Potential customers visiting the resource for the first time are ready to spend more time reading materials about the object of interest. And they are more likely to read the material in full.
Research data reflects a pattern in how visitors view site materials: content is often studied in their free time. And if the user is interested in the material but only reads part of it on a working day, he will come in to finish it and get additional data on the weekend. The conclusion is that most users do not move through the sales funnel sequentially but use its different stages in parallel:
- study materials about the object of sales/services;
- evaluate effectiveness, read reviews;
- interact with sellers and consultants.
Rule 3: There is no best day to publish
There are many versions of what day of the week is best to publish content. But Tuesday evening or Thursday morning claims simply don’t hold water. In practice, an analysis of competitors’ websites and traffic to corporate web pages by potential clients showed almost uniform data for all days of the week:
- with a slight advantage on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday;
- and a barely noticeable decrease on Monday morning and Friday afternoon.
The optimal day for publication is today. Stay focused on certain days of the week. Instead, prioritize based on visitor engagement with the different types of content and interactions on site pages that users visit upon return.