According to an old marketing axiom, it takes seven touches before a prospect responds to a call to action. So, it’s no surprise most marketers are focused on simply generating those seven clicks.
The problem, though, is that a simple interaction — or a single piece of content — doesn’t tell a story. It doesn’t nurture a prospect or turn them into a consumer. A prospect can make that seventh click and return to browsing the web, never to visit your company website again.
To generate those quality touches, and to convert prospects into customers, organizations need to nurture visitors with a stream of curated content and keep them engaged over a period of time. Using a content marketing guide can be beneficial here, as it provides structure for creating effective touchpoints.
This is where integrated content marketing comes in. Integrated content can enhance the customer journey, effectively nudging them to make the final purchasing decision.
Check out The Accelerated Buyer: How Personalized Content Journeys Impact the Buying Process to learn how you can create digital experiences with a personal touch.
How Content Fuels Conversion
Content creation fuels the conversion process, but it’s the customer experience that causes prospects to convert. But what makes for a great content experience that converts?
At its core, a good content experience has two distinct features. First, it’s markedly different from typical content touches — the random clicks generated by organic social posts, for example. Second, content pieces within an experience must work together to build a narrative arc; one piece flows to the next and pushes the prospect further along in their buyer’s journey.
Incorporating these two elements into your integrated content strategy is what can set your content apart from the competition, leading to more conversions.
Content’s Cumulative Effect
With a solid experience in place, prospects will begin to engage with your content. These engagements will have a cumulative effect, where interactions in, say, a webinar, informs the next piece of content served up or the content experience presented to the prospect.
But before a cumulative effect can take place, marketing teams need to break content — videos, blogs, webinars, e-books, etc. — out of their silos. Content must address a specific problem for a general audience or be repackage-able for a targeted account.
One way of approaching content for scale is to think of multimedia content as packaged experiences. By creating content in tandem, you can craft a dynamic and informative experience that can be repurposed and tailored as needed and reach audiences at each point of the buyer journey. This is especially important to take into account as part of your integrated content strategy.
Putting It All Together
You have the building blocks. All that’s left is to put it all together. Remember: content experiences must address pain points and queries while providing interesting and meaningful impressions of your product or service. As a marketer, you need to convey your understanding of your buyer’s concerns and what they are interested in long before they make a purchase.
This is how you can successfully utilize integrated content marketing to improve sales conversions, growing your customer base exponentially. Remember: the success of the customer is what leads to the success of your business!
The right tools and technologies can help you deliver your integrated content strategy across diverse channels, platforms, and devices, creating an overall seamless experience for your customers.
To learn more about how you can create integrated customer experiences, check out our new e-book, The Accelerated Buyer: How Personalized Content Journeys Impact the Buying Process.