You understand the value of content. You’re consistently creating valuable content assets. You’re even measuring your efforts and running a data-driven content strategy.
And yet, you can’t seem to master the art of creating content that converts. What gives?!
It’s incredibly frustrating to feel like you’re doing everything you should be, but seemingly to no avail. When it comes to B2B content marketing, this usually points to a very specific issue with your content strategy — a problem with your content experience, or the environment in which your content is consumed.
Here are three problems with your content experience that might be affecting your content conversion rates.
1. You’re not accommodating the entire buyer’s journey.
60-70% of B2B content sits unused. This means that 60-70% of your content is not relevant to your audience’s needs and does not connect with your buyer’s journey.
Remember: your visitors are all on different, unique journeys looking for different content. Providing useful, relevant content might start with content ideation, but it also has to do with the fact that your content is not readily available every step of the way. This issue is easily solved by having a well-optimized content experience.
So, how can you start to better accommodate the buyer’s entire journey?
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Determine your content gaps.
Conduct a content audit to ensure that your content is speaking to all of your buyer personas, as well as all stages of the buyer journey from discovery, to consideration, to purchase.
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Diversify your content mix.
Everyone in your target audience prefers a different format to consume content. Some prefer blog posts, and some would rather check out an infographic or listen to a podcast. The idea of content atomization — taking one idea, chopping it up into tiny pieces, and spreading it everywhere — is one way to effectively diversify your content mix.
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Ensure your content is easily discoverable.
Regardless of the stage of the buyer journey that someone is on, you must ensure your content is easy to find. This not only involves including a search bar within your blog or resource center, but also means that your content should be strategically organized to meet your goals.
Content discoverability is especially important to improving your content’s conversion rate — after all, how can you expect your content to convert if no one can find your content?
Which brings us to problem number two…
2. Your content is siloed.
“White papers! Exactly what I was looking for!” – said no one, ever.
Too many marketers are siloing their content as individual, one-off pieces, buried within the noise of the rest of the world’s content, as opposed to leveraging them as valuable assets that are part of a cohesive engagement path.
How can you avoid the silo-ification of your content?
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Organize your content strategically.
Organize your content according to how people are going to search for it. People don’t typically search for “white papers” — they search for answers. Similarly, don’t let your content pile-up by date. Organizing it according to topic will prolong your content’s lifespan and minimize your content “dead ends”.
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Keep your traffic inbound.
Think about what happens when your individual content assets live outside of your resource center. For example, if you’re driving traffic to a video on YouTube, you’re sending a valuable visitor away from your relevant content and risk losing them to a clickhole of cute cat videos (hey, it’s happened to the best of us). By centralizing your content, you encourage readership of more similar content assets.
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Provide a logical next step.
One of the worst conversion mistakes marketers make is not providing people with an option to continue their journey. This doesn’t necessarily mean asking them to convert at every possible option; rather, it means making the right ask so they can continue their journey in a logical fashion.
Providing a logical next step can also be accomplished by effectively using calls to action (CTAs) — more on that next.
3. You’re not using CTAs effectively.
When it comes to creating content that converts, CTAs are where the magic happens. However, your CTAs will be useless if their placement isn’t relevant and contextual.In all seriousness, leveraging context can lead to a major boost (up to 25%!) in your CTA conversion rates.
A few tips for creating more relevant and contextual CTAs:
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Make the right ask at the right time.
You probably wouldn’t propose on a first date. Same rule applies with your content — don’t make a high-commitment ask, and ask for minimal amounts of information (e.g., by leveraging progressive profiling).
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Don’t ask the same thing over and over again.
Don’t use one blanket CTA across all of your content — again, tailor it so you’re considering the buyer journey and providing a logical next step.
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Be clear and concise.
Tell people exactly what they’re clicking to or signing up for. Also, avoid using the passive voice (e.g. “Let us know”, “If you want”) in your CTAs. Use verbs that compel people to take action — “Click here”, “Read now”, etc.
The secret to high converting CTAs? Context! The more contextual your CTAs are (considering both the content, the ask, and the buyer journey), the higher your conversion rates will be.
No conversions? It might not be your content’s fault…
Having great content is important, but it’s only one aspect of content marketing. Equally as important is having a well-optimized content experience that easily allows you to accommodate the buyer journey, avoid the silo-ification of content, and effectively leverage context.
Don’t blame your content for your lack of conversions. Think more about optimizing your content experience, and the conversions will come!
Learn how to better leverage Act-On to meet your content marketing goals. Sign up for Uberflip’s Marketing Automation Hacks: Act-On Edition webinar!