The Content Currency Equation
Content is the new medium of exchange between companies and buyers. With customers
taking control of their buying process and so much information competing for notice, the
relevance of your content must be perceived as high enough to pay for their attention. The
value of your marketing content as currency is also determined by how many of your
prospects decide to pay you by sharing their information and opting in to receive more.
As you can see in the chart on the left, the top marketing challenges are all related to the
ability to create a perception of value in the eyes of targeted buyers. The finding that 69
percent of marketers asked said that generating highquality
leads is their top challenge speaks to the need
to not just attract attention, but to increase the
perceived substance of their marketing currency to the
point of instantly recognizable and reciprocal value.
When your marketing currency is perceived as high,
more prospective customers are willing to exchange
their information for your content. An additional benefit
is the willingness of those prospects to share your
content with the growing number of people involved in
the decision made during a lengthening buying process.
To gauge the value of your marketing currency, evaluate the following factors that
form the equation:
Time – Are prospects viewing one article for 5 seconds or spending the time necessary
to read the entire piece? Do your prospects stay for the entire Webinar or leave after the
first 15 minutes?
Depth – Do prospects read one page and leave your Website, or do they tend to click on
links to related information and travel more deeply to explore the content more fully?
Storyline – Is it evident that prospects follow a directed path through your content or do
they click around aimlessly on unrelated pages without settling on any of them long
enough to engage?
Interaction – In addition to how many registrants your Webinars get, measure the
difference between unique attendees and total attendees. A higher number of total
attendees can be an indication that your content is considered important enough to
revisit and view again, or that it’s been passed along and shared with others—hopefully
those involved in the buying decision. Even better, how many questions or chats were
posed during and post-event.
Social – How many of your prospects and customers are sharing your Webinars, white
papers and other content with their social networks via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or
mentions in their blog posts?
Opt In – What percentage of prospects who visit your landing pages are opting in for
your gated offers? This includes Webinar registrations, newsletter subscriptions, online
demos and other content offers.
Referrals – Are your prospects only visiting your Website when prompted by an email?
Or are they coming to you via social media, search returns, peer recommendations or on
their own? Being findable is the new “black” for marketing. The more accessible your content is—regardless of where your prospects happen to encounter it online—the
higher your currency value.
All content is not equal in relevance or usefulness to your prospects. The overwhelming
amount of content available online generates a lot of clutter and noise that your prospects
must sort through to find useful information that addresses their needs. Their assessment of
your content’s currency value is expressed by the combination of the factors shown above.
Content with currency value delivers immediate takeaways that leave lasting impressions,
helping to motivate a higher willingness to trade their attention for your content whenever
they see it.
The Imperative for Buyer Knowledge
The strength of your marketing content’s currency depends upon the level of relevance
assigned to it by the prospects you want to become customers. The only way to reliably
improve this perception is by addressing what matters most to your prospects because you
know. Not just for the decision maker, but for all the people involved in the buying process.
Here are a few research findings that disprove marketers’ assumptions about the relevance
of their content as perceived by prospective buyers:
“…
communication of business value proposition, and too few proof points to evidence ROI.”
CMO Council
“Only 14 percent of the ‘unique benefits’ promoted by companies drive enough
preference to have a commercial impact.” Corporate Executive Board
“The lack of relevancy for the prospect reduced the vendor’s chance of closing a sale by
45 percent”. IDG
“A survey of IT buying team members shows that they find relevance in only 39 percent
of links offered to vendor content from social conversations.” IDG
Marketers need to take the initiative to continuously update and refine what they know about
their buyers. Luckily, there are many more ways to do this today than were available in the
past due to technology.
These 8 methods will help marketers focus their listening to cultivate insights that
can be used to improve your marketing content’s currency value:
1. Phrasing: One of the best ways to increase relevance with prospects is to use the
language they use to talk about their problems. If they talk about bottlenecks, discussing
performance improvements may not produce the same level of engagement as using the
words they use intuitively. When you listen to prospects, make note of how they describe
issues of importance. Remember that listening to your customers may not produce the
same results as you’ve already indoctrinated them with some of your company’s
terminology and language.
2. Webinars: One of the ways to get up to speed about prospects is by attending Webinars
your prospects attend. Sure, it’s helpful to hear other experts talk about the issues,
problems and solutions, but what’s really valuable are the questions asked by attendees
at the end or during session in the chat window. Addressing those questions and
comments in your next piece of content can help to boost its success, as well as your
company’s credibility and expertise.
3. Blogs: Following the most active blogs in your industry is a great way to listen to your
prospects. What you’re looking for is not just timely topics of interest, but comments.
How people respond to the blogger’s point of view can provide a lot of insight to the
concerns, beliefs and interests that are top of mind for your prospects (or people like
them).
4. Twitter Streams: What I mean by Twitter Streams are hash tag searches for keywords
or solutions. Use a program like TweetDeck or TweetGrid and dedicate 2 or 3 columns
to hash tag searches pertinent to keywords your prospects use. This concentrates how
many Tweets you have to plow through, makes for a quick study of phrasing and provides links that are being shared and thought—by them—to be important sources of
information.
5. Bit.ly Links: Many of the links used on Twitter are created by the URL shortener Bit.ly. If
you copy and paste the link into a browser and add a + (plus) sign at the end and click
enter, you can see a stream of who has Tweeted the link and any comments readers
have posted. You can click through on their Twitter handles to learn more about the
people interested enough to share that information with their followers. This information
also provides an impression about the level of interest in the topic by displaying how
many clicks, Tweets and shares have happened over time. Additionally, the number of
responses provides an idea of the level of influence of the original Tweeter, who may be
enticed to help you spread your company’s ideas to interested followers.
6. LinkedIn Groups: Using profiles of people like your prospects to get a baseline about a
specific segment is a good start. But to get a feel for their sentiment about a topic,
monitoring and participating on groups they belong to can provide great insights that
translate back to improving your content relevance. Make sure when you participate that
it’s never to sell, only to provide valuable insights, answer the questions asked or ask
questions about topics the group is focused on discussing.
7. Feedback: Direct learning about the opinions and reactions to your company, products
and services is available in a variety of flavors. Whether or not your Webinar attendees
stay for the duration of your event and are interested enough to ask questions is realtime
feedback. Customer surveys post-Webinars help as well. Contact center reps are
on the front lines, interacting with your customers daily and salespeople are speaking
with the very types of people marketing content is responsible for attracting.
Incorporating a variety of feedback into your listening can serve as validation for the
types of information you’re gathering through other methods.
8. Metrics: Paying attention to whether or not prospects are responding to your email is a
form of listening, as is measuring bounces on specific Website pages and time spent
with specific content. Noting the keywords site visitors use to find your Website is another input for your consideration when developing content. Metrics are the ultimate
gauge of what’s working and what’s not.
By refining your content using insights derived from the eight methods above and then
monitoring responses, you’ll have the ability to continuously tweak your content to ensure
that relevance does not diminish over time as priorities shift in parallel with business
objectives.
Proof about the growing imperative to improve your knowledge about buyers is evidenced
by the findings in a recent survey conducted by DemandGen Report, sponsored by
Genius.com. Take a look at some of the results from the Breaking Out of the Funnel: A Look
Inside the Mind of the New Generation B2B Buyer survey, conducted in February, 2010:
48.4 percent of buyers said they’re utilizing a wider variety of sources during research.
59 percent shared the information they learned during research with others.
66 percent of buyers said consistency in messaging by vendors influenced their buying
decision.
77 percent said their buying process did not follow a traditional path.
77.8 percent of buyers started with informal research around a business challenge.
95 percent of buyers said that the vendor they selected provided ample relevant content
during their buying process.
It’s also worth noting that nearly half of buyers asked said they’re taking more time during
the research and consideration stages. The implication for marketers is that by improving
relevance and helping your prospects learn what they need to know in an efficient manner,
your online marketing content could play an even larger role in reducing cycle times.