Content Marketing is All About Conversion

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Content marketing has become a major player as social media has taken a bigger seat at the media table, putting consumers in charge of media consumption. It’s become so successful that the average marketer puts about 40% of their budget towards content marketing (Peterson, 2014).  Content marketing includes everything from brand publishing, branded content, native advertising, sponsored content, and brand journalism (Contently, 2014). It’s on social networks, online news sites, and regular websites in the form of infographics, webpages, podcasts, videos, and books (Steimele, 2014). Basically, the majority of the media that people are exposed to on a daily basis. As we’ve all heard: Content is King.

With marketers spending so much time, money and effort into content-based marketing, conversion on our websites is important. Conversion rate is defined as the “…percentage, equals Outcomes divided by Unique Visitors during a particular time period.” (Kaushik, 2008). Gone are the days when marketers are only concerned about clicks - even Facebook has moved on from simply counting clicks. Now it’s all about conversion. Are visitors buying, signing up, or acting on the content that is being pushed? What is the ROI on content? It’s about making the extra effort worth it, thus leading to action on the visitor’s part.

We don’t have to sit behind our desks and wonder if our content is getting through to site visitors thanks to web metrics. We have the science to adjust our content if it is or isn’t working.

Although, there is discussion of whether marketers should measure with Unique Visitors or Visitors (Kaushik, 2010). Do we want to allow visitors to repeatedly come back to our sites before taking an action, or are we counting every single opportunity as a chance for an action? According to Kaushik, it’s a business decision – personally I think the metric should be using Unique Visitors if not for the fact that people like to research. Just think about buying a car and how much that process has changed. When people come to the car lot they already know what features they want and can get, and what price they should be paying.

So how can marketers make conversion happen with content marketing? It’s not easy, and there is no set formula that guarantees success. However, it starts with a greater understanding of the organization’s audience. Knowing who core customers are and what they are interested in, particularly buying habits. With a greater understanding of the audience, identify the channels for pushing content. Determine the type of content that will work best for that channel and how that will help to return the best value (DeMers, 2014). Obviously a placement on Buzzfeed will vary greatly from an article on The Atlantic.

At the end of the day, content marketing is about getting users interested, and getting them to come back and take an action. What do you think is an important factor in getting content marketing to lead to positive conversion rates?

References:

Contently. (2014). Contently.com. “State of Content Marketing 2014.” Retrieved from, http://contently.com/strategist/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Contently_SCM-Revolution-2.pdf.

DeMers, J. (2014, October 1). Forbes.com. “5 Steps to Boost Conversation Rates Through Your Content Marketing Strategy.” Retrieved from, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/10/01/5-steps-to-boost-conversion-rates-through-your-content-marketing-strategy/2/.

Kaushik, A. (2006, July 31). Occam’s Razor. “Excellent Analytics Tip #5: Converstion Rate Basics & Best Practices.” Retrieved from, http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip5-conversion-rate-basics-best-practices/.

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web Analytics 2.0 [THE ART OF ONLINE ACCOUNTABILITY & SCIENCE OF CUSTOMER CENTRICITY]. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Peterson, T. (2014, October 14). AdvertisingAge.com. “So You’re Made Some Content, Now What Do You Do With It?” Retrieved from, http://adage.com/article/news/content-made/295363/.

Steimle, J. (2014, September 19). Forbes.com. “What Is Content Marketing?” Retrieved from, http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/09/19/what-is-content-marketing/.