You’re not getting the most out of your content marketing or virtual events, and you may not even know it. Shalini Mitha, vice president of product marketing at ON24, discusses the key aspects of the continuous engagement journey and how content marketing can be strategized to elevate the live audience experience.
We were forced to deal with a new reality throughout the pandemic, one that required us to maintain genuine, human interactions in a digital world. The digital transformation that would have taken months or years was activated in weeks or even days.Â
Businesses have started to recognize the opportunities that come with a work-from-anywhere approach and are pivoting to reap the benefits. Marketing is no different. Marketers are making content more accessible and creating other forms of it that can be consumed by potential prospects anywhere, however they choose.
For most B2B organizations, content marketing has developed into an extensive process to drive inbound leads and nurture prospects through the funnel. Content is designed for each stage of the buyer’s journey, and marketers spend hours analyzing, optimizing, and revisiting content.
However, most companies haven’t maximized content marketing to drive digital engagement. If you’re in the process of defining your digital experience strategy, there’s a tremendous opportunity to add live digital experiences to on-demand content to improve interactivity, increase engagement opportunities, and capture first-person data.
See More: Your Brand’s Content and Digital Experience Will Determine SuccessÂ
Interactive Content Captures Attention
Many companies focus their content marketing on creating static assets. Blog posts are great for conveying your ideas in-depth and driving visitors to your site with SEO, for example, but bringing a community together isn’t their strong point.
That’s why pairing blogs and other assets with interactive content is a home run. Did you know that 81% of marketers believe interactive content is significantly more effective at grabbing an audience’s attention than static content, according to the Content Marketing InstituteOpens a new window ?
Imagine featuring a live webinar that runs across all relevant blog posts as it’s happening. Any prospect landing on your site can instantly join it to answer their questions and begin frictionlessly engaging with your marketing and sales teams.
Experiences don’t even need to be live to draw people in. Simulative and on-demand webinars offer many of the same benefits. By bringing all those formats into the same content hub, you can provide relevant content that encourages engagement, directs audiences to the content you want them to see, and drives them further into the funnel. AI can deepen personalized recommendations to provide each prospect with the right information when they need it, factoring in what they’re already consuming.
Digital Experiences Create Engagement Opportunities
Engagement is what separates memorable experiences from forgettable ones. And virtual events are perfect for engaging your ideal audience alongside your existing content, serving as the ideal destination for prospects. They can be as short as a 20-minute webinar or as long as a virtual conference that lasts several days.Â
The key to success for any format is creating a compelling agenda that will provide valuable information to your target audience. When you’re engrossed in an event, you feel a connection with the presenter and anyone participating in it with you in a way that you can’t feel from static assets.
Live and on-demand webinars can and should feel immersive. Audiences should be able to network with each other, ask questions, and easily connect with a company’s marketing, sales, training, or other representatives. A few ways are polls, interactive games, breakout rooms, and Q&As. It should also be easy for attendees to access and download related resources.
When done well, engagement leads to revenue-generating opportunities. Our Future of EventsOpens a new window research found that 85% of respondents believe “virtual events contribute significantly to the pipeline.†And 79% of respondents believe virtual and hybrid events provide more data than physical events, which allows organizations to better understand customers and prospects and cater to their needs.
SAP ConcurOpens a new window had great success with a webinar program it developed to train and educate users. It reached more than 3,000 accounts — with most participants averaging four to five webinars — generating an average of $600,000 in pipeline per webinar program. Another example, Plante MoranOpens a new window boosted audience engagement by 25% with on-demand experiences, drove new subscribers and meeting requests with attendees, and ultimately boosted reach by 7X at a third of the cost.
Engaging Content Produces Better Data and Buying Signals
When content and digital experiences combine, not only does more demand generation result, but more data leads to clearer buying opportunities.
Content journeys are tricky for many organizations today. Ultimately, you want to recommend the next best piece of content that will support them at their current buying stage. As they spend more time engaging with experiences and content, valuable buying signals emerge that can lead to greater conversion.
Product marketing is another beneficiary by creating memorable and integrated product launch experiences. Live content connects to on-demand materials like demos, best practice webinars, resource hubs, and more to provide more information on products, leading to greater awareness.
Self-service education portals promote your live and upcoming webinar content alongside on-demand resources and can be embedded onto your corporate website. As just one example, you can easily showcase your best customer stories to drive brand affinity and provide substantiation of your effectiveness.
As you create new ways to use your content, you’ll be able to deliver the content and experiences your audience wants and measure their actual impact more holistically.
See More: Misaligned Content: Far-reaching Implications and Actionable Solutions
Live Experiences + On-demand Content = Greater RoE
Older ways of measuring success aren’t built for today’s digital buyers. Tracking leads based on hitting certain thresholds of attendees, clicks, touches, and emails opened is better than not having any measurement in place, but those actions don’t mean someone is qualified to go to sales or even interested in your product.Â
Combining content and digital experiences helps you establish actual intent and not just general interest like many of the signals marketers typically analyze.
Today’s buyers are digital-first and will reach out to your organization when they’re ready to start the sales process. They seek to develop relationships with a brand. That’s why giving them the right content is so crucial, and why marketing metrics should center around engagement. It may mean reengineering the tools we have and rethinking the value of metrics like clicks, downloads, etc.
Marketers should examine the cumulative amount of time a prospect engages with digital experiences. More time spent engaging produces more touches, driving them to the assets you want them to see. Those touches lead to interactions, an even better metric to measure, as prospects provide information about themselves through surveys, polls, and chats. Intent signals become clear by gathering all that information and providing a mix of conversion opportunities, such as “Talk with Sales†CTAs, demos, and additional content.
Intent data completes the picture and lets you analyze return on engagement (RoE) – what causes buyers to engage, what makes them ready to buy, and what happens after they do. With these metrics in mind, you can continually optimize all your digital channels to enhance your RoE. Your content and experiences can combine to drive revenue growth if you let them work together.Â
How can content marketing leverage AI and ML to improve the live experience for audiences? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to learn from you!