Content is king. But if you’re only worried about getting words on the page, you are overlooking major elements to supplement those words.
Technology and other forms media are helping to revamp ineffective content into incredibly engaging content for your readers and customers. By and large, technology has accelerated content marketing in that it helps generate more leads, website traffic, and therefore sales.
Without certain technologies to boost content with key aspects of reader engagement, content falls flat and your efforts are wasted, rather than focusing it elsewhere.
It’s important to understand the technology that has been implemented into content marketing so they won’t be overlooked in your campaign — making it a successful one.
And a strong content marketing campaign cannot be taken lightly. In fact, Smart Insights revealed that content marketing is the single most important marketing activity for the last 3-4 years.
Below illuminates five technologies and their vital contributions to content marketing.
Visual Elements
Source: Quietly
Visual elements are a must in the content marketing department. Without them, your audience would be presented with a lifeless wall of text to read. This is proven to discourage readers, and potential customers, and turn them away from your website.
This can potentially cost you a conversion, or worse — a customer.
The American Graphics Institute affirms that “Recent data shows that visuals combined with digital content marketing garner significant increases in blog traffic, social media engagement, visitor-to-lead conversion rates and inbound customer acquisition results according to recent industry data.” Although this was said in 2016, this statement has only gotten more appropriate today.
It isn’t hard to imagine as a blogger, entrepreneur, or business that your website and content would not be well-received without some inclusion of images, video, animations, infographics or any other visual appendage.
Or, just as equally, it may not be received at all — as a large population of readers or customers may exit your website due to unengaging content, retaining nothing about your brand.
Visual elements have become so important to content marketing, separating them would render digital content, for marketing, all but dead. Take a look at this graph by Orbit Media Studios, putting together reader retention rates below:
Mobile Optimization
Rutgers University points out that “Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, stated that not only are there over 100 billion mobile searches every month but that this number is expected to continue to increase.”
This data goes to show that people are searching for things, such as businesses, on mobile devices at a higher rate than searching on a desktop.
Since mobile searches have surpassed the more traditional desktop search, businesses and anyone who would like to keep on pace, have adopted the now common practice of optimizing their websites for smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
The same frustrations of not including visual elements with your content can be foreseen when your customer can’t navigate anything on your website with their phone.
Other complications of not optimizing your site for mobile devices, deterring potential conversions, can include unattractive aesthetics, non-responsive web design, and difficulty reading content.
Source: Nextfly
Any of these things can cost you a sale, membership, subscription, or any other conversion, and it may cause that lost customer to find a business with others. However, optimizing for mobile will increase your website’s organic traffic, visibility, and subsequently your sales.
Search Engine Optimization
Speaking of website search traffic, SEO content is a sure fire way to increase your visibility in the search engine results page, specifically Google. With great content, keywords, headlines, meta tags, and proper link building, you’ll rank higher than the competition.
In the digitally driven world we live in today, ranking higher than your competitor in the search engine results page — and just having a high ranking page in general — is a major goal any business or brand should aspire for. This graph in a previous post stresses the importance of SEO in showing the percentage of shopper searches:
With the hundreds of billions of monthly searches mentioned above, it is pertinent that your brand is visible in the search engine results above your competitor to drive in that traffic before they do — and more traffic means more conversions. So, hopefully, you’ve created engaging content with visual elements that are at the same time optimized for mobile devices.
SEO content has changed content marketing, requiring the implementation of keywords, links, and other optimization, but content marketing becomes more focused on these SEO implementations.
Writing material for content marketing becomes more technical, but still keeps the readers in the forefront as user experience is a driving force for SEO. If your SEO content isn’t great, relevant, or geared toward actual readers, you won’t be sending the proper signals to Google.
Video Marketing
Source: BrainSINS
Arguably the strongest visual element to accompany your digital content is video. Video is cost-effective and can be placed anywhere — on your website landing page, social media platforms, blogs, etc.
Amsterdam Printing suggests to even “Put it on your company emails and add QR codes to your mail pieces to drive more traffic online.”
Another benefit, should you choose to go the route, is that video that will help your SEO efforts. Include your video to a company YouTube: Google owns YouTube and your appearance there, along with some SEO headlines and descriptions, will signal Google to look favorably on your business and brand.
Additionally, the video provides a personal, more intimate perspective of your brand for customers that plain text cannot. This personalization of your brand will build trust and an emotional connection leading to brand loyalty. With the explosion of social media, live video is now becoming successful for its abilities to correspond with customers in real time.
Companies are now able to answer customer inquiries, promote brand new products, and can even hold contests — again, in real-time.
This can allow for hyper-personalized responses to customers, and a very high level of customer engagement, all while increasing your brand visibility, website traffic, and therefore conversion rate.
Landing Page Conversion
Every paragraph above contains information on how to get potential customers to your company or brand’s landing page.
It is crucial information, but it’s all futile if you don’t get those customers to purchase, subscribe, become a member, join the email list, or any other type of conversion rate you are trying to facilitate.
On the other hand, your website’s landing page depends on the information above; you’ll have a hard time getting people to your website landing page in the first place if you don’t utilize it. The two are necessary together to drive a successful content marketing campaign.
Similar to discouraged customers who will turn away from your mobile website if it’s not optimized for mobile devices, your landing page needs to accommodate every customer for the easiest transaction possible.
The graph above by LoadStorm explains the urgency of page load times to engage your website customers.
Anything that can enhance user experience will help convert should be a focus: A dynamic headline, easy navigation, website build and design, loading speed, and more. Most importantly, have an easy, very visible opt-in form for whatever information you are trying to obtain.
Make sure your page is easy to navigate with no hiccups. Take a look at how a viewer scans a page to see where you should place your most important content:
Conversion rates can elevate, impacting sales, significantly just doing little things for user experience, like choosing the right color scheme that suits your business or brand. It also should be noted that your call to action should be specific to your opt-in form.
A visitor is much more likely when your call to action, and how they can sign up or pay, is carefully laid out and explained to them. Make sure it is easily visible, accessible, gain all the information you need from them, and takes them to the correct secondary page if need be.
Conclusion
Content marketing has been changed by technology, almost exclusively in the interest of user experience. Through the years, writing content for marketing your business or brand has been transformed through periods of trial and error.
After all, the conversions that are the driving force for all marketing efforts are going to be made by these users, visitors, and readers. Technology has only made it easier for an analysis and a firm understanding of these audiences; knowing what they like and don’t like.
Try to imagine a content marketing campaign without any of the elements above in them. It would prove unsuccessful almost immediately. Without visual elements, not many people would read your content.
If you don’t optimize your company website for mobile devices, you would be dismissed by a bulk of potential customers trying to view your business or brand on their smartphones or other mobile devices. A study by Wordstream finds that “Businesses that use content marketing have conversion rates 6x higher on average than those who do not.” Don’t miss out on increasing your conversion rates by not implementing a content marketing campaign.
Without SEO content marketing, your business or brand would hardly be visible to people trying to search for your company.
Missing the video marketing boat will eliminate the chance for customers to interact with your brand on a personal level — leaving you no opportunity to connect with potential customers to create brand awareness and loyalty. And finally, if your landing page isn’t properly set up, you’ll fail to achieve your ultimate goal — conversions.
It is hard to imagine content marketing without these technologies, however, don’t forget about the main ingredient of this recipe — great, relevant, and dynamic content.