People spend an inordinate amount of time consuming digital content.
The average American engages in over four hours of content-consuming screen time on their phone every single day. They also spend time consuming content on PCs and tablets.
Your goal as a company is to get people to spend their screen time -- across all of their devices -- consuming your content. Raising awareness about your ecommerce site, brands, products, or services requires a comprehensive digital content delivery strategy. You must choose the correct forms and varieties of content delivery to successfully brand and sell your products and services in today's omnichannel, digital economy.
Below, we outline the role that content delivery strategy plays in successful marketing campaigns, and provide several best practices for you to follow.
It's easy to conflate the definitions of content distribution and content delivery. The two processes are interdependent, and the differences between them are nuanced. Content distribution is the process of diffusing your digital media content to the masses via sharing, publication and promotion.
Content delivery is the process of determining which content gets distributed to whom and on which channels. Defining delivery goes beyond simply describing how one delivers digital content. Content delivery requires delving into customer experience data to determine precisely how to reach different customers at the right time -- and in the right place -- to make a sale.
Certain types of content will appeal to different prospects at various points in their customer journeys. Below we outline the most common -- and effective -- types of digital content to deliver across channels to provide the best user experience.
You're reading a hybrid blog right now. (Officially, this is a glossary item, but it reads similarly.)
You can embed useful, customer-pertinent information inside of blog posts. Use search engine optimization (SEO) research to increase your blog's page rank on Google based on keywords. Blogs act as company billboards, constantly attracting new audience members and current customers alike to your brand, raising awareness and trust.
People love video streaming!
Create information-rich, brand-focused videos to educate and provide value-added content to prospects and current customers. These videos can be created and advertised on social media to increase customer awareness and engagement for your product or service.
Ebooks add legitimacy and trust to your brand. Their purpose is the same as blogs -- value-added information that passersby and customers find enticing. Ebooks are exceptional for generating in-flow leads. The best practice is to deliver ebooks as gated content -- request contact information before allowing people to download them.
Podcasts don't always make sense for customers, but they are popular and can be built into a formidable marketing strategy depending on production and format. Have your podcasts add value to a product via interviews, case studies or discussions on future developments to keep customers engaged.
Infographics catch customers' attention and appeal to visual learners. They make great eye candy on social media. They can also entice customers to provide contact information before downloading -- like ebooks.
If your strategy is to build trust, consider leveraging case studies and whitepapers. Case studies can highlight your company's success in helping customers overcome pain points. Whitepapers highlight your company as an authority in a particular market segment.
Webinars are synchronous sales pitches offered under the guise of professional development or product education. Webinars typically run live with customer participation. They should always be recorded, and then reproduced and delivered as video or as repurposed podcast content for future marketing opportunities.
When it comes to content, it always pays to go green. Fresh content is always a plus, but going green saves company resources by recycling and reusing existing content. You can spruce up existing content to make it appear "fresh" again:
Always find ways to reintroduce and redeliver your branded content across different channels to different types of customers. You don't have to create new content to get your message delivered -- simply change the packaging.
As the multiple formats above demonstrate, you need to focus on creating omnichannel content that can be delivered to customers across numerous digital platforms simultaneously. Omnichannel delivery requires you to format your digital content for different screen and device compatibility. Consider the following examples:
The goal is to use content to build engagement and drive sales. Content must lead customers and prospects to point-of-sale opportunities -- typically on your website or well-drafted landing pages -- or at a minimum, future engagement opportunities (e.g., follows, likes and email sign-ups). You can also increase engagement and sales by personalizing said content.
Customers expect to receive personalized content. Once you've built a robust and omnichannel-neutral content library, you need to deliver it in a personable way. Fortunately, Optimizely offers a full suite of cloud-based, digital content delivery tools your marketing team can use to create and deliver personalized omnichannel content.
Optimizely's Experimentation Platform provides you with the world's fastest, personalized testing software. The software allows you to create A/B tests on the fly to optimize your content to suit different customers' needs. You can also test the effectiveness of content across channels and measure user engagement in real-time.
Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) provide the ultimate content delivery and personalization options. Optimizely DXP is a data-driven solution for delivering personalized content to your customers at optimal times. The platform collects all of your customers' omnichannel touchpoint data, and uses AI to inform your marketing team of the right time to present certain content in front of your customers.
Choose the appropriate software tools to maximize content delivery efficiency, and you'll be well on your way to increasing customer engagement and sales.