Back in 2013, Walker issued the now-famous prediction that by 2020, customer experience would overtake price and product quality as the key differentiator between brands.
Well, here we are—and as our own Sam Hurley explained in November of 2018, Walker’s forecast actually came true much sooner than predicted.
Case in point, data from iperceptions shows that:
- 64% of consumers say CX is more important than price when it comes to making a purchasing decision
- 67% say they’d pay more in exchange for a better experience with a brand
- 71% say they’re more likely to recommend a brand’s products or services if the brand provides an overall positive experience
The impact of providing a top-notch experience to consumers is crystal clear as well. According to iperceptions’ data, experience-driven companies see an average revenue growth of 15% (compared to 11% growth for non CX-focused brands), and up to 1.9x more growth than their competitors in terms of:
- Customer retention
- Repeat purchase rate
- Average order value
- Customer lifetime value
For B2C companies operating primarily (or solely) online, a strong approach to content marketing may be the essential ingredient to providing an optimal experience for the consumer.
To be sure, this isn’t exactly breaking news; content has been king for quite a while now. But the way content is used to create a cohesive, comprehensive, and overall valuable experience to the consumer has evolved in recent years and will continue to do so as time goes on—which is exactly what we’re going to be discussing in this article.
Focus on Providing Value, Not Promising It
One of the most basic rules of marketing is to always focus on the benefits of a product rather than its features. The modern customer doesn’t care about what your company’s products do; they care about what your products will enable them to do. Still, in using your content to focus on the benefits of your products… well, you’re still focusing on your products.
Remember though: your customers seek more than just a product that will help them accomplish a given task. What they really want is to find a brand that will provide an overall incredible experience for them—only part of which involves a high-value product.
So it’s vital that your content provides value in itself, instead of merely promising value from your products.
Consider Here Magazine, a digital and physical travel publication developed by the team at D2C luggage company Away.
If you venture over to Here’s website, you’ll notice something that may seem a bit counterintuitive: there’s only one mention of Away on the page—and this solitary mention is in regard to a mailing list registration form.
That’s it.
There’s no promotion of Away’s products.
No sales announcements or discount offers.
Not a single hint that the content within the digital magazine is meant to get readers to make a purchase.
Why? Because it’s not the goal.
Here Magazine exists solely to provide its audience with interesting stories of travel abroad—and nothing more.
Is there a connection between Here’s content and Away’s products? Absolutely.
Does Here’s audience need to purchase Away’s products to get full value from the publication? Not necessarily: it’s quite possible that many of Here’s readers haven’t purchased new luggage in years—but they can still devour every story of international culture published in the magazine.
(And of course, when the time comes for them to purchase a new set of luggage, Away will likely be top-of-mind. More on this later.)
The point is, Here’s content is an end unto itself—not just a means of pushing the reader closer to conversion.
Again, it may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes the best course of action is to provide your audience with valuable content for its own sake. While there are certainly scenarios where you should use content to nurture them through the sales funnel, this isn’t always the case.
In truth, if you can provide a truly valuable experience for your customers through the content you create for them, you won’t have to nudge them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey: They’ll simply take the next step of their own volition.
Create a Structured—But Not Linear—Content Journey
You’re probably familiar with the idea of creating different types of content for delivery to customers at different points along the sales funnel.
If we’re speaking in general terms, infographics such as this one can definitely help guide your content creation initiatives, allowing you to deliver certain content to individuals when it’ll be most valuable to them.
But this isn’t to say that these optimal moments are the only ones in which a certain type of content can influence the customer experience. For example, customer success stories can provide certain value to ToFu and MoFu customers, as well as those nearing a purchasing decision (as depicted in the image above).
Content consumption does not happen in a vacuum, nor is it a linear process. In truth, a given customer can find value in any branded content at any point throughout their personal buyer’s journey.
A few examples:
- After engaging with a ToFu-focused blog post, a new prospect may jump right into BoFu content—and make a purchasing decision relatively quickly.
- A hesitant customer who has engaged with a variety of ToFu and MoFu content may go back to check out additional ToFu-focused content to solidify their understanding of how the brand in question can help them.
- A loyal and experienced customer may review content they’ve already consumed, and end up gaining new insight due to the experiences they’ve had since first engaging.
In taking a linear approach to delivering content to your audience, you may unwittingly be blocking them from engaging with the right content for them at the present moment. In pointing them toward content that you believe is right for them at a certain point in their buyer’s journey, you may actually be turning them off from your brand altogether.
Now, this isn’t to say that your approach to delivering content shouldn’t be structured. You don’t want to say to your audience, “Okay, here’s all the content we’ve ever produced. I’m sure you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for.” Without some kind of direction, it will be difficult for your audience to figure out on their own which way to proceed.
And there’s the rub: on one hand, you’re tasked with using multiple pieces of content to nurture prospects toward conversion. On the other, a one-size-fits-all approach to delivering this content just isn’t going to work. As we said, different audience members will want to engage with different content (and content types) at multiple times throughout their buyer’s journey.
So your aim should be to deliver a progressive content experience to your individual customers that builds upon each individual’s previous experiences with your brand.
This is why micro-segmentation and dynamic content delivery have become so fashionable in recent years: they’ve enabled marketing teams to use everything they know about an individual’s experiences with the company to identify and deliver the most valuable piece of content for the individual at any given moment.
Overall, many brands are moving on from the idea that the goal of content marketing is to get the consumer from Point A to Point B, then to C, then D. We’re beginning to see content used to more authentically immerse the customer in the experience the brand intends to provide—even if that means allowing them to double back to content in a way that jibes with the traditional linear approach to content delivery.
While the ultimate internal goal is for this immersion to lead to conversion, the customer-facing goal isn’t to push them through the sales funnel. Rather, it’s to provide as much value as possible at all times—in turn, allowing them to confidently move forward with their purchasing decision.
Leverage the Content Experience to Achieve Business Goals
Piggybacking off that last point, we definitely aren’t advocating providing valuable content to your audience without doing something to also nurture them toward conversion.
But taking the linear approach we mentioned earlier can actually hinder your chances of converting a given prospect.
Consider the following hypothetical situation:
After absorbing your ToFu-focused content, a prospect feels confident to go ahead with making an initial purchase from your brand. But their thought process is interrupted by the CTA used in this ToFu content, which merely points them to content suited for MoFu customers. As a result, they may hesitate a bit longer in making their decision while they dig into this subsequent content.
While this will allow the prospect to become more informed and immersed in your brand, the fact remains that you’ll have unwittingly delayed their purchasing decision (which, in this situation, would have worked out in your favor).
Obviously, not everyone is going to jump to a purchasing decision in this manner. For the most part, it’ll take multiple pieces of content in various formats to nurture your prospective customers toward conversion.
Moreover, you don’t necessarily want prospective customers to make a purchasing decision before they’re truly ready to do so. Rather, you want their decision to be made with confidence, and with a full understanding of the value they’ll be receiving from your offer.
The thing is:
The threshold for what’s considered sufficient confidence and understanding varies from consumer to consumer. While one individual may be more than happy to try out your products after just a cursory glance at your content, another might need to dig deeper into your content catalog before they’re convinced that your brand is right for them.
Your goal, then, is to understand when your individual prospects have reached their own personal threshold in this regard—then get out of the way and allow them to take the next step in their journey with your brand.
While it would be ideal to get all members of your audience completely immersed in your brand’s content and overall customer experience, this doesn’t need to happen for your company to experience positive business results.
All that matters is the following:
- Your individual audience members enjoy the unique content experience you provide them
- The unique content experience is sufficient to get each of them to convert
So, your approach to content creation should be such that you always have the “neediest” of your customers in mind when creating your various pieces of content—but delivery only that which is needed by your individual customers. In turn, you’ll always be able to provide a positive content experience that consistently nurtures your audience toward conversion.