One of my favourite World War II posters I remember from school when I was a kid (not during WWII, I might add!) had the slogan ‘loose lips sink ships’. This is it, here. In digital inbound marketing, the slogan could easily be adapted to ‘loose content sinks websites.’
Many businesses fail to achieve the interest and leads they need from their site because their content is too ‘loose’ – poorly thought out, too self-focused, insufficiently targeted, or simply not immersive enough to prompt engagement.
A good way of improving the value of your content assets and encouraging lead generation is to tighten up your content by making it more immersive. Here are a few simple ways you can do this, transforming your content from a dreary monologue into a dialogue between your business and your target audience.
1. Build Immersion Into Your Content Strategy:
Content marketing works best when your content assets are planned as part of a strategy designed to maximise engagement. With this in mind, start thinking about customer immersion from the very beginning of your content planning and creation process, considering how you would like your audience to interact with each asset (e.g. leaving comments, social shares, likes, lead enquiries, website visits etc), and what kind of customer journey you want them to experience.
To do this, it’s helpful to plan the common narrative, or ‘story’, you’d like to express through your content, as well as any visual elements and interactive components needed to tie the content strategy together and ensure a cohesive and engaging experience.
2. Interactivity And Immersion:
The cornerstone of immersive content is interactivity. Immersive content invites engagement and interaction, and provides the means to do so, thereby transforming passive viewers into active participants, and encouraging brand recognition and retention. There are lots of ways you can do this, including directly asking for shares and likes, using polls within your articles and on social media, and encouraging your prospects to create User Generated Content (UGC). Interactivity can be encouraged in more subtle ways, too. For example, by writing your articles and video scripts in a way that continually asks questions, prompts your viewers to reflect, and encourages them to find out more, you subliminally prompt them to engage with other aspects of your business.
3. Use A Strong Call To Action:
A call to action (CTA) is what transforms content into marketing content. Even the most site ore and exciting content should have a purpose beyond just engagement, so make sure to include clear and strong calls to action in all your assets that guide your audience on what to do next, whether it is subscribing to a newsletter, subscribing to a service, visiting your site, or making an appointment with your sales team. A well written and tactically placed CTA can convert the heightened engagement of immersive content into tangible results for your business.
4. Respond To Customer Feedback And Questions:
Encouraging engagement gives you the opportunity to create a genuine dialogue with your customers. Use the results from polls to shape your future content plan, respond to customer questions you receive on social media in the form of blog articles or videos, and be humble and candid in the way you respond to feedback.
Next steps
Making your content more immersive is not just a way of increasing leads and engagement. By talking directly to your customer through your content, involving them in the process and considering their needs and motivations at each stage, you start to develop an authentic brand voice that is unique to your company and the service you provide.
To find out more, please get in touch with one of our content specialists today by calling 01332 982197.
