3 ways to use content experiences to fuel your demand generation campaigns
Experiences are what define virtually everything that goes on in our day-to-day lives. An impressive customer service experience at the mall, a negative experience getting stuck in traffic—a good or bad experience can ultimately make or break someone’s day. And as marketers, we’re in the business of experiences—it’s our job to make people feel excited, or moved, or pique their curiosity enough to continue to engage with our brands.
Many people may think that creating experiences is the job of a content marketer, but it’s actually just as important (if not more) for demand generation marketers to think about experiences in order to get prospects to convert.
If you’re looking to take your demand generation campaigns to the next level, we’ve got three ways to use content experiences to uniquely engage your prospects.
Turn your email nurture destinations into an experience
Since one of the most important elements of a successful nurture campaign is targeted content, it only makes sense to send people to a content destination that is tailored to their buyer persona. Rather than sending everyone in your nurture the same old generic content, take the time to segment your audience into role- or interest-specific groups and use a unique destination (tailored to each persona) for each.
In this example from Blackbaud, you’ll see that they’ve sent out an email which links to an asset (in this case, a fundraising checklist), that leads back to a curated collection of content providing additional tools and resources relevant to that topic. For anyone who’s really interested, there’s even an option to request a demo of their product.
Rather than sending people to just one piece of content, it’s always a good idea to at least give them the option to consume more. There are a number of tools you can use to create curated content destinations (of course, Uberflip is one 💁), or you can simply ensure that every asset you direct people to has at least one call-to-action that will send people through a thoughtfully planned reading path. The goal is ultimately to avoid leading people to any dead ends and start thinking beyond static destinations.
Use content experiences to make the click from your CPC campaigns count
When you’re investing your budget into paid search, display, and social media advertising, you want to make sure that you’re getting a return on what you’re paying for those clicks. A generic landing page will make people bounce, while a well-thought-out content experience will compel further engagement—meaning you get your money’s worth for that click!
AdRoll has the right idea with this ad destination. They’ve designed a page that features a customer story, a brief description of what their product can help you achieve, and a call-to-action to get started.
When building out an ad experience, ask yourself: What else might people who are interested in your asset care about? Are they at a stage in the buyer journey where they might want to see a product demo? Do you have any upcoming events they might like to attend? Questions like these will help you ensure you’re including everything that might intrigue someone who’s clicked through your ad—truly making that click count.
Get strategic with your next marketing campaign or series
If you’re running a weekly demand gen campaign like a video series or a crash course, you’ve got to create an experience out of it! I’m sorry to say, but your content (no matter how good) isn’t enough to keep people interested—especially if the goal is to get them to consume multiple pieces of content.
Rather than building out a succession of landing pages or blog posts for your series, it’s a good idea to house all of your videos or articles in one place (using one consistent link as the main destination). Wistia’s One, Ten, One Hundred series is a great example of this.
Wistia’s email sends people to a collection of content, which provides a series description (so people know what they’re getting into), a trailer (so they can get a taste before investing their time) and access to every single video in the series on one page (giving people the option to binge if they want to). The team at Wistia does an awesome job of creating an experience that draws you in—really taking the email destination game to the next level.
Now it’s time to start building experiences
Hopefully, these examples of killer demand generation experiences have gotten your gears turning about how you can switch things up in order to better personalize and scale your campaigns. Being a B2B marketer doesn’t mean you’re subject to the boring-landing-page life, instead, it’s all the more reason to get creative to get people engaged with our brands.
Now that you’ve gotten a taste of what’s out there, I challenge you to try it for yourself. Let the experience building begin!