As a B2B marketer, you work incredibly hard to capture your prospects’ attention with high-value content. Wouldn’t it be a shame for the buyers you’ve worked so hard to attract and engage to bounce from your site because they hit a snag in their customer journey—one that you could control? If your high-value content isn’t performing the way you expected, the problem may be with your content experience. 

Behind (or around, more accurately) every high-converting piece of content is a great content experience. There may be several sneaky cracks in your content experience where your B2B marketing prospects could be getting away from you. Repair these cracks in your content experience foundation and make your content work harder for you in closing deals and driving pipeline. 

You might also like: 

• Overcoming content experience pitfalls 
• There's a faster path to pipeline: Why content experience matters now 
• 3 content experience challenges every B2B marketer must overcome

Warning signs of a leaky content experience

It’s perfectly plausible that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your content experience. You have hit the nail on the head with your personalization. Your content is perfectly mapped to your customer journey and every call-to-action is thoughtfully and flawlessly placed. Well done, you! But if your performance just doesn’t seem to add up, you might have a break in your experience. 

We know that the success of every campaign is defined differently based on the objectives and key performance indicators set out by the marketing team. You’ll need to measure your campaign holistically to truly understand its performance. Bounce rate in conjunction with other metrics will tell a greater story about the content journey, for example. Having said that, there are some telltale signs that your content experience might need some maintenance. If you see these metrics appearing together and often in your campaigns, you came to the right place: 

• High bounce rate 
• Low average time spent on page 
• Low average number of pages per session 
• Low CTA engagement (link clicks or form fills)

Responsive design: One size doesn’t fit all

How many of your prospects are browsing your content while they’re on the go? Mobile devices account for 63 percent of Google’s US organic search traffic. When over two thirds of search results are happening on mobile devices, you can’t afford to leave your mobile experience as an afterthought. A responsive content experience means adapting it so that it doesn't create more leaks simply because it's on a smaller screen. Our audiences shouldn't have to squint their eyes, pinch their screens and (especially) search for your CTAs. Now that multi-screening is becoming increasingly popular, the experience should be intuitive and fast. 

Eliminate road closures in your customer’s journey 

Dead ends and broken links are frustrating snags in the customer journey that can confuse prospects and drive them to bounce from your content. Once your buyer lands on your ebook, video, or blog post, where do you want them to go next? The next stop on their journey should be clear, contextually relevant, and personalized to their pain points. Content recommendations within your content experience entice them to stay longer or convert. (We’ll give you more on calls-to-action later.)

A little quality assurance can go a long way, not only for functionality but also for your credibility. Set up link redirects on retired content so that, even if you miss a link while you’re auditing your content, you won’t risk leading an interested prospect to a dead end. 

Bring your high-value content to the surface

Think about how much content you've created over the years. Now think about how your buyers find that perfect piece of content. Are they searching for a needle in a haystack, or are they following breadcrumbs? 

Help them along their journey with organized categories and other signposts to give your audience some direction. It might not matter as much for your shorter-lived topical content, but increasing discoverability enhances the lifespan of your evergreen content. Your content can’t work its best to increase brand awareness and generate leads if you don’t make sure it’s discoverable by category or through a content-wide search feature. Don’t bury these gems.  Keep content organized so your best pieces are easy to find for those who are looking for them.  

Calls-to-action are best with context

Having a catch-all, generic CTA, such as “Subscribe to our email list” just doesn’t work as effectively as one that’s adapted to the context that the visitor is in. Contextual calls-to-action work better, whether they're around, beside, or within your content. Presenting your prospect with an irrelevant CTA is equally damaging to your conversion rate. 

Maybe you jumped the gun and presented your top-of-funnel prospects with a conversion message. Maybe you presented your prospects who are researching account-based marketing with a gated ebook about sales enablement. Either way, one thing’s for sure: a whole lot of traffic directed to a page without a relevant CTA that your prospects are excited to click on means a whole lot of would-be leads are lost.

Plug the leaks and generate more leads

Don’t wait until the end of your campaign to measure your success. By then, it’s too late to pivot! Optimize your content experience while it’s live to improve campaign performance. At the first sign of content distress, put yourself in your buyers’ shoes and view the holistic content experience you are guiding them through. Everything is on the table, from calls-to-action to page-load speed.

Just remember this: in the content experience, it’s a one-click exit. You need to do everything you can to make them want to join you on your journey.  

Learn more about creating a better content experience to create more opportunities in our eBook.