We all know that content is king — or queen 👑.
In a cutthroat and crowded digital space, the kind of user experiences you provide can make all the difference between just about surviving and positively thriving. And those experiences start (and end) with great content.
But these days, there’s a lot more to it than that. Because to really nail it, you have to think beyond the world of basic content marketing.
Welcome to the world of content experience.
Content experience vs. content marketing
As a general rule, you could say that content marketing covers creation, consumption, and measurement. In other words, it’s about generating and delivering relevant pieces of content for specific audiences. You’re going to be focusing on how they actually engage with each piece, learning from those insights, and fine-tuning the high performers.
Content experience management adopts a more comprehensive approach by going one step further — and taking one step back. So, forget creating content as a series of one-off assets. Today, it’s all about seeing the big picture. That means viewing your entire content program as a unified whole as your consumers move from prospect to customer.
That way, you can understand each piece as part of a wider context to ensure you deliver it in the right way, to the right people and yes, at the right time. Which is why the concept is so crucial for engaging audiences and driving conversions.
In fact, you’re probably delivering content experiences right now.
So let’s make them the right kind of content experiences.
Already produce content in different formats across different channels? And are your audiences already engaging with that content? If so, then yes, you’re already delivering content experiences. So, it makes sense to start managing that content as part of an end-to-end framework that helps to maximize engagement, drive conversions, and strengthen your brand.
5 big benefits of a well-crafted content experience
Content experience management moves you from targeted, one-off interactions to longer-term, joined-up experiences that improve engagement, increase loyalty and retention and, with a bit of luck 🍀, drive conversions.
- Dial up customer engagement: Joined-up content experiences that have been mapped out against the entire user journey are way more likely to resonate with your audiences, win their attention, and nudge them onto the next step of the journey.
- Polish brand perception: By their very nature, seamlessly connected content experiences provide the value, knowledge, and satisfaction your audiences are looking for. And that’s obviously going to help showcase your brand as a leader in its field.
- Strengthen customer retention: Serving the content prospects and customers are looking for when they need it inevitably keeps them satisfied — reducing churn and reinforcing loyalty. That means they keep coming back and even singing your praises to their peers.
- Generate more leads: Engaging customers more effectively. Providing the info they want. Reinforcing your position as an authority that understands their needs. It doesn’t take a genius to see the chances are you’re going to convert more prospects into leads and more leads into loyal buyers.
- Boost brand visibility: Paid search can put your brand out there. But that’s nothing compared but the kind of domain authority driven by organic traffic. So, combine content experiences with SEO best practices, strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.
Core elements of an effective content experience
Okay, so creating content experiences are the new big thing. Get them right and sure, they have a ton of potential not only to meet your targets, but smash them. But that’s easy to say. How do you actually make it happen?
Well, first thing you need is an actual content experience management strategy designed to engage your consumers from that very first click — and continue to do so all the way through to their next purchase… and the next… and… you get the idea.
Great content experiences should be:
- #1. Organized: Never forget the whole point of content experiences is to manage the end-to-end relationship between different content assets: web pages, images, video, audio, social, you name it. So the foundation of any strategy is going to be organizing your content in a way that allows it all to work together — be that by format, journey stage, or audience segment.
- #2. Appealing: Content experiences start with the very first impression your content makes. It needs to be appealing enough to catch their eye, be easy to “get” and remember, and start to build an emotional connection.
- #3. Personalized: Tailoring content to specific user groups was the last “next big thing”. Optimizely, for example, integrates personalization tools to help you effortlessly establish trust from the outset and nurture relationships as prospects move through the buying journey.
- #4: Interactive: Fact: interactive content generates twice as many conversions as static content. So yeah, you definitely want to build interactive elements into your content experiences whether that be a quiz, poll, video, slider, comment section, or even just a social media share button.
- #5: Consistent: Content experiences are all about creating connected steps that guide customers along the buyer journey from one asset to the next. That’s not going to work so well if every piece looks and sounds completely different. Unified content means a uniform brand tone, with consistent messaging at every stage on every channel. Standalone? Yes. Disjointed? Absolutely not.
Common challenges in content experience – and how to solve them
We’ve already touched on the fact you may already have the tech and the content to start creating unified content experiences. But we’re not going to pretend it’s all plain sailing. Like any new initiative, there’ll be a few bumps along the way. Even so, the challenges you’ll tend to come across are all relatively straightforward to overcome — and trust us, it’s going to be well worth the effort.
1. Content overload
From bump…
Saying there’s a lot of content out there is kind of like saying the Grand Canyon is a pot hole. As a user, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed: how many billion pages came up when you last did a Google search? That’s why it’s so essential to curate content that resonates.
…to plain sailing.
Develop a clear content strategy that prioritizes quality over quantity. And look into AI-driven content recommendation systems that personalize content based on the behavior and preferences of your audiences.
2. Inconsistent branding
From bump…
When you’ve got all kinds of different people dreaming up all sorts of content, it’s easy to loosen your grip on brand tone. Or lose it altogether. It can also lead to duplication and inconsistency. Yet as we’ve seen above, maintaining a consistent style across your content is vital.
…to plain sailing.
If you haven’t already done so, rustle up a comprehensive set of brand guidelines, making sure content creators understand them — and follow them. If you live in an ideal world, your centralized CMS will feature built-in style guides and support a cohesive, cross-departmental collaboration.
3. Negative user experiences (UX)
From bump…
Too much content or a poorly designed website that’s difficult to navigate = frustrated (ex)users.
…to plain sailing.
Conduct regular UX audits to identify pain points, simplify navigation, and make sure your content is mobile-friendly. Something like 60% of web traffic now comes from mobile — and that figure is only going to increase. While you’re in the mood, you can also look at responsive page designs and optimizing page load times.
4. Lack of engagement
From bump…
Your prospects and customers have to wade through endless pages of content in their search for the perfect pan, the dream holiday, the cheapest insurance… whatever. All too often, the content they’re served simply ticks the “been there, done that” box.
…to plain sailing.
Interactive content gives your users a voice, allows them to express an opinion, or invites them to watch rather than read. It helps make the content experience different and keep things fresh. Other easy wins for boosting engagement include encouraging user-generated content and community interaction through comments and social media.
5. Measuring impact
From bump…
Measuring the effectiveness of content experiences can be a bit of a headache. After all, how do you go about evaluating something as abstract as a user’s personal experience with your content?
…to plain sailing.
Analytics tools can track the metrics that will provide a range of insights into the performance of your content experiences.
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Measuring content consumption will help you evaluate whether customers reach your content at all. Metrics include traffic growth, search engine rankings, page views, overall time on site, and content downloads.
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Measuring engagement helps you see if your content distribution attracts the right customers and if they find your content valuable. Metrics include percentage of returning visitors, average number of pages per visit, social media engagement, time on each content asset, bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR).
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Measuring ROI shows whether or not your content is delivering against your overall campaign objectives. Metrics include the number of new leads, number of signups, number of offers redeemed, any other conversions you aim to achieve.
Read next: 20 website metrics to track for success 💪
Best practices for a content experience strategy with maximum impact
We’ve covered off the core elements of any content experience: Organized | Appealing | Personalized | Interactive | Consistent. Let’s now quickly cover off the underlying best practices that should form the foundation of your CX strategy.
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Set objectives
Setting goals will provide a sense of direction and purpose for your efforts, help you to focus on generating the right kind of content, and provide a benchmark against which you can measure your success.
Whether you’re setting out to increase subscribers, generate leads, convert prospects, strengthen loyalty, build awareness, support sales, or bump up those SEO rankings, it goes without saying that you’ll want to make sure that your content experiences lead to user actions that align with your company's strategic goals. -
Audit your existing content
Before working out where you’re going, it’s a good idea to first establish where you currently are.
A comprehensive review of your existing content will serve to identify the assets you have and how well they’re performing; flag anything that’s out-of-date or duplicated; and spot gaps you can fill with new pieces. And bearing in mind we’re looking at things from a holistic context, consider how all that content fits together not just standalone asset, but as part of a cohesive flow. -
Conduct user testing
If you have the time and the resources, it’s well worth considering testing your content experiences with real users. This will provide valuable insight into the way they discover, access, and interact with your content.
As they move from one piece of content to the next, you’ll start to see how well your content experience fits together. And if there are any pain points – say in discovering, accessing or navigating content – you’ll be able to set them right. -
Personalize your content
We’ve covered off the fact that great content experiences incorporate personalization, serving interesting content to the relevant user at the opportune time.
Building personas, mapping customer journeys, and collecting contextual information such as recently visited pages, viewed videos, or downloaded papers will help you to plan impactful content experiences that meet the expectations of every audience segment from their first visit onwards. -
Think omnichannel
The whole point of content experience management is creating a seamless stream of content that flows from one asset to the next. And since an omnichannel experience involves delivering consistent messaging across every platform and touchpoint, this approach has an essential role to play.
For example, if you repost the same content across all platforms, make sure you tailor it to the relevant format and audience. Hosting a live event online? Don’t forget to promote it across your newsletters, social, and website. And critically, be sure to make sure every channel is bang up to date with the latest branding, themes, promotions, etc.
*The* tool you need to create a great content experience
Okay, so that’s a whirlwind tour of the content experience landscape. It’s important to note that there are plenty of tools out there designed to help you create next-level content experiences.
Take the Optimizely One digital experience platform (DXP), for example. Our unified system is transforming experience optimization, integrating every feature you could dream of, from content management and personalization to experimentation and the latest AI innovations.
