I recently attended a Yulbiz Montreal conference with speaker Muriel Vandermeulen. The gathering was about Writing for the Web: How to set up a leading marketing strategy which ensures notoriety and conversion.
In my first blog article about the conference, I focused on the first two letters of the well known acronym “AIDA” concept, which in marketing, stands for Attention and Interest. In this context, it applies to all visitors of a website.
This second article will be a continuation of the acronym and tackle the tactics which will encourage Desire and Action, that is to say, conversion.
How to convey Desire
When one writes for the Web, it is necessary to keep in mind the whole “web” ecosystem. Therefore, an effective marketing strategy requires a calendar of publications which integrates various types of content:
- blog post;
- landing pages for downloads;
- commercial email;
- etc.
To create desire, we must put into place strategies to identify the visitors’ experience and create awareness based on their personal or professional interests. For example, for a second wave of promotional email to promote an eBook, the content should be different if the recipient opened the email or not in the first case.
It is also possible to add a feeling of urgency to the text which will contribute to create desire: “now, less than two days, offer exclusive to the first 100 people, etc”…
What length for an article?
According to Muriel Vandermeulen, a blog article should have about 350 words; this is the norm. Although longer article can be effective from an SEO perspective (since they allow you to have a good density of keywords), everything should be adjusted for target audiences, themes, context and the type of article.
How can you create Action and measure its performance?
I listened carefully to the speaker say that for 10 years, the Web was an IT field, then came the era of communication and now increasingly, the online presence of a company and its editorial strategy is relayed to the marketing service. Why this transition?
In B2B, the majority of websites are used to collect leads and it is possible to measure the effectiveness of its marketing strategy content. Here are some tips and tools.
Actions according to the level of engagement
Depending on the level of engagement of the visitor, it is suggested to change the incentives for action, commonly known as “call-to-action.” Several studies suggest that to designing buttons can encourage action and therefore increase the conversion rate.
These action buttons could be placed under the content the visitor is reading, in a right-hand side band, or a thank you page after they have filled out a form. : a calculator, a survey, remote loading of a specific study, a subscription with the blogist, etc
Measuring the maturity of the company versus its content
The speaker also mentioned a model which makes it possible to measure the maturity of the companies according to its content, the EMC.
It presents 13 dimensions that assess the maturity of the company by its content. One of the categories is information. This is about measuring the efficiency of the content strategy when it comes to sharing, collaborating, reusing and corporate content.
Because nowadays, it is not enough to just write and publish an article. It becomes essential to use the tactics of pollination, via social networks, encouraging readers to like, share or comment on its notes, its news or its content. And of course, adding a photo or video content helps to create interest and provoke action.
“Heat Map”, a concrete tool
This tool offers a colorful graph that allows you to see how visitors digest the content on a Web site; what interests them more. Its consultation and analysis can optimize pages and reposition the incentives for action based on the results obtained. I invite you to read this article which has a free tool list.
From ROI to ROC…
Finally, I will end with a performance index relevant and different from the traditional ROI that I discovered at the conference. It measures the effectiveness of its Web content: ROC is “Return on Content.”
I invite you to read this article to begin to calculate and improve your marketing strategy editorial.
