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Most brands know what it takes to deliver a satisfying content experience – or think they do.
But your brand's goals for driving engagement may not align with what works for your audience.
When it comes to value, audience perception is reality. If your content experience doesn't impress the first time, you may not get a second chance.
Meeting audience expectations requires organization-wide alignment so you can ensure everyone understands the task.
Internet connection interruptions lead to consumer dissatisfaction
An effective content experience should capture the interest of a casual audience – and gradually convert it into trusting and lasting customer relationships.
However, this trend can be broken when isolated functions manage certain components of the experience independently.
If these content partners don't understand your audience's intent and motivations, they may confuse their messaging priorities and marketing goals with the audience's needs and concerns.
That's why Mark McShane, co-founder of Cupid PR, says, “All good communication starts not with the message you want to send, but with a deep-rooted understanding of what your audience already thinks, feels, needs and wants.”
Audiences notice when experiences – or their content components – are designed to advance business goals rather than address business challenges.
Align your audience’s lens
It's important to look at every decision from the perspective of audience understanding, says Steve Pritchard, managing director at It Works Media. A company-wide process that combines multimodal research with performance data analysis can sharpen that understanding. “Telling a story through your brand only comes naturally when all content functions have direct, well-aligned knowledge of what makes your audience tick,” says Steve.
Use direct feedback to humanize your audience
Ricci Masero, marketing manager at Intellek, shares some data-driven signs that indicate when you're not on the same wavelength as your audience: “Engagement drops rapidly, people abandon your offer shortly after discovering it, and conversions become rare.”
But metrics alone don't paint the full picture. Diana Zheng, head of marketing at Stallion Express, says platform metrics can give brands a false or incomplete picture of engagement.
While these metrics reveal superficial behaviors and patterns, they do little to shed light on the underlying causes or relationships of the interactions. And these insights are critical to decision-making.
Diana and Ricci both recommend combining quantitative analytics with direct feedback mechanisms to improve your understanding of your audience.
“Surveys, focus groups and user testing lift the curtain on their motivations, pain points and decision-making structures,” says Ricci. “When you overlay that with quantitative data patterns, you get a 3D view of your customers that you can then share with your functional content partners.”
“Seamless” begins with bridging isolated strategies
Understanding your audience is invaluable, but turning every moment of interaction into an opportunity for deeper connection requires strategic orchestration of all your content touchpoints.
Many companies are therefore having to rethink how they design the experience. Instead of isolated steps along a path, content experiences should be networks of valuable, contextually relevant insights – regardless of where, when or how a customer makes contact.
Seamlessly linking all brand values and interaction points is a major challenge.
When I spoke with Robert Rose of CMI, he recommended that I start by reviewing your existing experience. The data can give you insight into your audience's key interests, which can help you set priorities across your entire business. Robert claims that this will help you set direction and create manageable timelines so you don't have to redesign everything at once.
Integrate your employees
You need to engage and prepare your cross-functional partners (like sales, communications, and other teams that work together on content) to create a cohesive experience together. As Ricci notes, everyone involved needs to understand their responsibilities and how their roles fit together in the audience journey.
Travel map it
Mark McShane of Cupid PR suggests creating integrated customer journey maps to highlight audience needs that your reps may not be aware of. The maps should include all touchpoints and the intended experience at each stage of the journey.
“This helps identify gaps in capabilities – places where the experience might frustrate or overwhelm customers, or where obstacles and delays arise,” he says.
Establish workflows and communication channels
Next, you need to establish efficient workflows and clear lines of communication. Make sure all teams involved have input into the strategic direction and understand the implementation process. These steps can help neutralize the friction and resistance that often arise during major organizational change.
While your teams may be hesitant to push their boundaries and work outside their comfort zone, it is essential to delivering a coherent and compelling content experience.
Maxwell Pollock, former content marketing specialist at Memora Health, says, “(You) have to do it, and (you) have to integrate all the necessary effort into your workflows.”
The collaborative process will be helpful in developing and implementing the audience experience.
Maxwell points out that his team has built a content library that streamlines the brand's cross-departmental collaboration. “It makes it much easier for sales to access our content to achieve their goals, and it also encourages valuable conversations between our teams in a direct and goal-oriented way,” he says.
Establishment of uniform standards for quality and user-friendliness
Establish company-wide standards for the quality and value of your content. If your brand's tone, style and voice aren't consistent, you risk confusing people as they move from touchpoint to touchpoint.
Maxwell recommends working with key stakeholders to develop a company-wide editorial style manual.
“This will ensure that our customers receive a consistent, high-quality content experience with our brand across all of our different platforms and content types,” he says.
In addition to content quality, you should also set usability guidelines. Make it easy for your customers to find what they're looking for and move on to the next step, no matter where they come into contact with your brand.
Diana Zheng of Stallion Express suggests focusing on these user experience considerations to ensure positive interactions and improve customer satisfaction:
Her tip: Make navigation more useful by organizing content based on your visitors' most common challenges, rather than by content format (e.g., videos, white papers, blog posts), use cases, or target industries. These structural approaches better consider your brand's priorities and assumptions than your customers' practical needs and preferences.
Monitor, test, learn and experiment
As you redesign your experience around a more customer-centric vision, don't overlook the value of testing and experimentation. The digital space is constantly changing, and the popularity of platforms, technologies, and trends can rise and fall without warning.
You may need to test and pivot new strategies as new insights and opportunities arise. These opportunities will arise more regularly when monitoring your customer feedback channels is an integrated part of your content experience workflow.
To seize the opportunities you discover, you also need the willingness – and operational flexibility – to try new ideas.
According to Mark McShane, a willingness to experiment has become a central tenet of Cupid PR's approach. “It's about finding out what works and then doing more,” he says, “but also constantly asking yourself, 'I wonder if…?'”
Target group-oriented strategies promote valuable experiences for both sides
Brands succeed when their content experiences provide value that their audience appreciates. To achieve this goal, your entire organization must operate on a unified strategy that aligns with your vision for success at every step of the journey.
A version of this article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Chief Content Officer.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
