Industry: Technology
Content: Daily news articles
Highlights: Content was assisting a significant number of conversions
You’ve probably heard that “content is king” and are well familiar with the reasons why it’s supposed to be so powerful – content shows off your business’ expertise, it gives visitors something to do on your site and will draw them back for more. But companies that set up their content marketing strategies the right way see more than user engagement. They see movement on the goal that really fuels investments in corporate blogs: Conversions.
Track goals to get insights
One Brafton client started to see just how big of an impact its daily news content was having on its bottom line after setting up goals in Google Analytics. After adding code to establish event tracking, the company’s content marketing strategist could see how many times website visitors downloaded brand assets and product information, or landed on the Contact Us page to get in touch with a representative.
In a matter of months, thousands of goals had been completed and content was playing an important role. People who viewed the news articles on the site were more engaged and more likely to convert. Just how likely? Data showed content readers were 566 percent more apt to convert than the average user who landed on the site.
There’s value in the assist
To be clear, this doesn’t necessarily mean that internet users who came across an article in search results were clicking through the company’s page and converting on the spot. Unfortunately, that’s not how content marketing is designed to work. It’s meant to provide a soft touch – a nudge in the direction of a conversion – and after receiving enough information about the products and services in question, the readers opt in to conversions.
This non-linear pathway is exactly what surfaced when the client had sufficient data. People were coming to the site to read news stories, and would click through to other informational or promotional pages before finally handing over their contact data.
Prospects entering the site for news stories were staying approximately 211 percent longer.
In fact, content readers generally clicked onto seven other pages when they came to the site, compared with a site average of three. Not only that, but prospects entering the site for news stories were staying approximately 211 percent longer than visitors who came in through the site any other way (over four minutes on average versus a minute and a half).
How hard is your content working?
The promise of content marketing is, ultimately, what drives bottom-line results. Because your news articles keep people on the page longer and pique their curiosity about your company, you have more chances to deliver your pitch. With accurate information about the conversion pathway, you can make smarter decisions about when to keep it educational or compel them to act with a hard pitch for the best possible results.
