The Loyalty Code

In the past, marketers lived in a simpler world. Although the task of finding the right marketing channel mix wasn’t easy, the number of channels and how content was consumed was limited. Marketers could carefully select their mix of television, radio, print, event, and out-of-home advertising and that was it. Customers only had so many places to consume content, and advertisers knew they’d be there. Image (Television) The internet changed all that. The first disruption was connectivity that enabled on-demand content consumption. Then, mobile put the power of the internet in our pockets. Communication with customers was upended and traditional channels fragmented into individualized, on-demand content consumption. Then social media arrived, adding a new layer to an increasingly complex mediascape. This new channel brought with it the rise of new set players. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked-In became new places for consumers to discover content. While other play...

You’ve worked hard and prepared a big meal for your guests. There’s a full spread, including snacks, appetizers, salads, meats, veggies, and desserts. But it all goes to waste, and the only thing that’s eaten is a bowl of pretzels. What happened? The same thing’s happening when your content site’s Visitors only touch one or two pages during a browsing session.  You think to yourself: Look at all this content, I have pages that cater to topics my audience wants, I have different types of content like video, white papers, and light reading, I have guided navigation and search, and still, they come in they hit one or two pages and leave, what gives? There’s one metric that you can look at that can help you understand user engagement and how to generate multipage sessions: Pages per visit. For a content site, your pages per visit metric is a good indicator of the quality of your content, navigation structure, and overall user experience (Patel, n.d.). It’s also interco...

Long-term customer relationships, they’re essential for the success of any brand and content sites are no exception to that rule. Your content may be designed to get you clients, or maybe it’s all about generating subscriptions, ad revenue, or paid downloads. Whatever the goal, you’ll want a base of loyal customers because they’re the ones who will come back to you, and if you’re doing things right, refer people to you and generate real growth for your content brand. But earning that loyalty is no easy task, especially in today’s dense jungle of user-generated, curated, and created content. It’s also a world where customer expectations are high. In fact, 78% of customers say that the experience is a crucial factor in the brands they choose (Clarke & Kinghorn, 2018). It’s an experience that’s based on several factors, and 80% of customers place convenience, friendliness, knowledge, and efficiency at the top of their list (Clarke & Kinghorn). So, how do you measur...