When your quiet leads tend to say the most

Did you know that only 30% of marketers say their companies are effective at content marketing, down from 38% last year? That’s according to a recent survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. This number is surprising considering that “Content is King” has been going strong for quite a few years.

At Folloze we believe that providing valuable content is key for the success of B2B marketers, and that prospect engagement through content is going to be a major sales and marketing battle in the coming years. The engagement analytics presented here are our way to help you work towards an effective engagement strategy, where content plays a key role. And by effective we mean helping you win more business.

Explorers (silent) Vs. Clickers (loud)

Visitors of Folloze boards fall into two main categories, based on their engagement with the content. The most engaged are “Clickers” – people who clicked a call-to-action on the board. What we found is that Clickers viewed an average of 1.2 items on the board and spent less than a minute on the board. Then we have the “Explorers” - people who were highly engaged with the content but did not click a CTA. Those people viewed an average of 3.3 items and spent 2-3 minutes on the board.

Interesting to note here that a survey conducted by DemandGen Report earlier in 2015 found that more than 50% of buyers prefer packages of related content, a preference that is reflected here in the Explorers’ behavior. 

Why is this important?

1. Your opportunity to increase conversion lies with the Explorers. By reaching out to them at their moment of attention, you can make a significant improvement in your funnel conversion.
2. When designing a board for maximum conversion, you should assume low level of engagement with the content. Offer as much information as possible on the page itself without making your prospects click into the content. Plan on short form content or videos.
3. When designing a board for lead nurturing, feel free to use long-form content created by you or a third party. In the survey by DemandGen Report we mentioned earlier, around 60% of respondents said they prefer content by industry thought leaders and analysts over content that was created in-house. Lastly, consider minimizing content gating, so as not to “scare off” your Explorers.

Don’t lose your quiet opportunities

During an active sales cycle, your prospects are 3-4 times more likely to engage with content you’re sending them compared to when they were leads.

Bottom line: If your sales cycles are 2-3 months long, you can quickly lose your prospects’ attention and enthusiasm. Dripping relevant content along the purchase process will keep them engaged and top-of-mind.

What type of content works best during the purchase process?

In a recent study performed by the CEB and quoted on Forbes here, which examined the impact of personal emotions on B2B purchases, it was found that 71% of buyers who see a personal value in a B2B purchase will end up buying the product or service. In fact, personal value had two times the impact on the buyer than business impact did.

What does this mean for your content choices? In their take on this story of emotions in B2B purchase decisions Curatti suggests to use storytelling in your marketing. Easier said than done? For sure. But let the power of content packages, combined with personalization elements help you get there.

How did we get our numbers?

The analysis in this report is based on about one million interactions across a large sample of Folloze boards during 2015.

Folloze is uniquely positioned to measure engagement of leads and prospects with content as our boards serve a dual purpose:

1. We provide our customers with a way to package content in a highly targeted, engaging, and relevant way, that entices the visitor to interact with the content.
2. On the same content boards, we also provide calls-to-action to increase the probability of conversion.

So as you can see, Folloze is a venue for both content consumption and decision making.

By recording every interaction with that content, as well as every click on a call-to-action, we create a one-of-a-kind database of interactions by leads and prospects. This allows us to uniquely analyze the relationship between viewing content and clicking a call-to-action.