Crystal Clear Communications Blog

“How does the user experience impact content?” A marketer from TD Ameritrade posed this question, one of the Top 100 Questions on content marketing.

As you plan marketing for the year ahead, adapt to customers’ changing preferences and media habits to ensure your brand remains relevant and visible.

How are people’s media habits changing?

Among those who spent a couple of years of working at home, many want to go back to the office to interact with coworkers in person. Others resisting returning to the office. Downtowns are emptier as a result.

Compared with the pandemic years 2021 and 2022, in 2023 people are traveling more, both for business and pleasure.

People are still Zooming and Teaming

While people are participating in live events again, they also continue to meet virtually on Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Virtual and hybrid events are mainstream now, so they’ll continue to play a bigger role.

Social media channels were upended when Elon Musk acquired Twitter.

Changes in Twitter’s rules upset marketers – and reinforced the lesson that it’s dangerous to build your content assets on rented ground. Build your most important content assets on ground that you own, such as your website, blog, events and email.

Users’ hunger for an alternative to Twitter led Meta to introduce Threads, which attracted more than 70 million users in its first week.

In 2023, LinkedIn is becoming more useful and more crucial, especially for B2B marketers.

These are ways that the user experience impacts content marketing. An equally important question for marketers to consider is:

How does your content impact the user experience?

To get users aboard with your content, maximize the expected rewards and minimize the effort required for people to obtain the benefits, as Wilbur Schramm advised. For example:

• Bundle together all the relevant content on each key topic you cover. For key topics, collect your blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, long-form content and recorded webinars on one webpage so that all your content assets are easier for buyers to find and use.
• Make comparing products easier. Chances are your brand offers multiple ways to address customers’ pain points and needs. Provide a simple side-by-side comparison tool (as Consumer Reports does) to help people choose the product that fits them best. Here are examples of product comparison tools.
• Learn your buyers’ top questions and answer them online. Any unanswered or unanswerable question is sufficient to get buyers stuck. As a result, they abandon shopping carts and postpone planned purchases. Provide content that helps buyers overcome obstacles and address their worries – by gathering, analyzing and answering their most frequently asked questions. Here’s a blog on how you can convert customer questions into compelling content.
• Map content to the buyers’ journey. On a carefully considered purchase, buyers take four distinct steps. At each step, they ask different questions, use different media and prioritize different buying criteria.First, buyers recognize a need. Second, they look for alternatives and make a list of potential solutions. Third, as they narrow their list of solutions, they seek social proof from other buyers – such as reviews, ratings, social media and word of mouth. Finally, buyers decide – and they need reinforcement to be sure it’s the right decision. Here’s a blog that spells out the most successful types of content for each step in the journey.

“How does the user experience impact content?” is one of marketers’ Top 100 Questions on Content Marketing. Here are the answers.