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Does Content Gating Still Work for B2B Lead Generation in 2023?

Posted on January 20, 2023 - 4:03 AM by
b2b lead generation

In the ever-evolving world of B2B lead generation, marketers are always looking for the best strategies to capture qualified leads. One of the most popular strategies is content gating, which involves requiring visitors to fill out a form in order to access a piece of content. 

White papers, e-Books, and other long-form content pieces have been popular lead-generation tools for B2B marketing agencies for many years. But with the plethora of gated content, it has become increasingly difficult to stand out and make an impact with gated content.

The question is: in 2023, are white papers and other long-form content pieces as lead generators dead? The answer is not entirely straightforward. 

While it’s true that gated content pieces are no longer as effective as they used to be, the creation of high-quality, premium content should still remain an important part of any B2B company’s lead generation strategy. High-quality content can and should be used to provide valuable insights into a product or service and help build trust with potential customers. 

In addition, the gating of the content may need to be done in more creative ways and possibly further down the buyer’s journey to better qualify the user’s purchase intent.

Should Content be Gated or Ungated?

Generating qualified leads is a key part of any successful B2B marketing strategy. Both gated and ungated long-form content, such as whitepapers, can be used for different purposes in the marketing process and in the buyer’s journey. 

While gated whitepapers have traditionally been used as a lead qualifier and lead contact information generator, the average landing page conversion rate is only 2.35%. This means that 97.65% of your landing page traffic leaves the page without ever engaging with your content or with your brand, leaving a tremendous opportunity to cultivate that initial interest.

One effective way to engage your audience is by “ungating” the content, which allows potential customers to access your content without having to provide any personal information. This approach helps to build trust and relationships with prospects, while also providing valuable insights into their interests and preferences.

Setting your whitepaper free, i.e., ungated and free to download without a form gate, is a perfect strategy to follow when you are seeking to build brand awareness in the industry. Allowing free access builds goodwill while promoting your brand as a knowledge source and a thought leader. 

This does not mean that ungated content cannot be used for lead-generation purposes. This also does not mean that the gating of white papers and other content pieces is dead.

How you can use Ungated Content for Lead Generation

Ungated content can be used in conjunction with other lead-generation tactics such as SEO, retargeting, lead nurturing, and marketing automation. 

Bottom line – create content that is useful for and resonates with your target audience. 

If you produce high-quality, premium content, even if you “ungate” the content,  you can nurture leads through the sales funnel and generate more qualified leads for your business.

  • Search Engine Optimization Wins – Ungated content, when optimized for search engine optimization purposes, can be indexed by search engines and give you high visibility on search engines. 

Gated content, by virtue of not being visible to the public and search engine bots, cannot be indexed for search visibility.

So if you are still building your SEO profile and your credibility in your audiences’ minds, ungated content may be your best friend.

  • Retargeting Ads & Remarketing Campaigns – Just because you allow ungated access to your premium content does not mean you have lost all lead-generation opportunities. 

Enable cookies on your site and create retargeting audiences for your email, paid, organic, and social media visitors. Segment the audiences by their level of engagement with the ungated content that you provided for free. 

Re-engage with the audience through paid ads (retargeting) and email drip campaigns (remarketing). 

Use gated content once your audience is further down the funnel as your target audience is better acquainted with your brand and is more likely to share their contact information with you at that point. 

Retargeting and remarketing campaigns also help keep your brand top of mind as your audience. 

  • A Larger Audience Reach – Ungated content creates a much bigger audience for your content and is also more likely to be shared within their individual networks. As marketers, you can still keep track of the consumption of your content, which in itself is a micro-conversion. As your target audience consumes more and more quality content from you, you build top-of-mind awareness for your brand, and that in turn, is likely to generate more inquiries from your audience when they have the intent to purchase.
  • Direct Sharing with Your Most Valuable Audience – Finally, use automation tools on LinkedIn to share your most valuable content. In fact, go even further and share it with your targeted list of accounts. That way, you are using a valuable, usable, and relevant piece of content as a conversation starter rather than a cold prospecting message.  

When & How You Should Gate Your Content

Despite the low conversion rates of gated content and the ways in which ungated long-form content, such as whitepapers, can be used in more creative ways for lead generation, gated white papers are one of the most effective B2B lead generation strategies. 

By gating content, businesses can capture qualified leads that are generally genuinely interested in their products or services. This is an important step in the lead nurturing process and helps companies to identify potential customers who have a higher likelihood of making a purchase.

Gating white papers also help companies to track leads more effectively and set up the foundations for marketing automation. Through this process, businesses can target and segment leads based on their interests and preferences. This way, they can ensure that their marketing messages are reaching the right people at the right time.

So when should you gate your white papers or other long-form premium content?

According to a survey conducted by Referral Rock, 59% of the surveyed marketers said they are most likely to gate a piece of content when it is more in-depth than a typical content piece they produce. 50% of those surveyed also said they gate content to qualify a lead as genuinely interested.

In our experience, here are the best practices for gating and promoting content:

1. Provide a solution to a specific and urgent problem – Unless a piece of content is seen as really valuable by your prospects, they are hesitant to share their contact information, even if you have spent hundreds of research hours and content creation time to create perfect, in-depth content.

Make sure your content piece is specific enough to help the reader find solutions to an urgent problem. Remember painkillers sell better than vitamins!

2. Use titles and keywords that actually speak to your audience – Sometimes, there are various ways to speak to a problem in the industry and not everyone may be using the same terminology to speak about the same issue.

Make sure you spend enough time researching keyword search volume, hashtags, and buzzwords being used in the industry to really match your content piece to user queries.

3. Provide content that they cannot otherwise find online –  Examples of content types that work well behind a form include information that is not easily available online, such as proprietary industry reports, toolkits to help with a specific problem area, product demos, white papers (as long as it meets criteria 1, 2 & 3), data sheets, webinars on new technologies or topics, how-to guides, templates for downloads, etc.

4. Ensure Gated Form Best Practices to minimize the chances of getting spammed. If the contact information that is shared is not genuine or linked to a business, it can dilute the lead qualification process. 

Best practices include emailing the content to the email address shared instead of allowing for a direct download and requiring a business email address instead of a generic one. There is also some evidence that progressive profiling improves conversion rates by reducing user friction.

5. Acknowledge that not all downloads have the intent to purchase – Sometimes readers may be top of the funnel and may only be looking for educational material to improve their understanding of the subject, i.e., not likely to become an SQL anytime in the near future. 

We are all guilty of this. We are looking for information for educational purposes and have no intention of reaching out to the company that authored the content for any commercial purposes.

6. Gate content lowers down in the funnel. At the top of the funnel, many prospects are still learning and exploring and are more likely to want to stay anonymous. By gating content in the middle of the funnel, marketers can ensure that they are getting leads who have already shown interest in their product or service and are more likely to convert. 

This strategy is perfectly aligned with the idea of ungating your premium content and then targeting the viewers with retargeting ads and/or remarketing drip campaigns. They are more likely to share their information once they are in the consideration or decision phase.

What does this mean for B2B lead generation?

Content still reigns supreme. Great content that helps your users with a specific pain point will always work in generating leads with the right amount of marketing. The point is that not all high-quality, premium content needs to be gated. In fact, if you are still building brand awareness, it may be best for you to make your content pieces, even the more in-depth ones, free for all.

However, if you really have something unique that’s not available online, your gating strategy may work really well in generating leads provided you promote the piece of content well. 

In 2023, with form fatigue building up, introduce other lead generation strategies into your mix, especially retargeting strategies, automated and personalized chatbots, and gating your content lower in your funnel to truly deliver leads that have a high intent to purchase.

B2B Lead Generation Services in Chicago

Why Top Quality Content is Essential for Healthcare Practice Marketing

Posted on November 15, 2022 - 11:30 AM by
healthcare marketing

Healthcare marketing is one of our favorite niches at Webtage. We get to tell beautiful stories of miracles and the resilience of the human spirit. But this is the easy part of our jobs.  

What we find challenging, and thus, more exciting, is building a solid foundation for our client’s content marketing. It begins with laying out a well-thought-out content strategy.

Good healthcare content can help:

  1. Generate trust in your expertise as a trusted healthcare provider, thereby helping with your reputation management
  2. Drive search traffic by helping your quality content rank higher on search engines
  3. Help your patients answer questions regarding health conditions.

Why would any healthcare practice not want to include content in its marketing toolkit? Even though quality content should be a part of any healthcare practice, a recent survey by SEMRush on State of Content Marketing 2022, found that only 26% of healthcare organizations use content marketing very successfully.

 We’ll be exploring healthcare content marketing in this article, the challenges, opportunities, and some actionable tips you can implement for your healthcare practice. 

Where Are Healthcare Marketers Going Wrong And What Can They Do About It?  

What truly matters is delivering value for your customers through your content. Unfortunately, that’s missing from healthcare marketing. Most of the focus is inward, and content marketing is merely another tool to hard sell their practice and its offerings. We also commonly see click-bait, low-quality SEO articles with keyword stuffing to drive search traffic. 

Another challenge is that healthcare marketing is a different beast from the other kinds of marketing because of HIPAA laws and high (read life-and-death) stakes. 

At Webtage, we believe that challenges are hidden gems of opportunity. It’s a chance to wipe the slate clean, present fresh ideas, and carve new pathways that are unique for healthcare marketing. 

7 Tips For Your Healthcare Practice To Ace at High-Quality Content Marketing 

Here’s how you can use high-quality content marketing to partake in your patients’ conversations and make a difference in their lives. 

  1. Step Into Your Customers’ Shoes 

 The internet is a gold mine for healthcare marketers. Your patients are looking at it as a reliable source for answers on their health and solutions. It’s their first go-to source which can lead them to stumble upon your website. 

Relevant and high-quality content is what will pull them to your website, browse for answers to their challenges, and reach out to you for solutions. 

 Your content must be empathetic, and that can happen if you think and feel like your patients. What your patient is looking for is a trusted partner that can solve their ailing issues. 

Your message should have your target audience and their needs at the heart of all conversations. 

 You must know your audience before creating material for them. Ask yourself: 

What is your patient experience like when they come to your website and when they visit your competitors’ sites? 

A strong content marketing program identifies and defines its target audience. Some tools that can help you are focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and qualitative and quantitative research. You should now have a strategic foundation to construct your content marketing program thanks to that analysis. 

 A firm grasp of your patient’s needs and experiences is key to building a winning content marketing plan and relevant engagement material.  

  1. Plan Well And In Advance

Content marketing must be strategic, like any other marketing element. 

A documented content strategy, in our opinion, is essential to any healthcare marketing strategy. Not more content, exactly. Intelligent content is the key. It’s a tedious procedure, but essential to your success. A strategy is now essential, not just nice to have. 

We engage your consumers and drive business growth with our differentiated content marketing approach which requires us to plan, create, distribute, measure, and optimize all content around the target audience.

At Webtage, we employ a Google Sheets content calendar that enables us to collaborate with our healthcare clients to manage their monthly content editorial plan. In order to make writing content less stressful and more focused, our editorial calendar concentrates on specific key areas and goals. Our top content marketing goals are: 

  • Consumer engagement 
  • Brand building
  • Lead generation and conversion 
  • Patient loyalty
  • Physician engagement 

Our editorial calendar is set up in two-month intervals. This enables us to prepare ahead of time and delegate tasks to our content creators.

  1. Content Creation 

Once you have the content strategy and editorial calendar ready, decide how you will ensure quality content that meets professional compliance requirements and is medically vetted, so readers get valuable, up-to-date information. 

Quality, up-to-date and accurate healthcare content is also important for search engine visibility. In 2018 Google unveiled its “medic update” which had strong implications for businesses in the YMYL (short for ‘Your Money or Your Life’) or in other words websites that provide any information that affects people’s health, wellness, or money. Put simply, it means that Google does not want to recommend “uneducated advice, opinions, or potentially fraudulent websites.” Google wants to be certain that the sites that they recommend display a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. algorithms place. 

That’s the reason that we follow the E.A.T. principle when creating and marketing content for our healthcare clients.

At Webtage, our content team comprises medical writers with experience in creating content that meets professional healthcare writing standards. This means some of the  specialized skills they bring to the table include:

  1. Ability to present information that is scientifically accurate
  2. Deep understanding of medical terms & conditions
  3. Ability to provide a logical structure, including logical presentation of ideas
  4. Ability to simplify complex medical information into simple, easily digestible pieces, without losing factual accuracy
  5. Ability to search reliable references from non-reliable sources
  6. Be able to combine factual information with compelling writing to appeal to readers and search engines.
  7. A clear understanding of statistical research, data presentation, as well as ethical and legal issues
  1. Content Delivery & Mobile Searches

It’s crucial that we present the content in an engaging way. Those who optimize for mobile platforms and present snackable content in text and video formats will reap the benefits of content marketing. Therefore, your content marketing must not only show relevance to the end user but also deliver it in easily digestible chunks while on the go.

  1. Pay Attention To Online Reputation Management 

Healthcare marketers must convince prospective patients that they are reliable considering the abundance of options for customers to get health information, both reliable and dubious.

Reputation management means more than generating and managing reviews (although that’s an important part of the puzzle). 

So how should you go about building a transparent & authentic brand while driving action & advocacy that goes beyond managing your reviews on Yelp and other public review sites? Remember, the approach is to push up positive content higher and higher in search engine results and bury the negative content. We offer several services to build a solid reputation for you.

Creating original content, such as thought articles, white papers, videos, Q&A, and other long-form content pieces and publishing them on your website and high-quality third-party sites helps to display your thought leadership high on search engines, thus boosting your reputation. Similarly, social media marketing, when done well, can not only increase your brand reach, but it also allows you to build your reputation through local community marketing.

  1. Collaborate With Influencers 

Even if a doctor may be the one writing prescriptions and advising treatments, if a patient is well-informed, she is more likely to follow the doctor’s advice or even inquire about it in the first place.

Online influencers are now a part of these doctor-patient discussions because of the expansion of digital healthcare research, and they have a significant impact on the possibilities that patients inquire about.

Think of the quality above number when choosing your influencers to work with in order to maximize your impact. Instead of only looking for influencers with the greatest following, when conducting audience research, look for specialty publications and websites that cater to your core audience and consider methods to collaborate with them.

Your own work will benefit from paying greater attention to these trends and how they change over time. 

  1. Content Analytics and Measurement

In order to maximize the efficacy of the program, you need to examine your content marketing endeavor to determine what is effective and what is not. You’ll discover the tactical move that most appeals to your target market through trial and error. 

Key performance metrics we use to understand content marketing success include:

  1. Acceptance of content pieces on high-quality and relevant third-party sites.
  2. Ability to produce medically compliant content pieces that attract traffic consistently.
  3. Reader engagement with the content. This could include social shares, likes, and comments on owned social channels.
  4. Website traffic to your content pieces, whether we publish them on your website or third-party sites.
  5. Reach of your content, calculated as impression share

 It should be clear that developing a successful content marketing strategy takes time. It needs nurturing and requires patience. But in the end, your firm might benefit from all of your efforts, strategic focus, tracking data, and meticulousness. 

Final Thoughts 

The key to enhancing your reputation as an expert in your field and drawing new patients to your health system’s website and online channels is timely, pertinent, and consistent quality information.

Marketers in any industry may position themselves for success by creating great content for audiences that are becoming more knowledgeable, prioritizing mobile, and spending money on influencer marketing. This is even more important for healthcare organizations as the content you create can have serious implications on lives if not created and vetted extremely carefully

Google has clearly stated that “medical advice needs to be written by people with high medical E-A-T to be considered high quality.”

Creating regular, excellent healthcare material is not easy—but it doesn’t have to be an insurmountable endeavor. We hope you find our advice on developing a master editorial content calendar and skills to create high-quality, up-to-date, and medically sourced content helpful. 

Finally, you might want to consider asking for support from a professional healthcare digital marketing agency in Chicago to help handle this challenging task with ease and comfort.

Healthcare Marketing Agency in Naperville

Healthcare Digital Marketing: What E.A.T. Means for Your Search Visibility and Why Good Content is Your Best Friend!

Posted on March 1, 2020 - 9:01 PM by

In 2018 Google unveiled its “medic update” which had strong implications for businesses in the YMYL (short for ‘Your Money or Your Life’ or in other words websites that provide any information that affects people’s health, wellness, or money). Since more than 40% of websites affected due to this update were health related sites, this came to be known as the “medic update.” There have been further Core Quality Updates in 2019 that continue to have deep implications for search visibility of healthcare organizations.

So what do these updates mean if you are a healthcare provider? Put simply, it means that Google does not want to recommend “uneducated advice, opinions, or potentially fraudulent websites.” Google wants to be certain that the sites that they recommend display a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

So how do you signal your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness to Google?

Expertise

  1. Build expertise by creating frequent content that is informative, useful and engaging for your audience.
  2. Remove poor quality, dated content from your website that would signal half-baked, incorrect, or worse, harmful information to your audience.
  3. Keep in mind that it is not only important to build E.A.T. for your website, but also work on building E.A.T. for your content creators. How?

 

  • Ensure your content creators are experts in healthcare. Google has indicated that “medical advice needs to be written by people with high medical E-A-T to be considered high quality.”
  • You may be a wonderful and experienced doctor, but if you haven’t built your online profile then there is nothing in the digital world to back up your expertise. So strengthen your online expertise by writing guest articles for niche publications in your field and contribute to industry publications and forums.
  • Add by-lines expert to website content. This will signal that the author is an expert in the profession or niche and the information provided in that blog is trustworthy.
  • Link content creator’s profile to other online profiles, especially on authority sites.
  • Use structured data to markup the author’s profile that will allow for a connection to be made with other online profiles for the author.
  1. Cite credible research, statistics, and data in the content that you create.

 

Authority

  1. Build authority by developing valuable backlinks from relevant & authoritative sites.
  2. Gain backlinks from high authoritative sites naturally by guest blogging for niche high DA (domain authority) sites. Most health-related guest blogging sites have clear guidelines on the types of content they will consider for publication. Identify sites that are the best fit for your specialty.
  3. Create outbound links to high quality health sites & industry publications. Try to include links to research studies or academic journal. Outbound links to .edu or .gov or .org sites are especially useful.
  4. Quality over quantity! Take your time to build good quality links. Building links through automated citation submissions may not be enough anymore.
  5. A good social media strategy will help you market your content and get your content shared – another great way to build authority.

Trustworthiness

  1. Build trustworthiness by building positive reviews. Positive client reviews help in increasing the E.A.T. score, so encourage all the satisfied patients to write testimonials on Google My Business, social media, and review sites.
  2. Many healthcare provider websites allow for email subscriptions, online appointment scheduling, online portal sign-ins etc – all considered to be Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPPA. This patient data is vulnerable to being stolen unless your site is secured with an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate is not only necessary for you to be HIPPA compliant, it also signals trustworthiness of your website. Google takes privacy of user data very seriously and provides a boost to those websites that signal their intent to protect their user’s information. So make sure your website is secure with an SSL certificate!
  3. Have a clear way for your visitors to contact you with a clearly accessible Contact page.
  4. Include a Privacy Page to let your patients know how you gather, use, disclose, and manage their data.
  5. If you allow for online transactions through your website, ensure that clearly outline your refunds & returns policy.

 

E.A.T. is not the only update that has had an impact on Google search rankings of healthcare businesses. The 2019 B.E.R.T. is another update that has hit some healthcare sites hard and is about incorporating Natural Language Processing (NLP) into Google searches. And if pages on your website don’t provide information on topics that users are keying into search bars, then your website is likely to be overlooked.

 

Note the common theme in all the updates? Create content that is informative, useful, and engaging. Google has been saying this for a very long time. Create great content. That has not changed and will not change. See how we used content creation and a solid digital marketing strategy to help a healthcare practice gain top search visibility, increase online patient lead generation, and grow their long-term patient panel 60%.

[mk_page_title_box page_title=”Healthcare Digital Marketing Done Right” page_subtitle=”Grow Quickly & Effectively” section_height=”150″ font_size=”24″ title_force_font_size=”true” sub_font_size=”16″ subtitle_force_font_size=”true”]
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Healthcare Marketing Agency in Naperville

How to incorporate storytelling into B2B content creation?

Posted on October 2, 2018 - 5:29 PM by

While it is said that B2B buyers make decisions based solely on price and profit potential alone, even Ebenezer Scrooge succumbed to his amazing life story being shown to him through the eyes of the spectres! The most hardened number cruncher among us can’t resist a good, relevant story.

On average, 4% of people will remember any facts or figures from their last Power Point presentation. Most of us dread meetings as nothing more than ‘yawn fests’ that drone on seemingly forever.

These days we can consume up to 100,000 digital words every single day. Studies show that people prefer to get their information in the form of stories, not having statistics and lists of facts thrown at them.

If we are listening to a story about climbing a tree, the parts of our brain that would activate if we were actually climbing a tree in real life, light up. Telling a story is a powerful way to communicate and reach clients in a meaningful way.

Sometimes all you need are a few powerful words to engage. Ernest Hemmingway has been attributed to this six- word short story that is hinting at or implying a much larger story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

A story need not be novel length. A good story can be a just a few words. When you know your audience, when you want your brand to resonate you can tell a story. Stories will not only inform and teach but they will be remembered as well.

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Elements of B2B Storytelling

The heart of B2B marketing lies in building lasting relationships based on mutual trust. What better way to connect with the humanity of potential customers than with a story? Stories are how we learn. Stories can convince. Stories teach. Stories entertain. In the end, stories build relationships.

Building a strategy to reach out to other businesses through storytelling involves:

  • Showing who you are
  • Giving your brand the starring role
  • Striking an emotional chord
  • Inspiring trust so they will come back for more

 

B2B Storytelling: How We Did It

Optimized Solutions, an enterprise software solution provider in the digital transformation space, approached us to create a product video to launch their ground breaking enterprise IoT data product. We knew right away that we had to cut to the core and create an experience that would make the viewers sit up and care. Care about the value possibilities of the product itself and of the Optimized brand too. From finding the right hook to creating stunning motion graphics and the perfect script, we elevated the story of day in the life of a modern day business enterprise that captured and sustained the interests of the audience on a seemingly dry topic.

Watch the B2B Product Launch Video 

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[mk_padding_divider][mk_padding_divider][mk_padding_divider][highlight_box style=”fade2″ iconsize=”24px” id=”01″ text=”On average, 4% of people will remember any facts or figures from their last Power Point presentation. Most of us dread meetings as nothing more than ‘yawn fests’ that drone on seemingly forever.” clr=”#091315″ bgclr=”#b0b948″ hoverbg=”#ffffff” icon=”fa fa-quote-left” text2=”These days we can consume up to 100,000 digital words every single day. Studies show that people prefer to get their information in the form of stories, not having statistics and lists of facts thrown at them.”]
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Storytelling Works

Stories sell.

That is a basic fact of life. Who among us, when we were children, actually wanted to go to bed? Selling bedtime to an active four year old with the promise of a bedtime story is proof that telling a good story works.

Stories give relevance.

Stories allow us to connect with humanity. We see ourselves as we are and we also see ourselves as we’d like to be. Stories teach, inform and entertain. What better way to show people who you are than through a memorable story?

Stories drive action and create purpose. You may not want to incorporate storytelling into every aspect of your marketing, but realizing what a powerful tool stories are will open doors for many new opportunities.

Storytelling is science because evolution has hardwired our brains to react to stories. It is a connection of cause and effect. When you want to make lasting connections with other businesses, tell your story!

About the Author

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Sandra Mui shines in her role as the Creative Director at Webtage. With over 15 years of experience in creative writing and visual arts, she gets the pulse of the consumer and creates content that strikes a chord.

Having previously worked for advertising agencies, such as Leo Burnett and other boutique creative houses, she has successfully launched Fortune 500 ad campaigns, including those for Procter & Gamble, Kodak Professional Division, Phillip Morris, FILA, Aki Italia & Champion Sportswear.

Sandra has a passion for reading, writing and researching. Her love of words and art gives her a unique vision and ability to put things together in ways that will make your brand pop!

Contact her at sandra@webtage.com

B2B Marketing Services in Naperville

5 Steps to a Successful Web Content Redesign

Posted on May 8, 2017 - 11:51 AM by

It’s good business practice for organizations to redesign website content at regular intervals to better reflect shifts in customers needs, changes in business direction, design sensibilities and SEO needs. Website content redesign requires a highly strategic approach that requires multiple levels of expertise, including business & brand strategy, search marketing, experience design, lead generation strategy, conversion rate optimization, copywriting and graphic design. So how should you go about redesigning website content and what are some of the pitfalls you must avoid?

Strategy Before Implementation – At Webtage, we work through the content redesign strategy backwards. We start with the pain point – what is the pain point that content redesign is attempting to redress? Use the following steps to correctly identify the pain points and develop a top-level content strategy.

  • A website redesign questionnaire is a great way to start the conversation with the stakeholders. We use this easy-to-use and comprehensive questionnaire to kickstart content redesign projects.
  • Second, do a competitive analysis to see what others in the industry are doing. SWOT analysis is a great way to get ideas and discover opportunities.
  • Next, do a top-level, page specific analysis. We like to use a spreadsheet to map out top-level current pages and include stakeholder information about them. This is not a full-fledged content inventory of the website, but rather a strategic overview of the site pages and an organized way to gather stakeholder inputs. At this stage include information about pages that will most efficiently help you define a content strategy.
  • Finally, with the information gathered from the above, list the primary KPI and secondary KPIs for the website as a whole, and individual pages as much as possible. For instance, if lead generation is a key objective, then website conversions & goal completion should be your primary KPI. 

Content Inventory – After having established clear KPIs based on a content strategic overview, move to a complete site content inventory audit. The content inventory should allow you to pull a sitemap of the site with self-populated content fields.  There are 2 types of content inventory audit that should be conducted:

  1. SEO inventory – You should crawl every indexed URL on the site to include fields such as SEO tags, internal link structure, backlinks, traffic, content uniqueness, page speed and more. The reason for detailed SEO indexing is that you should maintain all trust worthiness that is already built into your website. For instance, maintain URLs that have a built-in, rich link structure, recreate content to better target keyword and semantic search patterns, and maintain favorable SEO technical parameters. If URL structure cannot be maintained, have a strategy in place to assign a 301 redirect to every page that exists on the current site. Screaming Frog and Moz are great resources to for SEO content audit tools and best practices including strategies for very large site content audits, mobile site audits and more.

 

  1. Content inventory – Content inventory should include all forms of content that exists on the website, including html, pdfs, images, videos, and other rich media files. In addition to content that exists on website, gather all pieces of content that may exist on other digital channels and offline.

 

SiteMap creation – Now comes the interesting part. Once you have a clear site content inventory, create new sitemap aligned to strategic goals of the content redesign project and user needs. A good navigation strategy takes its cues from expected user navigation patterns and allows for intuitive, self-segmentation of users. When creating the sitemap, add not just the linked pages; add content sections (topics, rich media, lead generation calls-to-actions) as well. Pages and content sections together provide a comprehensive view of how new site. Finally, assign URL structure to pages at this stage. Make sure you retain URLs with significant link juice and assign 301 redirects to every existing URLs to not loose the trustworthiness built into the pages.

We use Slickplan for sitemap creation as it offers very useful features that come handy when seeking sign off from multiple stakeholders and team members. Features include addition of link structure, mockups and notes (URL structure & other relevant details) to pages, as well as collaborations with team members and client shares at the click of the mouse.

Now that you have the sitemap aligned to the primary & secondary KPIs, map each page to the content inventory and make a list of content pieces that need recreation or reworking per page.

 

High Fidelity Wireframe/Mockup Creation – After creation of the sitemap, it’s time to put it all in a visual, hi-fidelity framework. This is where organization of content happens and the layout is finalized. Keep user experience at the top of your priorities when designing the layout.

There are many interactive design & prototyping tools that are very useful as they turn still wireframes and mockups into prototypes by bringing a level of interactivity. This is especially useful for clients and stakeholders as they can “interact” with the mockups to get a feel for the final site. UXPin, Sketch, InVision and proto.io are some great interactive design & prototyping tools available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copy Creation –  The final stage is the actual meat of the project and involves creation of copy well aligned to the KPIs, SEO needs and most importantly user needs. In addition to creating verbiage, here are some tips and tricks which will make the implementation of the content redesign smoother and faster:

    • Assign site-wide CSS formatting rules to each page. Add font rules (including for H1-H6, body copy, button CTA text , testimonials and other verbiage elements), add font colors, and css formatting for other design elements as required. Here is a snapshot of the font rules we have created for a site content redesign project that we are currently working on:
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    • Create a PDF of the page mockup and add instructions, such as hyperlink URLs for internal and external links, IT functionalities (how a certain content block is expected to function) and any other special instructions that you would want a web developer to be aware of as they upload your content to the website.
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    • Finally, create an art folder that includes all sized, high resolution rich-media files that the web developer can then easily add to the webpages.

 

Looking to redesign your website content? Contact us at Webtage where we are laser focused on creating the best digital experience to improve your top line. Our content development strategy is viewed critically with a UX, brand and SEO lens before implementation. Learn more about our content development & marketing philosophy.

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The Evolving World of Enterprise Data Strategy

Posted on December 18, 2016 - 9:38 AM by

The variety, volume and velocity (the “holy trinity”) of enterprise data coupled with the rapid pace of changes in enterprise data management technologies has left many business executives stumped.  Technology choices around enterprise data management seem overwhelming and unclear – SAP Hana or Hadoop? How about SAP Sybase?  What is MapReduce? More importantly, is there a compelling business case to make changes or is status quo good enough? Where do I start?

Well, this is a great place to start. This primer will show you how the enterprise data landscape has changed and map those changes to your enterprise level requirement.

First things first, let’s get some basic definitions out of the way.

Business Intelligence is an umbrella term to describe a set of software tools used to raw data into actionable insights for business decision making. Data Warehouse is a large ‘store’ of enterprise data on supply chain, products and customers. Together, BI and DW comprise the Enterprise Data System and form the backbone of business intelligence, required to sustain competitive advantage.

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