Content Experience

What Is Content Experience?

A content experience is the summation of all the interactions someone has with your digital content and the impression they take away from it. To create a successful digital experience, companies must progressively engage audiences with a series of related content elements that all work together to fulfill that audience’s informational or transactional needs.​ A great experience delivers the right information to the right person, in the right way, at the right place and time.

The concept draws from the worlds of user experience and customer experience and applies their best practices to content. In this way, it is concerned not just with individual content elements and assets, but with the connective tissue between content elements and how they collectively contribute to the user’s holistic experience.

7 Characteristics of a Great Experience

What does it look like? For starters, it’s always rooted in a strong understanding of your audience and their needs and goals. More specifically, content must have seven key attributes to create a positive experience for users:

• Progressive: It builds on the last touchpoint, rather than repeating it.
• Connected: It resembles the last touchpoint to provide continuity and consistency.
• Contextual: It is appropriate for a specific context.
• Engaging: It keeps audiences interested.
• Relevant: It addresses the questions and needs of audiences.
• Guided: It steers audiences to what’s next.
• Structured: It is systematized and organized in the CMS for efficiency.

Why It Matters for B2B Marketing

Today’s B2B companies are focused on creating a superlative customer experience, and they recognize customer experience as a critical competitive advantage. They understand that today’s customers expect brands to understand their needs and preferences. Since content plays a role in every digital journey and customer touchpoint, optimizing and personalizing this experience in turn supports the customer experience.

B2B companies—especially those with a SaaS model—increasingly rely on the recurring revenue of long-term customers. That spurs a shift in how content is leveraged: Instead of a focus on transactional content and generating quick MQLs, marketers must create content assets and webpages that take the long view and support the entire customer lifecycle.