4 Cogs of Interaction Thinking
2. Capture
Turn passive into active
You've got less than 5 seconds to make someone think, feel and do.
Experience doesn't start with the climax - it's a CX-y build up.
FINDING CONTENT GOLDEN EGGS that lead to meaningful outcomes is vital for turning doomscrolling into boomscrolling.
82% of consumers with high emotional engagement would always buy the brand they are loyal to when making purchasing decisions, according to a Capgemini report on consumer loyalty
Chasing vanity KPIs by producing an endless amount of content is not only inefficient and unsustainable, it also erodes customer trust and, therefore, engagement with your brand.
It's like going on multiple dates with low-value people you're not compatible with and don't add any value to you or your life. Then, when you do find the one, you have dating fatigue and, have become cynical and apathetic. You experience of relationships is a fractured one so you're closed off to other possibilities.
This is where we are with branded content on websites and social media.
We've seen so much empty, cringy, frustrating, inauthentic slop, we scroll past or click through only to be disappointed when we get there.
Separating branded content from the rest of the user experience is like calling a random number and asking the person who picks up to marry you.
Engaging content is articles, social posts, product pages, emails and videos organisations create to increase:
- Likes, shares and followers
- Increase Click-Through Rate (CTR), dwell time
- Increase open rates
The science of storytelling tells us it's the best way to bring complex and boring concepts to life and keeps the people wanting more.
Everything has a story to tell, from insurance policies and monkey wrenches to sporting events and a sexy new outfit.
The key is to appeal to the emotional amygdala so it overrides the logical hippocampus. Creating desire, revenue and repeat business.
The way to capture anyone's attention is through emotion.
That arresting moment when a billboard catches your eye or an intriguing headline on a TikTok or webpage.
You stop because you feel something. It appeals to something nestled in your amygdala. It's something you want to know or appeals to who you want to be.
You need to say something new in a different way so the reader can see themselves in it by:
- Leading with the benefit
- Showing, not telling
- Finding the emotional hook and using real lifestyle examples to bring it to life
Content Golden Eggs
Building a great widget that makes form filling easier is useless if no one knows it's there, so the journey needs to be looked at end-to-end, not in fragments.
Doing content deep dives to see what people want to know that no one is telling them is the Golden Egg everyone should be chasing.
Develop suites of content based on what you do best, and pointing to it, is being authentic to your brand's purpose and building a relationship with an audience who values it.
Become the thought-leader and disruptor by finding that niche and becoming famous for it.
But filming funny TikToks, pumping out sponsored articles and partnering with influencers isn't enough.
It needs to lead to a positive outcome and not just be floating around, achieving nothing other than being gang-clicked.
A Content Architect could help you
The ownership of the end-to-end journey with a holistic content strategy designed to grab attention, build desire, and create positive outcomes and experiences.
Building a great calculator that works out the value of your home insurance is useless if no one knows it's there, so the journey needs to be looked at end-to-end, not in fragments. Here's an example:
You've found out people don't know how much the contents of their home is worth so you build a calculator, with a "get a quote" next-best-action, lots of supporting articles about the benefits of this type of insurance, other types of home related insurance products and tips on how to protect your home, plus a video on how insurance is worked out. Once it's built, you need to get people onto your website or app, so you optimise the pages for search and find a good story to tell on social media about stats on break-ins or funny home accident stories.
A Content Architect will write and create the different types of content that need to work with the fulfilment journey to get people to their desired outcome. Whether they're proactively trying to solve a problem or by creating a desire to increase market share.
Interaction Touchpoints
Improve conversion and create the ultimate experience by knitting together content across all channels and for all purposes
Heart
Inspirational content engages people's sense of self-actualisation through bespoke campaigns consumed passively, either through direct or indirect marketing activity. And passes the customer over to Head content.
Lifestyle content uses emotion to illustrate what the product or proposition enables for them. So it must be distributed where they are.
Head
Always-on content in the active discovery part of the decision-making process. People may have come from Heart content but could be direct and standalone, supporting the product and/or proposition.
Content is meaningful educational articles, videos and infographics distributed where they are, like social media, CRM and search.
Hand
Action-led content designed to solve the problem outlined in Head and Heart content, as all content roads lead to here - creating an end-to-end CRO experience.
People get here through Heart and/or Head content and deliver your business objectives. This needs to have authenticity across all logged-in states, error messages, chatbot interaction and onboarding.
What's Interaction Thinking?
Online behaviour isn't linear or siloed. Strategically mapping the intersectionality of the content audiences interact with leads to better outcomes.
By considering customer and business objectives as an end-to-end journey, instead of fragmented solutions to a particular problem, you create better results, experiences and efficiencies.
1Connect
Content is the thread that links marketing with digital, which audiences follow from channel to channel, around and back again.
Interaction Thinking is based on tangent behaviour patterns seen when audiences are passively or actively triggered to answer a particular question or solve a problem.
2Capture
Catering predominantly to passive triggers, engagement content could be sought by active triggers looking for an emotional connection to the brand.
This content is the 'heart', designed to make audiences FEEL something.
This could be evergreeen lifestyle, inspirational content and fast-paced trend content seen on social media or CRM.
3Decision
The middle of the tangent loop provides educational, informational and reasons to believe content.
It's the 'head' phase that makes audiences THINK. It's crucial for both active and passive triggers but leans more into active.
Audiences dip in and out of this content to feel confident, to verify decisions and get help and specific questions.
4Conversation
This is the bread and butter of your business. The ultimate objective of content is to lead here.
Content with purpose acts as the 'hand' to DO something and is the point every journey has to get to in order to achieve business goals.
Content in this loop includes chatbot, web forms, ID verification, navigation, 404 screens, error messages, success screens, basket and logged in.
© 2018