The great paradox of digital marketing and a challenge that affects every marketing campaign is that people are reading less, even though they read all the time.
Your audience is reading fewer books, magazines, newspapers, and even comic books than previous generations. Not that people have stopped reading altogether. No, the digital medium has changed everything.
To get the leads you want and grow your business by serving other businesses, you need to understand your targets’ reading habits. There are three main reading habits:
1. Attentive Reading
These readers digest content thoroughly. You’ll recognize them by their steady scrolling speed, meaning they’re reading at the same speed throughout the entire piece.
2. Selective Reading
These potential customers skip some text blocks and give their full attention to others. They’re easy to recognize by their irregular scrolling speed, moving through some parts of the text quickly and without reading while slowing down for and even reviewing other sections that they find valuable. Interestingly, selective reading is the second most common habit.
3. Scanning
This is the most common online reading pattern and is characterized by high scrolling speeds, allowing readers to absorb only certain important ideas. Text scanning is similar to the way readers view social media feeds. Scanning readers will move quickly through an article, looking at only the most exciting or important things.
Where Do These Readers Come From?
There are several main traffic sources from which readers navigate to publications. The most common online entry points are:
● Social Media
● Website Contextual Links
● Feed Readers
● Media Home Page
● Messengers
● Search Engines
How to Get Quality Leads?
In today’s digital age, successful marketers reach their target readers when they focus on three things:
1. Identifying Your Audience
Before you can target your audience, you need to know who they are. Understanding your target audience’s habits can help you get into their heads and design their desired customer journey.
2. Creating the Content They Want
Today’s readers easily recognize authentic content versus generic stock content made with little thought or effort. Create original content that speaks to your audience. Readers crave fresh, informative content.
3. Creating Gated Content
Using online content that is accessible to readers once they fill out a lead capture form or take some other desired action is effective because it provides valuable information for free while attracting high-quality leads interested in your offerings. Gated content includes white papers, e-books, reports, guides, courses, worksheets, and online tools.
When creating content, you need to know what matters to your audience. If you aren’t sure, chances are you haven’t spent enough time getting to know your audience demographics and psychographics. Demographic data (age, sex, race, income, etc.) used to be all you needed to target and understand audiences, but digital media has exploded consumer options and made demographics less predictive of human behavior. In today’s digital marketplace, psychographics (emotions, values/beliefs, attitudes, etc.) are more effective and absolutes must-haves in your digital marketing toolkit.
If you are interested in learning more about custom content for your B-to-B marketing, visit our website. We’re committed to solving the problem of B-to-B sales prospecting. Our solution is unique, and our execution is world-class.
by: Rohan Kohli, Data Analyst Intern
Diehard Bengals fan who loves to push the boundaries and crush expectations. Started two businesses in High School, one of which with two friends which won a competition amongst high school peers in Pinellas County to win $10,000. Another that would go on to amass over half a million followers online. The way he sees it, Joe Burrow isn’t going into work to just play the game. He is coming in to win. That is how Rohan approaches every day. Let’s work! “You play to win the game… you don’t play to just play it.” – Herm Edwards