Content isn’t just about filling funnel — effective content should push your audience to action that shows concrete results.
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Content isn’t just about filling funnel — effective content should push your audience to action that shows concrete results. Join VB’s free webinar and panel of content pros to unlock the secret of creating content that inspires customers to action.
WeddingWire, a leading global marketplace that provides wedding-minded consumers with a host of planning tools and connects them to event professionals, was built on context-based content, says Sonny Ganguly, co-founder and CMO of WeddingWire.
It began as a content hub with user-generated reviews and conversation about wedding planning — and their marketing strategy evolved from there. Highly-targeted content is the main driving force for connecting with and engaging users on both the consumer and business sides.
“It’s about content with context,”Ganguly says. “It’s not just about creating a ton of great content, putting it out there and getting traffic. It’s also making it clear why that content is valuable to your business, which is sometimes a little bit more of a challenge.”
Too often content is created without a strategy for action behind it. It’s seen primarily as a way to bring in traffic and garner top-of funnel metrics. WeddingWire’s strategy,Ganguly says, is to create “inspiraction.”
“I use this word quite a bit,”Ganguly says, “and I think my team makes fun of me from time to time.” But relevance, he says, is power. Content that inspires a consumer to contact a vendor, content that has a business signing up for an account, is what moves users through the funnel.
“Ultimately,”Ganguly notes, “that content is there to do something.” Content needs to act as a catalyst. Every piece of content that is created by WeddingWire’s editorial team, the thought leaders they tap, or their user base, is integrated into the experience.”
On the consumer side, a planning checklist triggers a throughline of relevant articles, advice, and vendor interviews that ushers a couple through the planning process. On the vendor side, once a wedding planner jumps into a whitepaper, a webinar, or a case study written by subject matter experts, they’re guided through the next steps in growing their business, whether it’s marketing or finance, HR, legal, or sales.
To do this, a company has to know their users, understand what they want, and know how to give it to them. “It’s not just about creating great content on a cohort basis,”Ganguly says. “It’s really personalizing content based on each individual user.”
It starts simply at the top of the funnel, with a sign-up for an email newsletter, and then WeddingWire tracks metrics obsessively to build a picture of each of their users at every step of their journey, from engagement to wedding and from business launch to business success — with increasingly relevant content guiding them every step of the way.
To learn more about why content marketing is so essential, and how to create the content that keeps them clicking, sign up for our free webinar, “webinar title.”
Don’t miss out!
In this webinar, you’ll learn: Design a content marketing program that complements your marketing initiatives Find your voice – and how to adhere to it across media and platforms Learn which internal professionals to target for particular platforms (and how to get them to agree to do it) Uncover the benefits of content marketing, such as lead generation, expanded social presence, cementing brand recognition, and building individual executives’ brands Determine the ROI of content marketing, plus the tools and metrics to use
Speakers: Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat Ada Pia d’Errico, CMO, Patch of Land Sonny Ganguly, CMO, Wedding Wire
Moderator:
Wendy Schuchart, analyst, VentureBeat