Digital marketing in 2020 is warfare. The landscape of social platforms, advertising channels, algorithms, and tech conglomerates vying for your attention and budgets continue to grow every single day. Marketers somehow need to stay on top of the shifting sands and create lasting value for their prospective and existing customers. No easy task.
2. It’s harder than ever to keep that • attention once it’s acquired
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Creating Experiential Content
Defining Experiential Content
On-Boarding Experiential Content
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Defining Experiential Content
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Scaling Experiential Content
Creating Experiential Content
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Defining Experiential Content
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Adding to this - engagement rates across organic social media posts have been declining, and more users are opting to detach themselves from social media altogether. One of the primary driving forces of content distribution is becoming a true battleground for attention. Not to mention Google, the de facto search engine for discovery and organic traffic, has made several changes that keep eyeballs on their own results pages instead of diverting that traffic to brands’ websites.
1. It’s harder than ever to gain the • attention of your target customer
Scaling Experiential Content
It’s no longer enough to roll-out cookie cutter content strategies and take an, “if we build it they will come” mentality. It’s imperative that marketers transform the way they think about creating content, and re-engineer the kind of content they actually create.
Next Page: Defining Experiential Content
Digital Content Transformation
Digital Content Transformation
Creating Experiential Content
The Guide to Experiential Content
Scaling Experiential Content
Digital Content Transformation
Conclusion
It’s time for marketers to embrace experiential content.
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Often, when marketers hear the word “experiential” the first image that jumps to mind is an event, installation, or activation. Opportunities where true connections can be made between individuals and brands. Nowadays however, experiential is no longer just for in-person interactions, but also for digital touchpoints. Understanding experiential content starts with defining what we mean when combining those two words, “experiential” and “content”.
This doesn’t explore what truly makes experiential content… experiential. For that, we need to peel back the layers of what makes up engaging digital content.
The 5 Layers of Engaging Content
Create more immersive digital content.
Immersive
Defining Experiential Content
Narrative
Defining Experiential Content
On-Boarding Experiential Content
On-Boarding Experiential Content
The Guide to Experiential Content
Creating Experiential Content
The underlying copy, script, text, data, and other story components.
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Narrative
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Defining Experiential Content
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Interactive
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These layers can be used to construct the exact type of experience you are looking to create and trigger the specific actions or feelings you are hoping to elicit. The combination of these layers can transform ordinary, static content into truly memorable, experiential content.
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Integrated
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Conclusion
Conclusion
Interactive
Scaling Experiential Content
Visual
Experiential content is digital content that is purposefully designed to create a memorable experience for its consumers. By encouraging active participation through interactive and immersive elements, experiential content aims to form deeper, emotional connections between the consumer and the brand or creator.
Looking to stand out from the competition by creating memorable, immersive digital experiences? Ceros can help.
The visual framework of the story which includes images, graphics, photos, videos, and other visual components.
Defining Experiential Content
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Creating Experiential Content
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Immersive
Integrated
Digital Content Transformation
The components that add depth to visual content like triggered animations, sounds, and other dynamic layers.
Experiential content is digital content that is purposefully designed to create a memorable experience for its consumers. By encouraging active participation through interactive and immersive elements, experiential content aims to form deeper, emotional connections between the consumer and the brand or creator.
The integration of third-party tools like forms, maps, chat services, and other apps.
The underlying copy, script, text, data, and other story components.
Creating Experiential Content
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Conclusion
Next Page: Creating Experiential Content
Scaling Experiential Content
The components that respond to user actions, like click states.
Click to interact
The integration of third-party tools like forms, maps, chat services, and other apps.
The Guide to Experiential Content
The components that add depth to visual content like triggered animations, sounds, and other dynamic layers.
Digital Content Transformation
The components that respond to user actions, like click states.
The visual framework of the story which includes images, graphics, photos, videos, and other visual components.
The 5 Layers of Engaging Content
These tactics will help you create more engaging, experiential content that visitors love to interact with. Making experiential content a significant part of your operations, however, requires a detailed plan of attack and a clear understanding of how to bring this type of initiative into your organization.
Design
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Conclusion
Use relatable language: Speak like your audience and tell stories they relate to. Period. Add twists and conflict: Every story needs tension to keep the audience’s interest. Resonate emotionally: Use emotion and tug at visitors’ heartstrings when appropriate.
Defining Experiential Content
User Experience
Your story is your foundation. Understand what makes a good story work and use those mechanics to your advantage. It doesn’t matter whether your content is for business professionals or consumers - human beings connect with stories.
Storytelling
How you present your story through copy has an immense impact on the experience someone has with your content. Long, in-depth paragraphs will tire out visitors and disconnect them from the story. Understand how people read online content and format your copy accordingly.
Digital Content Transformation
Copywriting
Good user experience is foundational to ensuring your audience understands how to engage with your content. The principles of impact, efficiency, and psychology are especially important when asking an audience to make decisions and interact with an experience.
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Use relatable language: Speak like your audience and tell stories they relate to. Period. Add twists and conflict: Every story needs tension to keep the audience’s interest. Resonate emotionally: Use emotion and tug at visitors’ heartstrings when appropriate.
Key Take-aways:
Establish a hierarchy: Typography and image choices should clearly create hierarchy. Vary up your visuals: Use photos, videos, and animations to keep viewers engaged. Add effects tastefully: Animations and interactions are great... when used sparingly.
Strong visual design not only enhances the narrative in your story, it provides logic and cues visitors into what they should focus their attention on. Good design improves clarity and comprehension in a way that’s difficult with text alone.
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Conclusion
Defining Experiential Content
Use relatable language: Speak like your audience and tell stories they relate to. Period. Add twists and conflict: Every story needs tension to keep the audience’s interest. Resonate emotionally: Use emotion and tug at visitors’ heartstrings when appropriate.
The Guide to Experiential Content
Creating Experiential Content
Conclusion
Defining Experiential Content
Go to defining experiential
Start with structure: Use logic and structure to design your user’s journey upfront. Align your strategy: Define your goals, key messages, and distribution strategy. Focus on usability: Make sure your content is visually clear and easy to understand.
Less is more: Use less copy and more visuals to make important points stick. Get creative: Entertain your audience quickly and write in memorable sound bites. Tell the truth: Don’t trick your audience, tell them the truth - then make it interesting.
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Your story is your foundation. Understand what makes a good story work and use those mechanics to your advantage. It doesn’t matter whether your content is for business professionals or consumers - human beings connect with stories.
Scaling Experiential Content
2nd Edition
Your story is your foundation. Understand what makes a good story work and use those mechanics to your advantage. It doesn’t matter whether your content is for business professionals or consumers - human beings connect with stories.
Key Take-aways:
Design
Storytelling
Copywriting
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User Experience
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Scaling Experiential Content
Copywriting
Your story is your foundation. Understand what makes a good story work and use those mechanics to your advantage. It doesn’t matter whether your content is for business professionals or consumers - human beings connect with stories.
Design
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Some key points to keep in mind:
Storytelling
Storytelling
Scaling Experiential Content
Key Take-aways:
Creating Experiential Content
Key Take-aways:
Storytelling
Key Take-aways:
Digital Content Transformation
Consumers engage with content differently today than they did even five years ago. They are used to getting information on-demand and in bite-sized chunks. Brands need to adapt to this new normal or risk their content getting relegated to the obscure corners of the internet.
Creating Experiential Content
Storytelling
User Experience
Digital Content Transformation
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Key Take-aways:
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Design
User Experience
The Guide to Experiential Content
Use relatable language: Speak like your audience and tell stories they relate to. Period. Add twists and conflict: Every story needs tension to keep the audience’s interest. Resonate emotionally: Use emotion and tug at visitors’ heartstrings when appropriate.
1. Content should to be written with the user, where they can dictate the terms of consumption 2. Content should be an active, two-way conversation between the brand and consumer 3. Content should be aligned with, and optimized for, the medium in which it’s being consumed
Digital Content Transformation
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Key Take-aways:
Scaling Experiential Content
Copywriting
Start with structure: Use logic and structure to design your user’s journey upfront. Align your strategy: Define your goals, key messages, and distribution strategy. Focus on usability: Make sure your content is visually clear and easy to understand.
Creating Experiential Content
Conclusion
Defining Experiential Content
2nd Edition
Storytelling
Creating Experiential Content
Next Page: On-Boarding Experiential Content
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Competitive brand differentiation.
Con
In-depth creative expertise
The benefits of experiential content are many, and usually determined by the use-case and type of organization creating the content. There are, however, certain benefits that any team can expect when creating and deploying experiential content.
The Guide to Experiential Content
Full creative control over delivered product
Creating a singular project can prove the power of experiential content. One project, however, won’t automatically transition into a full-fledged content program. On-boarding experiential content as a strategic initiative requires clear goals, an understanding of how to communicate the value, and a plan on how to resource and fuel your experiential output.
Conclusion
Pro
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Product and features alone aren’t enough to make your brand stand out. Bespoke digital experiences tailored to your audience will separate you from the pack.
Experiential content drives increased engagement, longer dwell times, and higher conversion rates compared to traditional content types and promotion methods.
Ultimately what mix of skills, resources, and technologies are right for you will depend on your business, your budget, and your ability to execute. With these steps figured out, you’ll be well on your way to scaling your experiential content program across the customer journey.
Graphic & Web Design
Pro
Copywriting
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Highly scalable with increased spend
Steep learning curve when beginning
The underlying copy, script, text, data, and other story components.
Here are the three biggest benefits of using experiential content to engage audiences:
Doing experiential content well requires both a certain mindset, as well as certain skill sets. While these don’t each need to be individual roles on your team, it’s important to have knowledge and experience in these areas:
Full creative control over delivered product
Next Page: Scaling Experiential Content
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Create experiential content at scale.
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Scaling Experiential Content
Digital Content Transformation
Digital Content Transformation
Scaling Experiential Content
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Pro's
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2nd Edition
The underlying copy, script, text, data, and other story components.
Creating Experiential Content
Pro
Scaling requires more headcount
Creating Experiential Content
Defining Experiential Content
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Web Development
Competitive brand differentiation.
Types of skills needed
Con
Need to create interactive, immersive digital content but don’t have a full-time developer or know how to code? Ceros can help.
Cost per project can be higher
Prospects have many digital interactions with your business before they decide to buy. It’s vital to create memorable experiences at every one of these touchpoints.
Agency
In-House
Pro
It’s also important to evaluate what technologies can help you achieve your experiential content vision. An experiential content platform like Ceros can take the development burden off your team, putting full creative control into the hands of the designers and allowing them to push experiences straight to the web.
In-depth product and business knowledge
Custom experiences may require javascript or CSS to deliver certain functionality.
In-House
Demand generation experience helps craft content that converts visitors into subscribers or leads.
Con
Able to apply learnings from other clients
Con
Web Development
Demand Marketing
UX Design
Improved marketing and sales metrics.
A keen eye for layout and design help structure and draw attention to visual stories.
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Agency
Scaling Experiential Content
The Value of Experiential Content
In-depth product and business knowledge
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Allocate Resources & Fill Your Toolbox
Resources become more efficient overtime
Product and features alone aren’t enough to make your brand stand out. Bespoke digital experiences tailored to your audience will separate you from the pack.
Conclusion
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Resources become more efficient overtime
Requires specialized resources or tools
Extensive back-and-forth to get it right
Strengthened brand experience across digital touchpoints.
Not experts in your product or business
In-House
Just as important as having the right skills, identifying the right tools, resources, or partners is vital to delivering memorable digital experiences. The main consideration is whether to hire an agency -or- create experiential content in-house. There are several tradeoffs for each of these that we’ll explore further here:
Looking to stand out from the competition by creating memorable, immersive digital experiences? Ceros can help.
Digital Content Transformation
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Pro
Defining Experiential Content
Custom experiences may require javascript or CSS to deliver certain functionality.
The Guide to Experiential Content
Create more immersive digital content.
Allocate Resources & Fill Your Toolbox
Creating Experiential Content
Conclusion
Defining Experiential Content
2nd Edition
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Experiences can be defined on a couple of different levels. The interaction a visitor has can be a discrete experience they have with a brand. That visitor can also look across every interaction they have had with that same brand and let that inform their broader perspective, or experience, as the sum total of those interactions. Which is why it’s so important for marketers to think about the specific interactions they are crafting for their visitors, as well as the full brand experience that a visitor will have with their company. They need a holistic view of the customer journey and how experiential content can be deployed across that entire journey.
The Guide to Experiential Content
View full experience
· Quizzes
Experiential content can take many forms and be used for entirely different purposes depending on where along the customer journey the visitors are. These examples provide an idea of the types of experiences that can be created across that journey.
Digital Content Transformation
The Guide to Experiential Content
Creating Experiential Content
AWARENESS
Conclusion
Defining Experiential Content
Business-focused audiences are used to engaging with tried and true content types, like:
By playing on those familiar formats but layering in surprising interactions, animations, or embedding rich media, marketers can provide a superior business content experience.
View full experience
Not all stories need to be lengthy. Adding small-format interactions or other immersive microcontent, you can keep readers on a page for longer, improving overall content performance.
Ebook
By playing on those familiar formats but layering in surprising interactions, animations, or embedding rich media, marketers can provide a superior business content experience.
Blog posts, articles, and thought leadership are meant to build awareness and drive traffic. By making them more experiential you can engage that traffic for longer and convert visitors into fans, subscribers, or leads.
View B2C Examples
· Sales decks
Case Study
Newsletters keep customers engaged throughout their lifecycle, delivering important information and resources to help make them more successful. This opportunity to increase advocacy is amplified through experiential formats.
· Ebooks
Reports and data visualizations help build understanding around a story, product, or need. Making reports more experiential through interactions and animations help put a deeper narrative into your reports.
· Ebooks
· Reports
Newsletters keep customers engaged throughout their lifecycle, delivering important information and resources to help make them more successful. This opportunity to increase advocacy is amplified through experiential formats.
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Get Started
Scaling Experiential Content
Experiential Content to B2C
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Any sales professional using decks in their pitches would benefit from interactive formats that allow for non-linear presentations that follow the flow of conversation, not lock prospects into an irrelevant talk-track.
Proposal
Click to interact
Click to interact
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· Reports
Unify your customer journey with experiential content.
Create memorable touchpoints at every stage of the customer journey to close more customers and keep them engaged.
Defining Experiential Content
Unify your customer journey with experiential content.
Conclusion
· Editorial
View full experience
Experiential Content for B2B
Create memorable touchpoints at every stage of the customer journey to close more customers and keep them engaged.
Any sales professional using decks in their pitches would benefit from interactive formats that allow for non-linear presentations that follow the flow of conversation, not lock prospects into an irrelevant talk-track.
Not all stories need to be lengthy. Adding small-format interactions or other immersive microcontent, you can keep readers on a page for longer, improving overall content performance.
View full experience
· White papers
Some of these formats are already more interactive than their business-focused counterparts, but by integrating content with inventory to create shoppable experiences, marketers can create effective digital destinations.
Reports and data visualizations help build understanding around a story, product, or need. Making reports more experiential through interactions and animations help put a deeper narrative into your reports.
Experiential Content to B2B
Report
Organizations that create proposals can more scalably deliver custom packages to their prospective customers. Those using experiential proposals have improved win rates and seen increased revenue from the same services due to their premium packaging.
View full experience
Scaling Experiential Content
Microcontent
Experiential Content Across the Customer Journey
Editorial
Experiential content can take many forms and be used for entirely different purposes depending on where along the customer journey the visitors are. These examples provide an idea of the types of experiences that can be created across that journey.
Need to create interactive, immersive digital content but don’t have a full-time developer or know how to code? Ceros can help.
Digital Content Transformation
Case studies put your most successful customers front and center for the world to see. Create more engaging customer stories with experiential layouts and help those stories connect with a broader audience.
· White papers
Whether B2B or B2C, there are countless opportunities to improve the experience for your audience with experiential content. Deploying experiential content across the entire customer journey, however, takes a lot of time and effort- so it's important to identify those first key use cases and then scale out from there.
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2nd Edition
Ebooks are a staple of B2B content marketing programs, but many marketers have no idea whether their audience actually consumes their content. Experiential ebooks better engage readers and provide deeper analytics on reader behaviors.
2nd Edition
Blog posts, articles, and thought leadership are meant to build awareness and drive traffic. By making them more experiential you can engage that traffic for longer and convert visitors into fans, subscribers, or leads.
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Defining Experiential Content
By playing on those familiar formats but layering in surprising interactions, animations, or embedding rich media, marketers can provide a superior business content experience.
Creating Experiential Content
View B2C Examples
Experiential Content for B2B
Customer Newsletter
Scaling Experiential Content
View B2B Examples
AWARENESS
Conclusion
· Lookbooks
View full experience
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Get Started
Ebooks are a staple of B2B content marketing programs, but many marketers have no idea whether their audience actually consumes their content. Experiential ebooks better engage readers and provide deeper analytics on reader behaviors.
View full experience
Business-focused audiences are used to engaging with tried and true content types, like:
Case studies put your most successful customers front and center for the world to see. Create more engaging customer stories with experiential layouts and help those stories connect with a broader audience.
View full experience
Consumer goods audiences expect different types of branded content, including:
Sales Deck
Creating Experiential Content
Get Started
On-Boarding Experiential Content
· Event pages
Scaling Experiential Content
Organizations that create proposals can more scalably deliver custom packages to their prospective customers. Those using experiential proposals have improved win rates and seen increased revenue from the same services due to their premium packaging.
ADVOCACY
Create experiential content at scale.
· Sales decks
Next Page: Conclusion
Experiential content can also take different forms depending on whether the audience is consumer - or business - focused. The types of content that the audience expects can influence the forms of experiential content marketers create.
Digital Content Transformation
Experiential content can also take different forms depending on whether the audience is consumer- or business-focused. The types of content that the audience expects can influence the forms of experiential content marketers create.
This guide delved into the concepts around experiential content, it’s underlying structure, and how it manifests for different types of audiences. Understanding what experiential content is is a critical first step on the journey to transforming your digital content program.
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Defining Experiential Content
Conclusion
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Create experiential content at scale.
1. Make sure you have the skills (or a good partner) to creat experiential content 2. Figure out how to effectively on-board an experiential initiative in your organization 3. Identity touchpoints across the customer journey to deliver memorable experiences
From microcontent to microsites and everything in-between, design and publish interactive, immersive digital content at scale with ease.
It’s also important to:
The Guide to Experiential Content
Digital Content Transformation
Digital Content Transformation
Creating Experiential Content
Creating Experiential Content
Scaling Experiential Content
Scaling Experiential Content
Conclusion
On-Boarding Experiential Content
Experiential content is the future of digital marketing content, delivering a more memorable, immersive, and interactive experience for your audience. The perfect cure for declining engagement across marketing channels and lack of differentiation from brand to brand. Marketers - it’s time to get started.
2nd Edition
Digital Content Transformation
Need to create interactive, immersive digital content but don’t have a full-time developer or know how to code? Ceros can help.
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Defining Experiential Content
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Defining Experiential Content
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On-Boarding Experiential Content
Scaling Experiential Content
Conclusion
Creating Experiential Content
