3 Ways 'Webification' Future-Proofs Your Content Strategy

Offline content is dead.

I don’t just mean that it’s no longer in style (because it definitely isn’t).

I mean it’s lifeless.

As marketers, we have to constantly create eye-catching, informative content that captures the attention of our buyers and convinces them to buy from us. That means producing dynamic content that’s engaging, easy to update, and high-performing. 

It’s really hard to do that with static, offline content, especially in today’s noisy world where everyone has something to say and sell. 

PDFs and PowerPoints don’t grab buyers’ attention, are difficult to update, and don’t give marketers any insights into how buyers are interacting with them. 

These problems disappear when you webify your content.

Webification is the process of transforming all of your offline content from static PDFs and PowerPoints into dynamic, interactive websites. 

By ditching the downloads and putting all your content online, you give your content the life and flexibility you need to serve your buyers now and in the future. That means you can get more mileage from your content and drive better results.

Here are the top three ways that webification can future-proof your content strategy.

1. Makes your content more user-friendly & engaging

When’s the last time you were excited to download a file?

My guess is your memories of it are more of a burden than a thrill.  

Not only are offline files like PDFs and PowerPoints cumbersome to download; they’re just not engaging. They’re text-based and static, which requires effort on the part of the buyer to consume the content. There’s no way for the buyer to interact with static content except to passively read it.

With webified content, you can create interactive experiences that grab your buyer’s attention and actually require them to engage. According to Kapost, interactive content generates 2x more conversions than passive content.

Because it lives online, webified content allows for more creative treatments of your content than are impossible with static files like PDFs and PowerPoints.

It frees you to design content experiences that your buyers will love, which drives them to convert.

Want to add a video to your ebook? It’s as simple as embedding an iframe from YouTube or Vimeo

Want to add a call-to-action to your one-pager? All you have to do is place a button or even a  form in between the text.

How about a poll? You can embed that as well. 

Best of all, webified content is responsive and resizes for smaller screens meaning that you can make your content every bit as engaging for buyers on-the-go. 

With the amount of time buyers spend on their phones these days, content that doesn’t look good on mobile may as well not exist. In fact, 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a company because of a bad mobile experience (Source: SuperOffice).

So no matter what device your buyers use to view your content, they’re guaranteed an engaging content experience that drives them to convert.

2. Making updates and changes easy

No content is ever truly “evergreen.”

Even if you once wrote the most awesome ebook ever, with relevant terms and topics that drive high volumes of traffic, you still need to refresh the content from time to time to keep it relevant.

This isn’t so hard with online content. 

You probably have a content management system (CMS) that makes updating blogs and web pages a breeze. All you have to do is log on, make a few copy changes, swap some images (if necessary), and voilà. You’re ready to go live with some refreshed content that took no time at all to produce.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with offline content.

Assets like ebooks, one-pagers, and slidedeck presentations are usually published in formats that can’t be edited outside of the programs used to create them. 

They are likely created and saved away from your CMS, making content management a hassle; you have to make changes to the individual files rather than publishing changes from a central platform. 

Let's say you're a content marketing agency and you wanted to update your best performing eBook on social media from 2013. To do this, you have to hunt down the original file, likely go into Illustrator or InDesign, make the edits, publish a new PDF, reupload to your CMS or marketing automation platform, update links on your website...you get the picture; it’s a big hassle.

Even if you go through all those steps and republish and re-upload your content, there will always be versions of the content floating around that don’t reflect your most recent changes. 

This runs the risk of old versions of the files landing in the hands and inboxes of prospects and can end up making your content look dated and your marketing irrelevant. 

Once you put offline content out into the world, there’s no taking it back, and that means you can’t control the messaging and design of your content after it’s published.

With webified content, updating content is as easy as making changes to a blog or webpage. Just make the copy changes, adjust the design, and press publish. That’s it. No reuploading, no redistributing, and no worrying about outdated content proliferating beyond your control.

3. Giving you customer insights

From a data and insights standpoint, there’s very little to be had from offline content.

When a buyer downloads a PDF or a PowerPoint, you might get alerted of the action, but beyond that, you have no clue how they’re engaging with the content. 

Did they read the whole thing or did they skim it? Did they download it on accident and immediately delete it? Did they forward it to others, who knows? 

Offline files can’t answer those questions — but webified content can.

Webified content behaves like a website and just like a website, you can embed your content with tracking codes and analytics so that you get a bird’s eye view into how buyers interact with it. 

With this tracking, you can measure clicks, views, bounces, opens, and shares on your content, giving you a sense of how buyers are responding to your content.

This helps you on both a micro and macro level. 

On a micro level, those insights help you shape next steps with individual buyers engaging with your content. 

You can serve up appropriate follow-up content based on the content they click on as well as gather valuable information on their interests that can help sales tailor their messages.

On a macro level, insights generated from webified content helps you understand what kind of content performs best and which messages get the attention of the most buyers. 

This will help you develop better content moving forward as well as weed out the content that doesn’t hit home.

By removing the guesswork that comes with offline content, webified content empowers you to make data-driven decisions about your content strategy, helping you to drive better results from your content and measure ROI.

It’s Time To Reinvent Your Customer Journey

If you want to drive more leads and get more value from your content, then it’s time to ditch static content for good and webify everything. 

Turning your offline content into interactive, web-based experiences will get more eyes on the content you produce, make your life easier when it’s time to update that content, and give you a better understanding of how your buyers are interacting with your content.

Ready to future proof your content strategy?

Fill out the form below to get your first piece of content webified on Brandcast. Our team of content strategy experts will take one of your tired old PDFs or PowerPoints and transform it into an interactive website that’s responsive, and attention-grabbing.

Disclaimer: The below form is a from our sponsor, Brandcast, and not IMPACT. By completing the form, you're allowing them to follow up regarding transforming your content into a web experience.