Winning over leaders with solid, outcomes-based content

Your content makes or breaks your product. That's because it plays a simple but important role in explaining your value proposition, onboarding and retaining customers and fixing real points of friction.

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But outside of your content team, do you and your stakeholders know and understand how content works as a strategic business asset? And do you know if it’s truly showing the value of your products and services?

For many teams, the answer is likely no. For them, content works as a nice-to-have or as part of a longer-term, slower content marketing strategy. But your content is always working to support your business goals.

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Evidencing this is about identifying its value and explicitly connecting it to your business’ revenue and ROI. 

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So how do you get to the point where you can tie your content’s success to your business’? 

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Choosing the right KPIs and showing how your content results in positive behaviours and outcomes among users is the foundation for winning over stakeholders who might be resistant to investing time in your content strategy. 

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Figure out business and user challenges and work to fix them

Your content strategy should never involve producing high volumes of content without a user or business need in mind. 

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Users and your business have problems they want to be fixed. For example, a user trying an at-home blood testing diagnostic tool for the first time might be unsure of the right test pack to select for their needs. Do your landing pages or consultation flow need to be updated so they can make better, more informed choices and select the appropriate test kit for their needs?

Or, if your business is planning to introduce a new feature like a booking platform to help pharmacists manage their time and workload for Pharmacy First England services. Although it is a free service, it does come with incentives for the successful completion of consultations. With this in mind, you might want to plan content to help manage patient expectations, describe the conditions covered by the service and develop the copy for the booking flow consultation that helps patients select appointment times that work for them.

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In either of these scenarios, you can use your analytical data, user feedback and knowledge of previous service launches, to identify problems. Once you know your challenges, you can prioritise them and develop a narrative through metrics that resonates with your stakeholders once you’ve fixed them.

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Soft metrics add detail to your content’s story but give stakeholders the full picture

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If your content strategy reports only feature metrics like page views, impressions or time-on-page, then you’re likely doing your content a disservice. Although they help stakeholders understand that users are finding your content either directly or organically, they don’t explain how your content is winning customers’ stickiness, improving conversion or influencing the average order values.

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Soft metrics do have an important role to play; when you report on the trends you’ve spotted in user behaviour, you may be unveiling a problem that needs to be fixed and, as a result, content that needs to be optimised. But if you’re not telling your stakeholders how the content you’ve invested time in is shaping and influencing customers’ purchase decisions, there’s room for your reporting to be improved.

Your reports should include a mix of soft metrics and outcome-based results so that you can create a rounded picture of its role in user experiences.

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Remember to test and continue to optimise your content

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Testing is central to producing good content.

It shows you when the changes you’ve implemented have worked (and when they haven’t).

Rapid CRO and slower-paced, less frequent audits can show you where you’ve been successful and give you reason to either repeat or further invest time into an approach that you’ve taken.

For example, you spot that presenting a comparison of the tiers in a subscription-based private video-consultation service above the fold results in a 4% increase of patients opting for your premium GP consultation option. You may want to test your findings across your other key services.

It also gives you a significant finding to share with your stakeholders. You created a content solution that’s driving people towards high-value products and services that is repeatable, proves the value of your service proposition and is easy to roll back if it doesn't work when applied elsewhere.

Final thoughts

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Content is dynamic, and as a result, it will need to be updated and optimised regularly.

If your stakeholders are sceptical about the value it holds, developing a reporting system that is narrative-driven and outcome-focused should help in changing opinion.

But sometimes, it’s not as straightforward as presenting the data.

Listening to your stakeholders opens up opportunities for collaboration and can provide you with business insights you may not have had access to. The relationships you build with them help establish trust and encourage a content-positive culture within your wider team.

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