Tips on Using Actionable Content in Your Online Marketing Campaign

What is Actionable Content?

Actionable Content is just what it says – content that spurs an action. That could be getting your reader to take action with the content you’ve provided, fill out a form, buy a product, ask for more information, or to subscribe to your newsletter.

The post you are currently reading is written to give you tips on actions that you can take to improve your online marketing strategy in order to be more successful with your business.

As we move into 2014, we are going to see more demand on providing metrics that prove the effectiveness of  internet marketing (especially social media). But if you don’t have anything to measure, you can’t prove your internet marketing’s effectiveness.

Actionable Content tells the consumer how to take action, and it also gives us something to measure. For more information on the importance of measuring your online marketing strategy, read our post  How Measuring Your Marketing Strategy Can Save Your Website.

You can measure the effectiveness of the actionable content used on your website, social media strategy, email newsletter, ad campaign, or Facebook promotion by first determining your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and then deciding how they will be measured.

Here are some tips on how to integrate Actionable Content into your campaigns:

Social Media

Gives more brand exposure, assists in content distribution, and utilizes WOM

Actionable Tip: Ask the reader to LIKE or SHARE your post (you’d be surprised how effective just asking is), create sharing icons on your blog posts, link the reader back to a sales landing page to take action by filling out a form.

Measurement: Likes, shares, landing page traffic, form completions.

Newsletters:

Provides updated information and announcement of new offers

Actionable Tip: Include links inside your email to link to articles in your website. Link from the email directly to the landing page where the consumer can make the purchase, sign-up, or get involved. Embed social media links. Provide an option for readers to share offer with friends.

Measurement: Click through rates, referral traffic to website, number of shares, look for correlations in increased traffic or followers prior to email blast.

Videos

Visually show consumers your service or product in a more engaging way

Actionable Tip: Add a subscribe button to your YouTube Channel. Ask users to subscribe to your channel at the end of the video and give them a reason why they should.

Measurement: Video views and video subscribers. Referral traffic.

Measure with 3rd Party Tools

Taking it a step further, by using services like Bitly, tracking your campaigns with Google’s URL builder, or with 3rd part services like Sprout Social, you can further track the success of each piece of actionable content you create.

Are you using actionable content in your marketing strategy? How are you measuring your success? Let us know in the comments below!