Pssst… I know you’ve probably never done this, but I have. I’ve sat down and binge watched a whole bunch of episodes from one series on Netflix, and yes, I enjoyed it.
There, now that I have my confession out the way, I have to tell you what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Why is it that we binge watch shows on Netflix, but we dole out content to our readers like it’s bread crumbs? And scarce bread crumbs, at that?
Think about it – you want to learn something new. Maybe you want to learn everything you can about video marketing.
So you start looking, and you find a great article on a website about this exact thing. The site even offers to send you an entire email course on video marketing and you sign up.
Problem is, you want the rest of the course NOW. So you keep searching, and you land on other sites and read other articles and watch other videos.
And you forget all about that first site you were at.
A day later you get an email – installment #1 of your course. But you already learned everything you needed the other day. You’ll look at it later…
Yeah. Right. You never read those emails, do you?
I’ve done the same thing plenty of times. Yet I still parse out my content to readers as though they are doing absolutely nothing but sitting there, waiting for the latest installment…
When in fact they’ve probably forgotten all about me.
Or what about those product launches where they dole out one video every three days? “Watch this fantastic video to discover blah blah blah.” And you watch it, and you LOVE it, and you want to see the rest of the videos. Except they’re not online yet.
“The next video will be available in X days.” You don’t want to wait “X” days, you want to see it NOW.
And when it’s finally available, you’ve forgotten all about it. The ironic thing is, if they had all of the videos online when you were interested, you would have watched all of them right away. And if they were done well, you might have bought the product they promoted at the end of the last video, too.
But by the time the product is launched, you don’t even remember what they were talking about.
Been there, done that. Many times, too.
And then there’s the simple article on your website. You do one article about video marketing, one article about content marketing, one article about SEO, etc.
The reader finishes the article they’re interested in and looks for more on the same topic. There are no more. And so they leave.
Whoops.
Mind you, all three of these techniques worked great a few years ago. And I’m not saying they don’t work now. But I guarantee they are not working nearly as well as they used to.
And we can thank Netflix for that, and the internet, and the proliferation of ‘what you want, when you want it’ in just about every niche imaginable.
We are no longer content to wait. We want our information NOW, while we are hot about the topic. Not later.
And your readers and viewers are no different.
So what’s the solution?
We give our readers and viewers the opportunity to binge all they want.
You’ve got an article on your site about generating targeted traffic? Good. Now write 5 more, all on different aspects or techniques of traffic generation, and link them all together.
When someone finishes any one of those 6 articles, they find links at the bottom that take them to any of the other 5 articles. They now have CHOICES on where to go next, and all of the choices are good ones because they are directly related to what they just chose to read.
They also find a link that takes them to your super-duper traffic generation product, too.
If your articles are good, they’ll keep clicking and reading. And if they are impressed enough, they will eventually click on that product link they keep seeing.
And you will make sales.
Your readers will be happy because they found everything they needed in one place.
You will be happy because they stay on your site longer, they’re more likely to subscribe to your newsletter, and you’re making sales.
What about those email courses – why not let the reader accelerate the process?
At the bottom of each email in the sequence, you can let them know that the next installment is coming tomorrow. Or, they want to see it now, simply ‘click here.’
In fact, if you want to use tracking for engagement analytics, you might accelerate the process for the reader. Did they engage with emails 1 and 2? Maybe it’s time to send them straight to email #5, and so forth.
The more engaged your reader is, the more options they should have to continue consuming your content.
As a marketer you have an excellent incentive to do this, which we’ve already hinted at.
When someone is hot on the trail of a particular topic, or looking to solve a particular problem, you don’t want to present them with your offer next week – you want to present it NOW. Because they’ve engaged with your content, they’re hot. They like you. They’re trusting you. They want MORE. So give it to them.
Let them know that as good as your content is, the REAL meat is in your product. And watch them bite. Go ahead… Give your readers the Netflix experience they really want!
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