The cliffhanger is among the biggest instruments in leisure. I’ll clarify why later.
Seriously although, we’ve all skilled the cliffhanger: It’s that tension-building second of uncertainty on the finish of a chapter or installment that leaves the viewers impatiently awaiting the subsequent one. Some of my favourite binge-worthy TV exhibits and page-turning novels have been outlined by this high quality.
An ideal instance from trendy cinema is the conclusion of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. While I received’t give something away, the film ended with a stunning flip of occasions that appeared to depart little hope for the franchise’s heroic protagonists. In the 12 months that handed between Infinity War and its sequel, followers waited with rabid eagerness for solutions and closure, reveling in theories and hyper-analysis.
When Endgame lastly arrived one 12 months later, it delivered a vastly satisfying payoff. This helped the film rating the largest field workplace opening of all time, and earned its creators excessive reward from our personal Josh Nite for overcoming widespread Hollywood pitfalls and totally satisfying the fanbase.
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B2B content material advertising and marketing is more and more taking cues from the world of leisure within the quest to preserve busy clients and prospects tuning in. When it comes to riveting your viewers, there could also be no extra essential mannequin to borrow than episodic content material, and the advantages don’t cease there.
Advantages of Episodic Content for B2B Marketing
Let’s begin by springboarding off the purpose above, by highlighting the way in which this content material delights those that devour it. Then, we’ll focus on a number of the key operational implications for entrepreneurs.
Episodic Content Builds Loyalty and Retention with Your Audience
Storytelling could be very highly effective in B2B advertising and marketing. It helps audiences mentally arrange, join, and contextualize data in a method that makes the content material a lot simpler to perceive and bear in mind. In addition, storytelling by way of content material advertising and marketing helps construct belief.
Episodic content material offers a method to prolong the storytelling dynamic over lengthier time intervals and campaigns. In the identical method a robust narrative or theme compels a reader to preserve scrolling by way of a weblog publish or viewing a video, connecting a number of items of content material by way of this framework urges content material customers to discover and revel in that subsequent nugget.
“Episodic content provides a means to extend the storytelling dynamic over lengthier time periods and campaigns. Connecting multiple pieces of content urges content consumers to find and enjoy that next nugget.” @NickNelsonMN Click To Tweet
When you drill proper down to the important goal of content material advertising and marketing — per the venerable Content Marketing Institute, that’s “creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience” — it’s straightforward to see how nicely an episodic cadence aligns.
Episodic Content Brings Efficiency and Greater Utility to Your Content
Here’s a state of affairs: You’ve acquired a giant previous 5,000 phrase writeup on a subject vital to these in your trade or area of interest. You spent months planning, growing, and refining it. You’re satisfied it’s attention-grabbing and informative sufficient to maintain a reader’s consideration all over.
So why drop it unexpectedly?
Divvying such a hefty piece of content material up into a number of components means you’ll be able to stretch the content material out over a number of days or even weeks, filling up your content material calendar whereas additionally making the knowledge itself extra simply digestible and giving your viewers a definite purpose to come again. The identical is true of audio content material, video content material, and so forth.
This is one thing that may be (and infrequently is) executed in hindsight — “Wow, this turned out to be really long, let’s cut it into parts” — however is only when baked into planning, so you’ll be able to construct in these pivotal cliffhangers and a clean general circulation.
Episodic Content Adds Cohesiveness to Your Content Strategy
One of the habits I just lately steered B2B entrepreneurs ought to depart behind within the 2010s is aimless content material creation. Episodic content material is a straightforward resolution to the fragmented nature of many wayward methods. When you begin planning round sequential sequence of associated items, it turns into far simpler to tie all the things along with a constant thread, and helps embed that mindset all through the remainder of a program.
Examples of Episodic Content in B2B Marketing
It may really feel simpler to envision episodic content material within the context of TV exhibits or film franchises than in a B2B advertising and marketing technique. So let’s discover just a few sensible methods to convey this framework to life inside business-oriented campaigns and applications.
Webcasts/Vidcasts
This format is the simplest to affiliate with episodic mainstays like TV and movie, as a result of it follows the exact same premise: pull in a viewer with an engrossing video, after which depart them wanting extra. There are many examples of this all through the world of B2B advertising and marketing, one among them being our personal Break Free B2B webcast sequence.
The interconnected high quality in a video content material sequence doesn’t all the time have to be an ongoing narrative. Sometimes it’s merely a theme that resonates and applies to varied installments. In the instance of Break Free B2B, there’s no direct linkage between completely different episodes, apart from the core idea — good, forward-thinking execs sharing their greatest suggestions to escape the standard constraint and obstacles of our discipline.
YouTube itself illustrates the ability of episodic video content material. By robotically taking part in one other associated video after one ends, viewers typically keep tuned in for lengthy durations. And to reinforce the platform’s irresistible enchantment, Google just lately disclosed that YouTube earned greater than $15 billion in income final 12 months.
Podcasts
These fall into the same bucket as vidcasts and webcasts, however with a strictly audio focus. There are loads of fashionable podcast exhibits that unpack a progressive narrative over the course of many episodes (Serial was a breakthrough on this regard), however once more, it’s usually a couple of cohesive theme or idea.
Two of our B2B shoppers at TopRank Marketing are serving to cleared the path on this entrance: 3M’s Science Champions highlights the human facet of complicated matters, whereas SAP’s Tech Unknown explores cutting-edge innovation by way of the eyes of the innovators.
When Josh shared B2B podcasting stats right here just a few months in the past, a number of the most hanging had been across the devoted consumption of listeners. For instance, 76.eight% hear to podcasts greater than seven hours every week, and 52% of month-to-month listeners hear to everything of every episode.
In different phrases, when you pull somebody right into a podcast, there’s a very good probability they’ll be hooked.
“Podcasts continue to attract new listeners. And, most promisingly, those who listen are far more likely to add new podcasts than cut down.” @NiteWrites #B2Bpodcasting Click To Tweet
Social Casts
This is a considerably new frontier, however positively an intriguing one. Driving constant social engagement is a problem for a lot of B2B manufacturers, and episodic social content material contributes to fixing it.
The LinkedIn Marketing Blog* just lately highlighted corporations which are excelling with video on the platform, and the publish contains a number of examples of episodic campaigns, akin to Searchie’s LinkedIn Live sequence and the Keynotes academic sequence from eCornell.
Other widespread examples of episodic social content material embody weekly hashtag posts, worker spotlights, and each day polls.
Blogs, Guides, Email
The above examples are principally multimedia-focused, as a result of that greatest correlates to the high-profile leisure examples cited from the outset, however written content material like weblog posts and guides are additionally good for episodic supply. A thematic e-newsletter, or sequence of associated weblog posts, or assortment of ebooks protecting the identical topical space can all match the invoice. If you ring a bell together with your viewers, you’ll have them searching for the subsequent one.
On to the Next Episode
As you propose out your upcoming content material initiatives, take into consideration methods you’ll be able to construct them round an episodic framework. It will assist you to kind long-running narratives, acquire constant consideration and consciousness out of your viewers, add effectivity to your creation course of, and assist a cohesive technique.
Instead of fascinated with the conclusion of your subsequent marketing campaign or content material piece, begin fascinated with the cliffhanger.
A giant a part of episodic B2B content material’s enchantment is that it creates a lengthier and deeper expertise for the reader, listener, or viewer. Learn extra about why experiential content material is on the rise in our latest weblog entry.
* Disclosure: LinkedIn, together with 3M and SAP, is a shopper of TopRank Marketing
