October 30, 2024
No matter what people say they want, what they are is what they consume.
There’s a great scene in Friends where the gang is having a trivia contest to see who knows each other better (remember: the winner gets Monica and Rachel’s apartment).
Ross: Rachel claims this is her favorite movie…
Chandler: Dangerous Liaisons
Ross: Correct. Her actual favorite movie is…
Joey: Weekend at Bernie’s!
I love this, because it reveals a truth: we are what we consume. Humans have a process of “content association” and “content disassociation.” We love to be associated with Dangerous Liaisons because that makes us look erudite. We might not be so open about Weekend at Bernies, because that less of the image we’re going for.
No matter what people say they want, what they are is what they consume. There’s a lot of content out there, and there’s no better way to figure out someone likes than to follow them around and, well, keep track.
You might think this is analytics, but it’s not – analytics is about tracking content consumption is aggregate. Analytics tells you that 1,000 people read your blog post.
But customer data is something different – customer data tells you that this person read four blog posts, a product page, and downloaded a white paper. You might not even know who “this person” is, but they left a behavior trail in their wake.
Analytics is channel-centric, and cross-identity. Customer data is identity-centric, and cross-channel.
Let me say that again: analytics is about a channel, in aggregate. Customer data is about… Bob. Or Mary. Or whoever.
Every trail tells a story. Content recommendation platforms can use that story to predict the content someone will consume next, specifically what content is most likely to lead that journey to a conversion.
You see, if you watch enough journeys, you start to recognize patterns. Then you can consider Identity X and find patterns of (1) people consuming the same type of content, and (2) people who arrive at a positive outcome (a conversion). Combine those two things and you can pretty accurately figure out what Identity X should see next.
Knowing this, it becomes much clearer what content in your system is most effective. Additionally, you can “load level” your content by figuring out if you have more content of a particular topic that your visitors want, or less content. This helps drive better decisions about what content to create.
Again, this isn’t just about consumption. This is about consumption as part of a larger process. Just because someone consumes something doesn’t mean anything by itself. Hell, you can get people to consume anything with clickbait-ish titles.
But if they consume something, and then go on to convert or provide value, then that gives you a key piece of data. Now you have some understanding of the path that your customers go on, and you can develop content to meet that need, instead of just piling on more and more content that performs well in isolation.
This speaks to a larger, healthy perspective shift – moving from content to journey. Very few customers consume a single piece of content, then convert. Rather, everyone is on a journey through your content domain. They move from content to content, experience to experience. The key is not concentrating on specific “islands of consumption,” but rather to understand the transitions between them. Why does Content X lead to Content Y, and is that the path someone takes before they become a conversion?
It's s study in what’s called “positive deviancy.” Instead of trying to figure out what’s wrong with your content, figure out what’s right. Use tooling to examine those journeys that worked, then extract the commonalities from those and capitalize on them.
We can do all the focus groups we want, and we’ll never learn exactly what makes our customers tick. I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk to your customers, but they’re probably going to tell you about Dangerous Liaisons, rather than Weekend at Bernie’s. We don’t want to know what customer say they want; rather, we want to examine the successful journey they actually embark on.