September 04, 2013

87 Percent of TV Viewers Love the Second Screen; Can Your Content Marketing Keep Up?

With 87 percent of U.S. households reported to use at least one second screen device while watching TV, the attention span of TV viewers is decreasing as they look to multi-task while watching their favorite shows. So that begs the question: is your website attractive enough to pique the interest of these distracted TV viewers? 


image via shutterstock

High-Quality Engaging Content

One element that separates the websites customers visit on a regular basis from those they avoid is the quality of the content. Let’s take a look at the type of the content customers have come to expect on company websites:

  • Company-specific news
  • Industry news
  • Market trends and analysis
  • White papers, case studies, datasheets
  • Interviews with company executives, spokespeople, clients and partners
  • Multi-media elements including podcasts and videos

By posting content to your website on a regular basis, you are showing your customer base that you are the place they should be when they’re spending time watching a TV show or movie. And, if your content is first-rate, the television will become the background noise as the viewer learns about your great offerings, as well as what’s new in the industry at large.

Social Media While Watching TV

In a recent survey of 1,300 mobile Internet users under the age of 25, it was found that 80 percent of young people use social media while watching TV. The numbers breakdown further to reveal that:

  • 72 percent communicate through Twitter
  • 56 percent use Facebook
  • 34 percent like to utilize mobile applications
  • 62 of social TV users like to use a combination of all three

While traditional marketing has always focused on the single view (be it with a print ad, television spot or radio jingle), this study shows that thanks to the surge of secondary activity while watching TV, you should be ready for an integrated marketing approach. Let’s take a look at two hypothetical situations—one in which a company doesn’t utilize content marketing services and one in which the company does.

Scenario No. 1 – No Content Marketing

Your potential customer is watching television and something on the screen reminds her of your company. She checks your company website and the first thing she sees is “copyright 2011” written at the bottom of the page. She decides to find out about the latest industry news, but the only news item posted is wishing customers “Happy Holidays”— because it was posted in December. They potential customer checks out the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages, which are similarly abandoned, overtaken by bots, and loaded with customer questions from six months back. That customer then leaves your site feeling dejected and frustrated.

Scenario No. 2 – Utilizing Content Marketing

The same potential customer is checking out Facebook when she sees an intriguing post about your competitor’s offerings. This leads her to the company’s website, which contains several professionally written company news stories along with industry-specific blog posts right there on the homepage, hot off the press.

Excited by the activity, she moves on to check out other news. There are a slew of posts about relevant market research and your competitor’s core competencies, including white papers, video clips, case studies and more. The potential customers heads over to Twitter and spreads the word about all of the company’s great offerings, but not before stopping to fill out a gated asset so she can view a compelling infographic.

Just like that, your potential customer’s show is over. She turns off the TV and spends more time on your competitor’s website, taking critical steps down the customer lifecycle path. Worried this is happening to you? Worried that you are losing your potential customers to the competition because of a weakened content marketing strategy? Then get your A-team together to figure out how to come up with a fully-baked content marketing campaign, one that can compete aggressively with other organizations out there.




Edited by Ryan Sartor




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