Binge: an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence; an act of excessive or compulsive consumption
“Binge watching” has become quite the phenomenon in the last few years, thanks mostly to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon that allow users to watch episode upon episode of their favorite TV shows, past, present, and originals. This past weekend after Thanksgiving, for example, Gilmore Girls was supposed to break the internet with the amount of people who were going to watch the revival episodes. Or maybe Crown is more your speed, or Mozart in the Jungle. Whatever show it may be, I’d be surprised if there was anyone with access to a streaming service who hasn’t fallen subject to the lure of “the next episode starts in 5 seconds.”
With studies claiming that attention spans are down to eight seconds in our always-on culture, binge watching defies that trend, with 29 percent of respondents of a recent survey saying they wait for a show to be over to specifically be able to binge watch the show. With binge watching consisting of three episodes or more, that could be anywhere between an hour to three hours, depending on the length of the episodes.
So, what does all of this have to do with marketing?
What this trending binge watching should tell marketers is that compelling and relevant content has the ability to hold an audience’s attention. People who don’t want to see Frank Underwood’s brutal political moves won’t sit through more than an episode or two of House of Cards, but those same people might sit through an entire season of cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a day or two.
In the same way, your website—your company’s biggest marketing asset—should be able to hold your target audience’s attention. Your content should be relevant, informative, and necessary for the people you want to become your customers. If your content—be that video, informative blogs, ebooks, or webinars—holds your target audience’s attention, they should want to click from link to link to learn more, therefore staying on your site, or bookmarking your site to use later as a reference, like saving a show in their queue.
This also means your content can’t be everything to everyone. It’s tempting to try to reach everyone in the world as a potential customer, but that’s not realistic. Define who your target audience is; know what information they will need to know and provide it for them, discover what they’re searching for online and target those keywords. Each TV show has an ideal demographic they’re trying to draw in—find yours.
How do you make your website content binge-able?
Not that long ago, “going viral” was the priority. Getting thousands or millions of hits on a video or blog post was the goal, but it really only gave that one piece of content its fifteen minutes of fame and didn’t necessarily translate into customers or dollars for the content creators. But now, content should be binge-able. The focus shouldn’t be for one video or blog post to do very well, but that the quality and relevance of content on a site should allow that all content is equally desirable, each as good as the last.
To measure how successful your website and associated content are doing, use Google Analytics or another website analytics program to monitor bounce rates and page views. If a landing page or a blog post has a high bounce rate, that tells you that either the content is not being shown to the right people at the right time (maybe that ebook is better for a lead closer to the bottom of the sales funnel instead of those at the top of the funnel) or that it’s not relevant to your audience at all. Just as Netflix A/B tests the images for shows and movies on their service to get viewers to connect with a show, you need to A/B test placement of content and its success.
TV shows all have ends: season finales, episode cliffhangers, series endings. They get you hooked, take you on a journey with the characters, and eventually—whether it’s after one season (RIP Firefly) or twenty seasons (I’m looking at you, Law & Order)—they come to an end, leaving you looking for a new TV show to fill the void. Instead, your website should get visitors invested in taking a journey with your company, down the sales funnel, ending the journey with a successful sale, whether that’s product, service, or retail. Calls to action on your website should be the equivalent of the preview of the next episode: tease them with what they need to know from the ebook, webinar, or checklist your offering. Filling out a form on your website should be as easy as hitting the Continue Watching button on streaming, and the offer should be just as fulfilling to your target audience as watching the next episode of their favorite show.
Casual visitors to your website aren’t going to automatically sign up to try a demo or to buy your product. They need to become fans of who your company is and what your company does. Creating high quality, relevant binge-able content is how to get your audience invested. Then, monitor analytics to understand what works and what doesn’t. Cap off a content binging session with providing them with the next step of becoming a lead through more quality content behind forms, allowing those who have bought into your idea to see how your company can be a good fit for them.
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