How can companies combat information overload and help potential customers?

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Information overload or infoxication is everywhere. For example, just by typing a term into Google you will find thousands or even millions of answers to the same question.

While this initially seems positive, all too often consumers feel overwhelmed or paralyzed due to the infoxication they experience .

This phenomenon is not new. Variations of information overload date back throughout history, appearing particularly in the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution.

However, today this continues to grow, thanks to online office 365 database accessibility, and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Why should your company care about information overload? Consumers may consciously or unconsciously experience different levels of stress due to it, or even suffer from content anxiety.

In most cases, this is due to the sheer amount of irrelevant content available, not the volume of data itself.

As a company, you can combat the growing information overload and help your clients reexamine and refine their own Digital Marketing strategy .

Taking this reality into account, in the following lines we will address:

What is information overload?
What causes infoxication?
What are the risks of information overload?
How can a company combat information overload?
What is information overload?
Managing the amount of information we are exposed to on a daily basis is a challenge for almost everyone.

You have access to email, websites, social media, mobile apps and more, providing an explosion of potential information for every area of ​​your life.

Overload, therefore, is an excessive volume of content available to a customer to help them make a decision, complete a task, or answer a question .

As a result, this excess makes the decision-making process difficult, and even causes increasing levels of stress and anxiety.

In other words, information overload often results in procrastination, delays in choices, and a decrease in the quality of decisions made.

Too much content can affect a person's ability to process data and make the best decisions.

What causes infoxication?
There are many causes for the current state of information overload. The most common ones are:

Quantity over quality mentality
Today, the pressure on businesses and brands to compete for consumers’ attention and deliver the content they want and need continues to increase.

This results in a quantity effect, which outweighs quality, and is a major impediment to your prospects finding you and converting.

Massive amounts of new information are constantly being created, as Content Marketing remains essential for a brand across the various channels available.

Simplifying access to information
It's easier than ever to create and share content online, adding to infoxication and its debilitating effects.

Many channels offer simplified ways to access dashboards and share content over the internet. Anyone can do this, and consumers are taking notice and becoming overwhelmed.

Increasing the number of information channels
If before there were only a few ways to bring information to the population, today there are several, both online and offline.

Print media, television, podcasts , email, websites, social media, mobile apps, ebooks, and RSS feeds combine to provide access to content to virtually anyone on the planet.

Inclusion of historical data online
With new technology, historical data is aggregated online for the convenience of consumers .

While this seems like an advantage, it also adds up to the amount of information available.

Lack of quality control measures
Information modes lack a simple structure, controls and leveling to determine what content is repetitive, contradictory, conflicting or inaccurate.

In the race to reach the largest number of consumers, many companies create materials to be seen, thinking that search engines will notice them more if they include large volumes of online content.

The downside to this is that while SEO is essential, adding too much information can hurt your search engine results rankings.

Not having a Content Marketing plan
Without a solid Content Marketing plan, a company may spread information around without considering how it all works together to help customers avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Many factors lead to infoxication, and these are just some of the main ones to consider when looking for ways to connect more effectively with your target audience.


What are the risks of information overload?
Information overload, and the stress and anxiety it can cause, not only affects consumers, but can also have a negative impact on your business.

Essentially, the brain can lose some of its power to process all the available content. This leads to burnout and can even prevent your customers from taking positive action on the sales funnel.

With the constant influx of information and the task of storing it all, the brain is frequently on edge. Without periods of downtime, cognitive efficiency is impaired and can affect the consumer's concentration and contemplation skills. This can lead to delays or impediments in decision making.

Furthermore, information overload leads to conditions similar to attention deficit disorder or ADHD .

As a result, consumers are experiencing increasing levels of burnout and depression.

Another risk of information overload is that it can affect people by making them less productive and less innovative.

They may also suffer from psychosomatic ailments such as interruptions in breathing while contemplating all the content available before them.

All of these risks of information overload directly affect your potential customers and, in turn, the company's results.

How can a company combat information overload?
Infoxication should be a concern for all companies. But how can we combat this problem and help leads along the way?

Start by creating content that best suits your target audience’s needs and keep the customer experience positive instead of confusing or overwhelming.

Below, check out several practices your business can use to help combat this information overload and win new customers.

1. Improve your site with the right content
Start combating information overload by reviewing and improving your own company website .

Having the right amount of content on your pages, with the ideal information, will make all the difference.

That is, enough to be relevant, but not to overload viewers with information.

Also, make the site easy to navigate. Consider including home pages to aggregate content for all of your customers' needs and help them find exactly what they need to solve a problem or answer a question, without having to go anywhere else.

2. Reevaluate your personas
Take a close look at your current buyer persona profiles . Are they still effective or do they need to be revised in some way?

By revamping and rethinking your personas, you can ensure you're sharing relevant information with the right audience, not just adding more content.

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3. Audit and delete content
Conduct a content audit of your current offerings and consider ways to improve your strategy.

What are you sharing? Is anything outdated? Can you update anything to make it more relevant to today’s consumers?

The next step is content “pruning.” What can be removed, combined, or redesigned?

Optimize your content to better serve potential customers without overwhelming them with information.

4. Use more interactive content
One useful way to combat information overload is to create interactive content . This type of relevant material is easier to consume and benefits engagement in a fun way.

Consider interactive polls, quizzes, calculators , and other content that encourages participation.

There are software options that can help you create this type of content quickly and easily, saving your company time and money.

Interactive content adds a personal touch and leads can be directed to your strategic information offerings.

5. Incorporate empathetic marketing techniques
Younger generations are looking for brands they can trust and that treat them more as individuals than potential profits. You need to consider this in your marketing .

By incorporating empathy marketing techniques into your content, you can capture their attention while providing valuable information.

To begin, answer these questions about yourself:

What is the problem (or problems) that needs to be solved?
Can the specific problem be broken down in some way?
What kind of information is needed to solve the defined problem and find the best solution?
By putting yourself in your potential customer’s shoes and seeing the problem through their eyes, you can create a Content Marketing strategy that meets their needs and wants more effectively.

6. Develop a content matrix
Instead of staying reactive to the latest trends or providing disconnected information to potential customers, develop your own content matrix to keep your business moving forward.

A content matrix provides a framework to help you direct your marketing efforts and includes a plan to address each step of the customer journey .

It's a way to plan and organize your material, avoiding repetition and filling any gaps in information relevant to your target audience.

7. Monitor visitor behavior
To identify how well your content meets the needs of potential customers, monitor user behavior on the site .

Are visitors staying long enough to read the entire page, or are they abandoning the site entirely after a few seconds? Are they clicking on recommended links or interacting with your content in some way?

Use what you've learned from this data to review your website content, link building strategy , and anything else that might help eliminate infoxication.

8. Vary your content types
Not all consumers have time to read dozens of publications , articles or web pages to find answers.

Today, different types of content meet your needs more efficiently, including videos and podcasts.

Keep this in mind when determining the best way to reach a particular audience and vary your content types to find what works best.

Combating information overload requires commitment from both the marketing and management teams.

All of the above actions can benefit you and your potential customers in this fight.

You can also provide clues about the value of your content and help reduce the effects of information overload experienced by consumers.

Another way a company can combat information overload is to keep the following guidelines in mind:

keep content relevant to your customers;
Prioritize clarity throughout content, making explicit what the material provides and for whom;
present less content, keeping it simple and easy to understand;
concisely include supporting data;
Have balance in the presentation so that readers do not have to look for information elsewhere;
Include simple ways to encourage the customer to take the preferred action. Essentially, if you provide a potential customer with everything they need, succinctly and completely, without overwhelming them, you will avoid infoxication.
Consumers need to make decisions every day, and when there is too much information available, it can be detrimental to their ability to act on what they learn.

Even when they do act, the choices they make may not be the most advantageous for them, due to this overabundance of content.

While the causes of information overload vary, from a logic of quantity over quality to the ease of access to new and expanding media, there are ways to ease the strain your leads face.

As a business, you can help combat this problem in a number of ways, including providing more interactive content to help along the consumer journey.