Everybody can create content, but it’s captivating content that will get you more sales. This article talks about how content plays a major role in marketing strategies and why you should use it to your advantage. The article goes on to list five tips that can you use to convert a regular reader into a paying customer.
Blogs have become a significant asset in the world of digital marketing, and it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Writing blogs has become a reliable and effective way to increase leads and sales as well as engage and retain customers for your business.
This blog post will talk about how you can create content that can convert a potential client into a returning customer. Before we dive deep into how to create great content, let’s take a look at some numbers.
According to a study done by Hubspot, around 53% of marketers say blogging is their main content marketing priority, and in 2017, almost 66% of marketers said they used blogs in their social media content, which led to an increase in traffic and engagement. Additionally, websites that have a blog tend to get 434% more indexed pages.
From the above stats, it’s clear to say content plays a significant role in marketing, and it should be levied if you want to increase your reach and leads. With that said, here are five tips for creating content that converts.
Set the Target Audience
When you know who you’re writing for, it becomes a lot easier to cater to your audience as you get to understand their likes and dislikes. Similarly, with that knowledge, you would also know how to appeal to them more.
Look at your current audience and try to infer what are the common interests and characteristics among them. Once you know this, you can curate content that checks all the marks and addresses your audience’s pain points. You can create a customer profile that includes age, location, gender, and income level, so you know what the characteristics of your audience look like. You can even include marital status, interests and hobbies, ethnicities, etc.
Additionally, you may conduct market research to find out more details about your target audience. This can be done through surveys, polls, interviews, and focus groups. If you want content that converts, you need to go the extra mile to understand better the people you’re trying to appeal to.
Write Interesting and Engaging Headlines
One of the main reasons any person checks out content is because they were captivated by the title. If it’s something that can catch your interest, its job is complete. Experts believe that you have 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention before they move on to another website. So if your headline isn’t good, even if the rest of the content is perfect, you would still lose a significant chunk of your audience due to the headline alone.
To ensure your title is good enough to keep your audience interested, it’s recommended to use the 4 U’s as termed by AWAIOnline.com, which are Urgency, Usefulness, Uniqueness, and Ultra-specific. Take, for example, the title “There’s always time to live life to the fullest.” There’s no urgency as it says there’s always time. It doesn’t really provide usefulness; it just says time to live life to the fullest. It’s not unique either because most people already know they should be enjoying life, and it’s not specific at all. A better headline would be “One Thing You Can Do Today to Enjoy Life.”
This shows urgency as it says you can do it today, has utility as it talks about something you can do, is unique and ultra-specific as it says lists out a specific thing to do and isn’t a general title that could be about anything.
Choosing the Type of Content
There are loads of content types that you can go with for your target audience. From social media posts to podcasts to long-form content, you can use these different types of content to attract your audience to your website. People take in information in different formats, some like to watch videos while some like to read articles. You can conduct a poll or survey to find out what your target audience appreciates and then start catering to them in the best manner.
By finding out what resonates with your audience the most, you can curate content that will definitely catch their attention with the right medium, length, and even tone.
The Tone of the Content
The tone should be in line with your brand so you can ensure consistency. The tone sets your content apart from your competitors and makes yours unique compared to what your audience sees every day. The tone should show how you feel about the subject being written and how you want your audience to feel. It doesn’t necessarily mean the tone needs to based on what your brand does but more of what your brand represents and the values that follow.
If you want your audience to be inspired, a personal success story would be appropriate. If you want your audience to be informed, comics and cartoons might not be the best approach. Once you know what tone would be best for your content and what works with your audience, it becomes a lot easier to make your content more appealing.
Promoting Content on Social Media
Once you’ve created your piece of content, it’s time to publish it and promote it as much as possible. If people can’t find your content, all the tips mentioned above would go to waste.
There are various social media platforms that you can levy to promote your content. Each platform has its own advantages as well. Facebook would be a great place to share videos, Twitter is perfect for short-form content, Instagram for images, Pinterest for infographics, the list goes on!
You can even use convincing ads that entice users to visit your website. You could reach out to other websites to publish your content in order to spread your content to a wider audience. Additionally, it’s advised to include the right call to action at the end as that would set apart the people who came to the site for one-time information and the people who will return for your other content. A good call to action would be along the lines of, “If you want to know more about this topic, check out my eBook on the same topic.”
Conclusion
These tips can help you convert your target audience into potential customers. So whether you’re a tech company or a media agency, if you’re not blogging or creating unique content, you’re losing out on a major chunk of your audience, and therefore, losing out on potential customers.
Setting your target audience is a great way to start, and after that, you can start working on your content strategy with the above tips. When you’re done creating your content, it’s absolutely necessary to promote it if you want it to gain some traction. After a bit of practice, you’ll be churning out content that converts easily and in no time!
SOURCE: Digital Doughnut
