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.

Set the Target Audience

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

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