By now, you probably acknowledge that one of the ways to go wrong in business is to neglect your target audience’s needs and wants. If you design content marketing without a documented strategy, your content will not convert.
The next movement in content marketing is proving to be much more challenging. But, for those who are ready to make an effort and change their approach, success is achievable. The main difference is that your content must convert well.
While it’s not all about quantity, posting more content on your blog can support you to convert more visitors into leads and loyal customers. Maybe more than anything else, what you lack is a beginner’s guide for producing content that converts.
If you are struggling to drive traffic to your blog, attract quality clients, and increase sales, then you can embrace content marketing and develop an editorial calendar to follow.
By keeping an open mind, you can master creating content that consistently converts:
1. Discover content ideas that convert.
As the demand for new, high-value content marketing rises, marketers strive to create content for their blogs, social media platforms, and information products.
What’s more, 86% of B2B marketers report that their companies are using content marketing. Those who are skilled and obtain relevant customer insights will develop their businesses.
You can get practical ideas from blog posts, infographics, videos, magazine covers, online publications, Slideshare presentations, and more. Relevant ideas will enable you to create a content marketing strategy that generates quality leads for your business.
If you want to create momentum and make your overall content marketing strategy stand out in the blogging environment and search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to create attractive headlines and stir emotions to make your readers want more.
*Pro-tip: If you’re trying to discover proven content ideas, you can inspire from popular blogs in your niche.
2. Optimize your content like a landing page.
Visitors, usually, only read about 20% of the content on a webpage. If that’s accurate, then your mission is to guarantee that essential features stand out in your content marketing.
Here enters the LIFT model for conversion optimization. The LIFT model is usually related to landing page design and copy, but you can apply this concept for any content, no matter what platform you’re producing content for.
The six factors that constitute the LIFT model for creating powerful content that converts are:
- Value proposition
- Urgency
- Relevance
- Clarity
- Anxiety
- Distraction
The value proposition is what drives your conversions. You can make your content highly converting if you define a particular problem and offer practical action steps to address it.
Add a sense of urgency and provide specific instructions on what people will obtain if they take action within a defined time. When it comes to converting customers, there is no secret, just understanding what the consumer urgently wants.
Relevance compels you to stick to your topic and scale it. Your content should use terms, keywords, and expressions that your users relate to and understand.
Clarity is the sign that you understand your topic. For your content marketing efforts to highly convert, it must clearly explain the value proposition and a compelling call-to-action. Of course, both the visual content and text used on a web page should be in synergy.
Anxiety can be behind the strong need for your content, product, or service when people visit your site. Done positively, it convinces your customers to want to purchase on the spot. Used negatively, it discourages potential purchasers.
Eliminate distractions and avoid friction in your content. Your content and landing page must lose useless product links and options. That, in contrast, will increase your conversion rate.
3. Create compelling headlines.
This recommendation is the basis for powerful content marketing strategies. Excellent content that converts needs to stand out from a constantly rising crowd of similar content.
The outbreak in content marketing is about fighting for the reader’s attention. What’s more, it is reported that 80% of people never make it past the headline and just 2 out of 10 people will read the rest of your content.
In other words, whether or not they purchase your product or service depends on your headline. This suggests that if you allocate enough time to developing your headlines, you’ll probably experience increased content page views, social media shares, and ultimately conversions.
You can adjust your headlines in many ways, including with the following pointers:
Integrate power words: If you want your customers to click on the headlines, you need to add words that draw attention. A few examples of power words are:
- Clever
- Powerful
- Effective
- Best
- Convert etc.
Use odd numbers: From past A/B testings, we acknowledged that adding cardinal numbers in your headline will enhance its engagement. Your potential audience prefers this type of headline and odd numbers outperform even numbers.
*Pro-tip: When it comes to producing eye-catching headlines, you should focus on headlines that have gained a significant number of social media shares and links. You can then transform these viral headlines to create more compelling ones.
4. Write conversationally.
Adopting a specific writing tone can make your content market efforts accessible for readers and more relatable. However, writing the way that you talk doesn’t give you the liberty to produce inferior content, or to disregard the fundamental rules of writing. Quite the opposite, it means that you get invested in it and express your outlook on the world while supporting your opinions with statistics and documented case studies.
When you adopt this manageable writing advice, you can overcome your insecurities and unleash your writing skills. Read related topics to your business as a habit, and your writing will improve. You’ll become a better and more productive writer and also will enhance the engagement of your content marketing strategy.
Picture discussing with a friend. You can freely express yourself and provide your friend with the opportunity to respond. Writing this way will boost your engagement rate and sales. Although, don’t create great content that resumes only to yourself, as you still need to focus on providing solutions.
*Pro-tip: If you can’t imagine how you sound in a conversation, record yourself speaking about your topic. Imagine you’re chatting with a friend and describing your topic, to ensure you capture your conversational tone.
5. Include a call-to-action when emotion is high.
Blog posts missing clear calls-to-action seem to be incomplete. Of course, it all relies on your intention for posting the content in the first place. But, if you want better outcomes, incorporate a call-to-action when emotion is high.
By now, you’ve realized that creating high-quality content is time-consuming. And since you’ve created the content, edited it, published it, and begun promoting it, you shouldn’t waste all of that work by leaving your content without a call-to-action.
When readers finish reading your content, they might be asking, “where can I learn more?” or “how can I know more about the products and business?”
A call-to-action is an appeal for people to perform a specific action.
You can’t complain that your content doesn’t convert unless you’ve got a compelling call-to-action with it. To know the best placement for your call-to-action, it’s crucial to test it first.
*Pro-tip: Always invite your readers to learn more, buy, subscribe to your email list, watch another video, or take a particular action that will benefit them the most.
6. Set up your writing for readability.
Readability is related to layout and presentation as it is to great content and writing style. For your writing to be engaging and encourage leads to your business, it must combine three aspects: writing, design, idea.
Content writers need to produce top-tier content. The designers need to present that content in an attractive way. And, the fundamental idea has to be something that your audience desires.
We are still living in a word of impatient searchers. Back in 1997, a study about seminal web usability found that 79% of web users scan rather than read.
Mastering how to write for the web will help you constantly produce content that will be read, shared, and promoted by your target audience.
When formatting your content, remember the header hierarchy. If the headline is shorter than the subheading, there’ll be a sense of “mismatch” for your readers.
*Pro-tip: If you want your content to reach your readers, you’ve got to make it readable. Format your blocks of text with plenty of white space.
Conclusion
Whenever you design your content, remember that it will get promoted to generate social media shares, social signals, and this kind of engagement will boost your content readership and rankings in the search engines.
This step-by-step guide is meant to be helpful and inspirational for you in creating content that converts. These steps are easy to implement and you can replicate the success that other marketers have generated.
Have you applied any of these strategies or do you need help finding the right content marketing tactics to put your business on the path to greater success? Contact us today to help you achieve your goals!
