Content that converts is strategic and thoughtful.
Writing content for content’s sake will not get you the results you need as a business. More strategic content marketing that converts utilizes a creative and scientific approach in writing to ensure each piece of content you employ is intentional and effective at driving more leads to your business, whether you’re marketing to B2B or B2C.
Here, we offer our recommendations for developing content like this, which can drive action.
Writing Content that Converts
So how do you go about revitalizing your current content marketing strategy to convert more traffic into leads?
1. Develop and Understand Your Audience Personas
When we talk about audience personas at Logical, that means gathering and documenting detailed insights about your customers for all channels to utilize in their marketing tactics.
Why is this so important?
Say I’m a content writer — which I am — and am given the following information for a new client: Business that sells patient management software to dentists. For some content marketing agencies or writers, they would take this statement and run with it.
However, there is more here that needs to be understood. While this gives me a general idea of the type of user to whom I’m writing, I’m going to demand a lot more information to ensure the content we write is speaking to the right audience.
Some questions I might ask as a follow-up include:
- Which kinds of dentists are most interested in this platform (general dentists, pediatric dentists, orthodontists, periodontists, etc.)?
- Do these dentists have software they’re already using? What do they like about their current systems? What do they not like? How does this platform address their current pain points?
- Who makes the purchasing decisions? Should I be speaking to the dentists who own the practice or their office managers?
Can you see the depth at which we can go? By getting more information about individual audiences, I now know it’s the front office managers I should primarily be speaking to and not necessarily the dentists.
I also know that these office managers already have systems they’re using, so as I speak to them about adopting a new platform, I need to address common pain points of what they’re already doing to convince them that making the switch makes sense and can be done easily.
This leads to content that drives action.
2. Define the Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Products or Services
This may sound strange as we talk about content, but if you want to convert with content, your writers need to understand what they should and should not talk about when it comes to your offerings.
If you aren’t the most affordable option on the market, mark that as a weakness and something you don’t need to emphasize. Instead, share about the quality and quantity of what you offer. Why is it a higher price point? Speak to the additional benefits users gain from choosing your product over your competitors’.
Having this understanding, even when writing top-of-funnel blog content, gives content writers a clearer direction of where they should drive the content strategy to get closer to a sale.
3. Establish Goals for Your Content
There is a wealth of opportunity to utilize content across channels to achieve a desired goal. For example, you can use it for:
- Website pages
- Specific landing pages for paid traffic
- Generating blog content to attract organic traffic and strengthen email campaigns
- Posting on social media
- Designing graphics and visual elements that help users more easily digest the information being presented
- Developing videos to engage viewers
Within these specific tactics, content can be used for brand awareness to attract new customers, answering high-level questions they have about something related to your industry or product; used to complement email marketing campaigns, providing regular customers with service tips and new products they can purchase; creating bottom-of-funnel pages that speak about your products or services and have options for users to purchase; and much more.
To ensure your content is more targeted, it can help to state the goal of each piece of content:
- Increase organic traffic and brand awareness
- Improve time on site and get users to navigate to other pages of the site
- Grow sales by analyzing content and conversion numbers.
Doing so will give you a purpose for it and measurable KPIs to analyze once you publish to see if what you produced is working and if any pivots need to be made to get you closer to your end goal.
4. Map Out a Multi-Channel Strategy
One of the ways you can employ content and conversions is by utilizing content across channels.
Say you want to create a piece of content on a given topic to increase conversions. To attain your goal, you might consider doubling your efforts across channels to make it happen.
Example Strategy:
- Write and publish content
- Ensure piece is optimized for search
- Push out across organic social channels
- Incorporate into your monthly email campaign content calendar
- Create paid ads to promote on search engines and social
Now that this piece of content is being used among many channels, you can analyze the results to see which channels were most effective and adjust your marketing budget accordingly.
5. Leverage Conversion Content Marketing
This goes back to the “not writing for writing’s sake” statement. As you write content, it should be done using a more scientific approach. It’s not just putting pen to paper to jot down your ideas. Below is a list of strategic areas to emphasize as you write:
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- Keyword Intent
What are users actually searching for when they Google the terms you’re targeting? Does your content answer their questions in the way they were intended?
- Titles and Meta Descriptions
Are your titles and meta descriptions intriguing to your audience, targeting keywords they would be searching?
- Compelling Headlines Using Key Phrases
Do your headlines stand out, featuring keywords and key phrases that would capture your audience’s attention?
- Make It Engaging
Would you get bored reading your content? How well does what you write engage your audience? Will it keep them reading?
- Strong CTAs
Does your page leave space and opportunity for users to make a decision (i.e. buy, learn more, contact you)? Is the language persuasive enough to get them to click?
- Internal Linking
Are there opportunities for users to stay on your website after they’ve learned the answer to their question? How are you guiding them to relevant pieces of content on your site through internal linking?
- Keyword Intent
6. Study User Interactions
After everything is published, there are a few ways you can analyze the results to make targeted adjustments to your strategy.
Website Content and Landing Pages
Useful tools like CrazyEgg and Hotjar are available to help you evaluate how users are interacting with your content. This information is incredibly helpful in demonstrating where users are getting hung up.
Are they making it to your calls-to-action so they can actually convert, or are you losing them higher up on the page? If you realize this is the obstacle, you can take that information and rearrange your website content accordingly by moving up the call-to-action so they can make a decision sooner, trimming down on initial content so they make it further down the page, adding in jump links to help them get where they want to go, and other options.
Search Engine Optimization and Paid Ads
Similarly, by using heatmaps to study user interactions, you can find ways to increase a user’s time on your website by — amongst other areas of implementation — rearranging content and adding interactive videos. By incorporating these types of pieces into your content, they can improve Google’s understanding of the page and its value to users, moving you up in the rankings or giving you a better quality score.
Social Posts
Use social media analytics to see which posts users liked the most including polls, videos, testimonials, graphics. From this information, you can see which content you need to share more to continue to entice users to like, share, and click on your content.
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