The way companies advertise to their customers has changed dramatically, the typical ads you’re used to seeing on television aren’t really as prominent as they used to. A lot of marketing, brand awareness, revenue, and impact currently revolves around high-quality, valuable, and informative content.
Content marketing has become one of the most adopted approaches by the vast majority of B2B and B2C marketers. This has shaped digital marketing to such an extent that it’s almost impossible to imagine a successful business’s online presence that lacks well-penned articles and great videos.
Content improves KPI’s, not just shares and likes but also conversions. In this article, we’ve compiled a set of essential content marketing tips that’ll skyrocket your conversions, thus increasing your revenue and customer engagement. Let’s dive right in, shall we?
Let’s get the obvious out of the way
Content is by no means a magic bullet that solves your company’s issues by merely “being there.” To convert, the content you publish needs to be impeccable. We’re living in a weird time when we’re oversaturated with information, and the last thing we’re looking for is more irrelevant, boring information.
A business’s attempt to increase its conversions with content needs to be backed by content that will draw attention, stun, and amaze. In order to show up at the top of the search results in Google and other major search engines, you need to invest in seasoned professionals that will create engaging material and guide you through the process. Sourcing top professionals is a lengthy process. However, there are companies like TrustMyPaper that attempt to solve this issue.
You need to understand your audience first
Don’t worry about investing some extra time in understanding what your average customer is interested in first. This is definitely a high return investment, especially since a “spray and pray” will take much more time and effort to show some significant results.
So how do you start to research what your customers might be interested in?
- First off, you need to study what your most successful competitors have to offer, but don’t take just their reputation into account. There is are a few essential metrics you need to consider — Domain Authority, Page Authority, and other numbers that are central to SEO. There are a few tools that can help you do this research, we recommend using Moz.
- Another great metric you can use is the number of shares and likes on social media. Luckily, there’s a popular tool that can research the most shared content based on certain keywords — Buzzsumo. Just insert one or a few central keywords into their search bar, and you’ll be presented with the most popular takes on the topics surrounding the keywords you entered.
- Take some time to establish a few means of communication with your customers. One of the simplest ways of finding out what type of content they might find interesting is just posting a survey to your social media account.
- Having the data doesn’t answer questions
Let’s say you’ve done a great job collecting essential information about your potential customers’ preferences. What do you do next? Very often businesses will start shooting out blogs, videos, and other formats of content, without testing how their audience will react to various iterations of content.
If you’re looking for conversion optimization, you don’t just have to generate content, you need to make it better for the user, eliminate friction between the content and the user, and make it more appealing to their taste.
A good rule of thumb for understanding how much testing and optimization you should be doing with your content is 60/40. Sixty percent of your effort should be channeled towards creating blogs and videos for your potential customers and current audience, while 40 percent should be directed towards finding ways to improve it.
Here are a few optimizations you should be looking for:
- Find which calls-to-action work best with your audience.
- Build your image by making your trust signals visible to your audience.
- Use internal linking to encourage users to spend more time on your site.
- Once you’ve started getting a better understanding of what your audience is after, make sure you establish your editorial guidelines to ensure voice consistency.
Tap into storytelling
One of the central things any content marketer is after is to build a strong relationship between the business and its audience. One of the booming trends in content today is storytelling, and everybody’s using it, from small businesses to corporations.
The surprising reason why storytelling is so efficient in bonding with the audience is our human chemistry and the way our brains work.
According to recently published research, telling an engaging story causes a significant increase in oxytocin our bodies. Oxytocin is an essential hormone that is associated with the sensation of safety, security, and wellbeing. Our bodies are designed to have higher levels of oxytocin when we interact with other humans by hugging them, shaking their hands, and other physical types of communication that we find pleasant.
As a result, when you take a closer look at the numbers, there’s no mystery behind why even major corporations have chosen to tap into storytelling. An article or a video that has storytelling incorporated into it amasses over 300% more readers than the content that doesn’t have any storytelling.
Use content to humanize your brand
Unfortunately, the average user has come to distrust marketers and corporations. What can we do about it and how can we profit from it?
Having a more “human” tone in your content will help you build trust. This, in effect, will allow you to achieve more conversions.
When you’re writing for your audience, try to sound as if you’re talking to them, rather than writing a dry report. Choose a conversational tone over an official one and speak to the people’s emotions.
Here are a few key principles you need to take into account when trying to humanize your brand:
- Don’t be dull, build a friendship.
- Show off the people behind the company. Let them publish articles or short videos too. This helps your customers, both existing and potential, connect to your brand.
- Write case studies about real people that have used your products/services and improved their lives.
Conclusion
Content marketing isn’t as simple as it may seem, but once you invest a little time and effort into it, you’ll find that it’s an invaluable instrument for increasing conversions.
Good luck!
