Content creation never goes out of style when it comes to marketing.
Your brand needs that content to reach targeted audiences. And your target audiences need it to answer their questions, provide information, and offer solutions.
Ranking for keywords so your audience can find you, then, is essential. But, is that always enough?
Sure, ranking higher up on search engine results pages is helpful. It may even make you feel elated that you’ve accomplished such a worthy goal.
However, an even more important measurement of success is how much of your content is actually converting.
For this, you’ll need to concentrate on your readers first.
Start by taking a step back and examining your content marketing strategy, then consider the following foolproof ways to create more content that converts.
1. Determine Which Content is Working and Which Isn’t
Take a look at your current content and determine what is already working, leading to higher conversions and website traffic.
By doing so, you can get to know your audience better, understanding their needs, wants, pain points, and interests.
Start by tracking and measuring results on a consistent basis.
You’ll need to determine the conversion types you wish to track, such as signups for a newsletter, purchases of a product, requests for more information, visits to your website, or engagements with your interactive content.
Also, make web analytics your friend by finding a tool that you find easy to use and provides you with the type of information you need.
For example, in Google Analytics, you can customize the goals to track. Other tools can help as well.
By tracking and analyzing content, you will be able to:
- Find what content is generating the most conversions, and also the least.
- Analyze your best-performing content and identify any common traits.
- Identify the type of content leading to conversions (interactive content, how-to articles, etc.)
- Ascertain the headlines or titles that are getting the most conversions.
What you learn here can guide your content going forward.
2. Make Your Website More User-Friendly
While content created with your readers in mind is essential, you also need to make sure their experience on your website is user-friendly.
First impressions matter. So too does the experience once website visitors get past your landing page, contact page, blog post, or other content which initially drew them to you.
For this reason, try catering your website to your ideal customers or buyer personas.
For example, if you are an animation or gaming company, you know your visitors are likely to be more visually oriented and already enjoy interactive content. Use this information to enhance your overall website experience.
Other tips to help keep your website user-friendly include:
- Consider all the ways your visitor interacts with your website.
- Optimize it for different browsers and screen sizes.
- Regularly check on your page loading speeds and site navigation.
Also, consider that today many consumers use their mobile phones to search for information, products, and services, so always include mobile optimization in your website design.
3. Evaluate Your Headline
With so much crowding the online world today, it’s essential your brand stands out and grabs the attention of your audience.
For this reason, your content ALWAYS needs a compelling headline.
Without that, you lose potential readers. And without readers, you have fewer conversions and less chance of turning them into customers.
Here are essential tips to help your team write more compelling headlines.
Be Concise and Descriptive
Create headlines that clearly tell your reader what the content is about. What is it they will learn, and how will they benefit?
Go for Emotion
Incorporate emotions in your headlines when possible. Choose a specific pain point or issue of your targeted audience and use it to make your headline stand out and evoke emotion in readers.
Use Numbers
Find a way to use numbers in headlines. Odd numbers work particularly well and tend to spur more clicks. In addition, numbered content provides an easier way to present information that is scannable, a plus in today’s busy world.
Include Strong Words
Use stronger words, such as smart or powerful. (e.g., “7 Powerful Ways to Make Your eCommerce Site Stand Out”)
Pay Attention to Structure
Take a look at those headlines receiving the most attention and study how they are written. For example, you may see a structure similar to a “7-Step Checklist for Setting Up a New Online Retail Store” as a top performer.
Model Popular Headlines
Model after those popular headlines which receive higher interaction on social media, such as likes, comments, and shares. Also, consider creating similar headlines to those that catch your attention.
With more and more brands now focusing on inbound marketing, you need to find a way to get noticed.
Adding compelling headlines to your content is a good start. With them, you can increase click-through rates, website traffic, social media interaction, and conversions.
4. Include Interactive Elements in Your Content
Interactive content is still the newest kid on the block, quickly gaining traction as a power tool for gaining readers and increasing engagement.
With this higher content engagement, you’ll benefit in a number of ways, such as:
- Dwell time will increase.
- Search engines will notice.
- Viewers will more likely return for additional content.
- You can experience an increase in conversions.
Today, you have access to online tools to help you create the interactive content you want and need to reach customers like never before.
Consider what will work best for your brand, and go for it. Choices abound, including:
- Infographics
- Calculators
- Quizzes
- Videos
- Polls
- Surveys
- Flipbooks
In today’s marketing world, you need to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition. You can accomplish this by balancing your static content with more interactive content.
5. Compose Content with More Personality
Content creation involves time for gathering information, conducting keyword research, and instilling structure and optimal formatting.
While all of this is important, so too is the way you write that content.
Writing with personality, or incorporating your voice into the conversation, is a way to make your content more personal.
Instead of droning on, presenting facts and statistics as you would in an educational research paper, you want to consider your readers.
While you still need to remain professional and incorporate your brand’s voice into the content, don’t be apprehensive about writing in a more conversational manner.
Let the content flow as if you’re in a conversation one-on-one with your potential customer.
Ensure your content has personality while aligning with your brand’s tone of voice by working with professional freelance writers. Get matched with the right writers among the 15,000+ available at the WriterAccess marketplace. Try it for free!
6. Incorporate Emotion
Use emotion in your content to show the reader how they can overcome a problem, pain point, or particular challenge.
Connecting through emotions is a strong motivator for readers to take action and click on that link, go to your website, and learn more about you and what you offer.
In turn, your conversion rates can skyrocket.
Include empathetic marketing techniques throughout your content as well.
7. Increase Your Persuasive Writing Skills
While your content is meant to answer a question, provide a solution, or entertain your audience, you still need for the reader to convert.
To achieve both goals, try incorporating persuasive writing into your content.
To be persuasive means to present an idea or solution as the ideal one for them, making it believable and authoritative.
Be convincing and passionate in the way you convey your message, and evoke emotion to increase chances of conversion.
By conveying the value of your service or product in such a way, you make it so readers can’t resist finding out more.
To write persuasively, though, you will need to first understand your reader — how they think, how they shop, and so forth.
Then, determine what it is they need to know. What information are they looking for?
Focus on self-improvement and how even they can achieve success in whatever area of life you are writing about.
Another method to help you write persuasively is the use of storyselling as a strategy.
Just be sure to remain genuine in your approach, however. Today’s consumers can see right through shielded sales pitches.
Marketing success relies on a number of factors, with one of the most important ones being creating content that converts.
By putting your readers first and speaking to them directly, you can grow your website traffic, increase reader engagement, and boost those overall conversions.
It all starts with your content. Get it right, and the rest will follow.
Need more ways to achieve a higher conversion rate? Check out our list of the top conversion rate optimization tools to use today.
