After hours of writing and rewriting the content, scheduling the ideal publishing time, and promoting it on social media, your content is bringing in traffic but not converting…now what?
Cross your fingers and hope that eventually, enough people see it, and it begins to bring in the numbers your team forecasted?
Hubspot research found that over 60% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales. However, the most successful marketers understand that an effective content strategy that converts browsers into lifelong customers is the foundation of any successful marketing campaign.
That’s why in this blog post, we’ll provide you and your team with tips to boost conversion rates ranging from refocused SEO to CTA tweaks. And the best part is that all these tips are things your content team could start doing immediately.
So get ready to take notes.
What do we mean when we say ‘content marketing’ and ‘conversions’?
Before we jump into the helpful tips, let’s define what content marketing and conversions mean.
Content marketing is explaining to customers how your product or service can solve their issues through written text, images, or videos. It is intended not to be sales-y, but educational, explaining how a product works, its benefits, and the issues it can solve. For more on content marketing, read our blog post, Content is King.
Conversions are centered around a user completing a pre-determined action on your website. For instance, a conversion could be a user sharing one of your blog posts, clicking on a product recommendation, or subscribing to your newsletter. The percentage of users that complete the desired action is your conversion rate.
How to boost conversions with content
Ultimately, the content your team creates aims to increase your conversions. Simply put, your content should be enticing and direct your audience to take action. So, how can your eCommerce website’s content achieve this?
- Increasing awareness: Your content should be designed to be sharable across multiple social media platforms. While the nature of these various platforms prevents your content from being perfect or ideal across all your sites, you can take a larger piece of content and break it up so that it works more efficiently on other platforms. Example: a 10-minute Youtube livestream doesn’t stream or upload directly to Twitter. But you can take that 10-minute Youtube livestream and share short clips uploaded directly to Youtube. This means that visitors to your e-Commerce site who read your content are more likely to share it themselves – which quickly and easily increases the reach of your content and your company. By reaching more people, you can increase brand, service, and product awareness, ultimately leading to more conversions.
- Linking your products/services: Whether you want people to book your services, or buy your products, ensure that all of your content links back to what you are trying to get viewers to purchase. By linking your content to your product or services page, you provide potential customers with a positive user experience by making purchasing quick and easy. For instance, add your product links to the very top of the video description on your business’ Youtube.
- Building brand authority: Whatever your industry may be, tailoring your content according to your audience’s needs and pain points helps show how much industry knowledge your company has and can quickly establish your brand as a go-to. It can boost your website’s standing and help build trust with customers, who may be more likely to make a booking or purchase from your site over the competition.
How will you optimize your content for better conversion?
- Improve the content on your landing page/site to be mobile-friendly: Even though mobile commerce now has a sizable user base, the industry’s growth shows no signs of slowing. According to BigCommerce, by 2022, mobile e-commerce sales are expected to account for 6.9% of all US retail sales, double the sales percentage in 2018. When creating dynamic content on mobile, think about how users navigate Instagram and other social media platforms – the content is usually swipeable and scrollable with large, bright buttons as they move from Point A to Point B. Your content pages should follow similar principles – be easy to navigate with minimal interruption and aim to make a seamless experience for users to navigate to your predetermined CTA.
- Visible and robust CTA’s: First, ensure your CTA is easily noticeable for your customer. And while you want a clear and straightforward call to action, you still want it to be descriptive. That goes back to good content being inspiring! For instance, would you be more likely to read a story about a man in love or a man whose heart does the cha-cha every time the love of his life enters a room? Depending on your choice, you can see that specifics make a difference. So instead of writing, “Try this free trial,” you could say, “Become more mindful by completing our free 30-day yoga trial.” The specifics will help your customer understand what they will get from the deal. The key here? It won’t matter how well-written your CTA is if the viewer cannot see it or skim right past it.
- Incorporate client testimonials and customer reviews: According to BigCommerce, 92% of shoppers read internet reviews before purchasing. Therefore, including testimonials and reviews on your website might demonstrate your professionalism and industry expertise. Case studies are one way of doing this, as they can help you present relevant data on how your clients have grown due to utilizing your services or benefits.
- Increasing traffic: Stay on top of relevant trends, create “how-to” blog posts, and frequently update older content to ensure you continue serving your audience with valuable and timely information. You can even accomplish this by updating content long after it’s initially published. Regularly updating your content can organically drive more traffic to your website and more traffic means more opportunities for conversions and, ultimately, more sales.
- Shorten your sign-up forms: Long forms can quickly frustrate customers and make them less likely to convert. For instance, if you have a lengthy form, people may not want to fill it out because it takes too much time and can lead them to abandon your site altogether. It’s your job to eliminate that doubt by making your forms short and painless. That’s why we recommend asking for the bare minimum, such as their name, email, and phone number – this makes it quick, easy, and less likely that they’ll abandon the form midway through.
- Skimmable content: No matter the industry or brand, unfortunately, most website visitors won’t read every carefully produced word on a webpage. And although having a lot of content on your website is beneficial for SEO, you don’t want to overwhelm your visitors. Therefore, ensuring your content is formatted to highlight the essential parts of your blog, products, or services pages is important. Some formatting tips we recommend incorporating include eye-catching headlines (see below for more tips), short paragraphs, incorporation of videos and eye-grabbing imagery, and bulleted or numbered lists.
- Well-written headlines: You have just seconds to grab your customers’ attention when they reach your website. Luckily, that’s what your headlines are for. Some tips we recommend when creating well-written headlines include:
- Give the right amount of information and fast – tell them what they want to know about your product or service within ten words or less.
- Nobody likes clickbait, so make sure your headline aligns with the ad copy or content used to get them to click on your site.
- Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. Some customers will go on to read the rest of the content on the page, so make sure your headline matches up with what’s to come.
Bringing it all together
At its core, increasing conversions is all about creating exciting and engaging content to get people to click on from a Web search and stick around on your site through purchase.
Are you looking for a way to capture the attention of potential customers by presenting meaningful content from a position of authority and converting them into buyers?
We can help you build brand awareness, trust, and loyalty with your audience through excellent site content. Whether that entails helping you develop a site content strategy or direction for your copy by either writing it for you or working with you to edit existing content – we are here to help.
Drop Us a Line At:
email: [email protected] and [email protected]
Or, if you prefer an old-fashioned phone call:
Phone (USA): (513) 469-3346
4665 Cornell Rd. Suite 255
Cincinnati, OH 45241