You’re here because you’re confused and frustrated. A few days back, you wrote your best piece of content ever. It was a masterpiece, bursting with metaphors and insights that appealed to your target audience and effortlessly emphasized the benefits of your product.
Your colleagues loved it. Your manager loved it. Your roommate loved it. So, you posted it on the company website. And then… crickets.
Despite all your hard work, one quick look at your analytics dashboard shows that only two people have clicked on your blog’s CTA. Clearly, something’s gone awry.
If it makes you feel better, you’re not alone. Many content marketers struggle to develop content that truly engages potential buyers.
The reason? A lack of data-driven insights. Without a real-time understanding of your customer base and how they’re engaging with your brand, the content you post is just a drop in the ocean. For maximum impact, you’re going to need a holistic content marketing strategy.
Let’s take a closer look.
The importance of the conversion funnel
Content that converts is rarely ever a happy accident. It’s part of a data-fueled strategy—an insight-led approach to content creation that captures the attention of your ideal customer at every point of the conversion funnel, which goes a little something like this:
- Awareness: Educate your ideal customer on problems they relate to through free blogs and guides.
- Interest: Highlight your product as a solution to their pain points through different types of content, such as blog posts, webinars, and case studies.
- Consideration: Differentiate yourself from your competitors through compelling product descriptions, testimonials, and FAQ pages.
- Intent: Nudge your users toward purchase with free trials, demos, and other soft sells.
- Conversion: It’s time for purchase; catch your prospect’s attention with special offers and promotions.
- Loyalty: Turn one-off buyers into long-term customers through loyalty initiatives and exclusive content.
- Advocacy: Inspire customers to become advocates through user-generated content, referral programs, and customer stories.
As you can see, great content marketing works like a well-oiled machine. From prospects who have just heard of your company to loyal, repeat customers, leading marketers harness the power of data analytics to capture and guide readers along the conversion funnel, no matter where they’re joining from.
Why some content converts (and some doesn’t)
When prospects and customers click on your content, the next trick to bear in mind is a psychological one: the science of persuasion.
As made famous by Robert Cialdini’s book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” consumers tend to make purchasing decisions based on at least one of several factors—all of which you can use to elevate your copywriting.
These factors are as follows:
- Reciprocity: The principle of giving valuable advice for free with the understanding that a reader is more likely to buy something in return.
- Authority: People are more likely to respect and buy from authoritative brands. That doesn’t mean you need to overhaul your brand’s tone of voice, but you should make sure all of your copy is data-driven and research-backed.
- Scarcity: If we think a product or service is limited, we’re more likely to feel a sense of urgency to buy it while we can. You can play into this by highlighting the exclusivity or popularity of your product.
- Commitment and consistency: By nudging your audience to make low-cost decisions like signing up for your newsletter or downloading a whitepaper, they’re more likely to make bigger purchases in the long run.
- Liking: Having a brand personality is crucial to building an emotional connection with your audience.
- Social proof: Humans like to feel like they’re part of a community. You can appeal to this aspect of the psyche by emphasizing the popularity of your product in your content.
The next time you sit down to plan your content, keep this framework in mind. How will you motivate readers to move down the conversion funnel? What unique value can you offer them? Where will this content sit within your overall content marketing strategy?
How to write content that converts: What to know
Armed with an increased awareness of the conversion funnel and psychology of persuasion, you’re now ready to develop high-quality content that skyrockets conversions.
As you do, here are some must-know tips to remember:
Crafting clear and compelling headlines
Before a potential reader even clicks on your blog or whitepaper, they’ll first read your headline. If it’s boring, long, or confusing, they’ll scroll onward.
You don’t need to be Shakespeare to master the art of attention-grabbing headlines. You just need to know a couple of tried-and-tested formulas. Here are some popular ones:
- How-to headlines: How to [achieve result] in [number] steps
- SEO headlines: The ultimate guide to [insert SEO keyword]
- Curiosity headlines: The secret of [insert desired outcome]
Structuring your content for maximum impact
Have you ever clicked on an interesting blog only to be greeted by an unfriendly wall of text that put you off? Even if your content is as valuable as gold, consumers are highly unlikely to read poorly structured text.
To increase the readability of your content, keep these tips in mind:
- Start your introduction with a strong hook that grabs the reader’s attention.
- Structure your content with plenty of headings and subheadings to break up your text.
- Keep your paragraphs to a maximum of four lines each.
- Use online tools like Grammarly or Hemingway for editing.
Incorporating strong calls to action (CTAs)
Your CTA is the grand finale of your amazing piece of content. But, too often, marketers end their blogs, whitepapers, and so forth with uninspiring phrases like “Contact us” or “Try now,” which don’t exactly compel the reader.
To ignite curiosity and excitement, you need to make your CTAs powerful. Here’s how:
- Use the active voice for all CTAs.
- Try to elicit an emotional response from your readers. For example, instead of writing “Try our skincare products,” go for something more emphatic and human, such as “Start your journey toward better skin today!”
- Play into persuasion by using your CTA to offer readers a free trial, discount, or limited-time offer.
Leveraging social proof and testimonials
One of the best things about social media is the fact that your loyal customers can create effective content for you. Whether that’s user reviews, unboxing videos, or influencer partnerships, there are plenty of creative ways to boost your social proof and website traffic.
Better still, real-world user reviews are fantastic for boosting brand awareness and credibility. When potential customers see other people using your product or service—and loving it—they’ll feel reassured that you’re a trustworthy brand with a quality value proposition.
Optimizing content with SEO best practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to boosting your content’s organic traffic and visibility. For every piece of content, you’ll want to think about SEO practices like embedding keywords, link building, and backlinking, all of which directly influence your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
If SEO isn’t your forte, don’t be disheartened! There are plenty of options out there to help. You could, for example, work with an SEO agency, use a WordPress plugin, or take an online course.
While improving your SEO takes time and practice, it’s one of the best skills a digital marketer can develop—both for their own career and for the impact of their content.
Using the right content tools
As we mentioned at the start of this blog, data-driven insights are the bread and butter of successful content marketing, empowering you to understand how, where, and why your customers are engaging with your content.
It’s through these insights that you can refine and enhance your content strategy, identifying and promoting your top-performing content to drive conversions.
Of course, uncovering and amalgamating user data can be a challenge. In fact, research from Marketing Week shows that data analytics is the number one skills gap in marketing departments.
Luckily, you don’t need to be an IT expert to start unlocking the value of content analytics. You just need the right easy-to-use tools. Bitly Analytics, for example, helps marketers effortlessly track content click-through rates and engagement metrics.
By neatly presenting data by demographic and geography, Bitly empowers marketing teams to understand how their content resonates with different audiences so they can tailor their messages to fit specific customer segments.
On top of that, Bitly integrates with marketing teams’ go-to platforms, including WordPress, Sprout Social, and Buffer. With these platforms connected, you’ll build an even more cohesive picture of user data across the marketing ecosystem.
Elevate your content strategy with Bitly
Great marketing content is about much more than putting pen to paper. To skyrocket conversions, you’ll need to combine persuasive writing techniques with a data-infused understanding of the conversion funnel.
There’s no time to waste. Get started with Bitly today to leverage our Analytics to turn hesitant readers into happy customers.