There is only one reason we write content for our marketing websites – to drive sales, that increases revenue and our bottom line. If you are taking any other approach, you’re simply doing it wrong. If you need some help in getting your visitors to convert into customers, here are a number of strategies that have been proven to work.
Here you will also learn a lot of other valuable lessons, most notably, what NOT do to in marketing, and how psychology can be your friend as a content writer. So dive on in and find out the dos, don’ts, and nuances involved in writing web content designed to get a high percentage of conversions.
Motivate using emotion
The goal when writing content geared to sell is to encourage desire. You can do this in a variety of ways. You can use peer pressure. If a person know that others are experiencing something they are not, and enjoying it, it is a powerful angle.
The fear of missing out
Fear can be one of the great motivators of marketing. The fear of missing out on a great opportunity is another very powerful sales angle. Fear can spawn a desire for insights, and secrets. Headlines such “How I Grew My Portfolio by 200% In One Year” gains attention.
Self-improvement
Everyone wants to excel at what they do. It’s just human nature. A sales angle that converts people on the basis that a product or service can help them in life is compelling.
Adding Urgency To the Pitch
You can inspire urgency by using phrases that imply a limit on time and availability. For example, if you are going to host a paid conference, make it free for the first 100 people who provide you with a Skype address. This will have the effect of adding value and increase the chances your conference is packed with eager faces.
Even if there is no real need for urgency you should incorporate it into your web copy. Headlines such as “Stop Making These Lethal Mistakes With Your 401K” will always get attention.
Make It Relevant
When developing content aimed at conversions, focus on the concerns, issues, and needs of the person reading it. Keep in mind things such as seasons, sporting events, the holidays, and more to tap into what your customers may be thinking about in their lives at that time. Focus your content on this and you will increase the chances you will engage on a more personal level with a customer, and increase the chances of conversion.
Increase the Clarity
Straight to the point, clear, and concise content can be understood by all of your visitors. This content must be about how your products and services are going to be of benefit to the reader. Good information is great, but it won’t convert people. Here is a process to make your content more clear for readers.
- Introduce your topic
- Use language that is easy to understand
- Make it clear how this product affects the reader
- Explain the benefits of using the product or service
- Discuss how it can help them in the future
- Provide a call for action
Reduce the Anxiety
Before you have a brand that is well established and defined, people may have trust issues with you. Great content is what it takes to reduce the anxiety level of your audience. Educating them is part of what it takes to reduce anxiety. But it is very important that a reader perceives the person doing the selling of a product as someone just like them.
Sure, it helps if you are an industry expert, or a CEO, but people are more likely to respond to people who they perceive as being just a regular person. Here are some of the steps you can take to write content that builds trust.
Empathy, not sympathy
You must make an effort to understand where the audience is coming from, and walk a mile in their shoes if you will. Perhaps you have had some of the same issues your readers are currently experiencing?
People also love to hear a great story. If you can use an antidote, an analogy, or use a fun metaphor you stand a better chance of breaking through and gaining the trust you need to get conversions. Another important thing you can do to build trust is to show yourself. You can do this adding a short author’s biography at the end of the content, and/or by showing a nice headshot.
Get Rid of Those Distractions
You need to guide your visitors on a single, uncomplicated path of your choosing. Content should focus on one question, or one subject at a time to avoid distractions. This can be a problem with link building in some of your blogs. While having outside sources to verify your information is great, it can take readers away from your page and there is no real guarantee they will be back.
Add Endorsements If Possible
If a reader sees someone they know and trust that uses and endorses your brand, you are more likely to build some instant trust with them, and increase the odds of conversion. If this is not possible, all is not lost by any means, as here is what you can do.
Try and build some interest in people in your same business niche to co-author a piece, be it an ebook, a traditional book, or a series of blogs. You can also ask, and it may take a few times before you get accepted, for a podcast or interview with someone who has influence in your industry.
These are great for increasing awareness of your brand, and you must be careful to nurture these relationships carefully if you go this route.
Push the Main Points (Even if they are painful)
If you know some of the sticking points, or pain points of your industry, it is sometimes a good idea to make your audience more aware of them too. Here is an example to get a better idea of what we are talking about.
Many company heads today are clueless when it comes to their social media ad campaigns. There are not many effective ways to gauge the return on investment, and all of the while you are spending a big salary on a social media manager.
This would be the pain point for a product that has the analytics needed to effectively measure the return on investment for social media ads. Most all business niches and industry have a pain point such as this one. These kind of questions posed can not only jump start their interest in the subject, but help them to become more interested in the solutions that you propose.
Give Sound Advice As A Good Friend Would
Stop thinking of your content as just making a pitch to customers. If all of your content is promotional in nature, it is very unlikely anyone is going to believe you. Most experts agree that up to 90% of your content should be informative, educational, and related to solving problems of the reader.
That in no ways means you cannot do plenty of promotion in other ways. You can still have lots of inbound links to products in sidebars, and have banners that promote on the shameless side, but just do not do it within your primary content.
Close With The Right Call To Action
Notice we did not say just any call to action, we said the “right” call to action. Yes, there is a difference. Truth be known, there should be subtle calls to action in your content. The “right” call to action is done by showing your readers insight through your informative content, and then deciding they want to subscribe to your emailings, or a start a free trial of your product.
Here are a fee examples that may work for you:
“Sign up today for our RSS feed, and you will start receiving insights on a weekly basis from our panel of experts.”
“For more on (your product or service) check out our ebook.”
“Are you really serious about achieving all of your social media marketing goals? Register a time to talk with me and we can make it a reality.”
All of these tips are great for helping you get our content where it needs to be to get the conversions you need to compete in what is a brutal business environment. But if you feel you need a little extra help, there is plenty that is available.
Now Take A Look At What NOT To Do
Have you ever considered that perhaps by looking at what not to do, you’ll get a better idea what you “should” be doing? That is the premise behind a witty, informative, and fun slides series from HubSpot. How To Suck at Marketing will inform you how to do just that. Of course, whatever they show here, you will want to do a complete 180 degree turn. But that is their intent. In between having a good laugh, and hopefully you are not laughing at your own failed efforts, you will learn some important tactics and traits of successful campaigns.
You’ll learn about ineffective, unsolicited, unpersonalized email campaigns, keyword stuffing in your content that will not help a Google ranking, and other ways you can make a complete mess of a marketing campaign.
Becoming A World-Class Web Copywriter
Now that you know what not to do, it might be a good idea to reinforce early concepts and add to them with a slide series that helps you become a better writer. The DigitalRelevance’s How To Become a World-Class Web Copywriter may be just what you need to take your content to the next level. This educational slide series will tell you important and key factors such as visitors that stay on your site for at least 3 minutes are two times more likely to make a purchase from you.
With their help, you will learn how to keep them there for three minutes, and a whole lot more. They will help you to identify web copy that is poor and not working, and how to replace it with content that is solely intended to convert. They help teach you the art of subtle persuasion, and get you on the way to success.
The Bottom Line
There is a lot to writing successful ad content that gets customers to convert. The one thing you may learn on your own is you will need to do lots of tweaking, lots of revisions, and lots of testing to determine what works for you. The main thing is to never get discouraged, and always approach any problems you face head on, with a good attitude.
So what do you do when it seems all has failed? Easy!! You do what all American businessmen and women have done for ages when faced with a crisis. You take a page from the playbook of your competition. Yes, copying is a form of flattery, and if it can be done – and it can – without violating any copyright laws, then by all means do it. Once you are on your feet, you can make your message reflect more of your own views, and highlight what it is your unique brand brings to the table.
But do the best you can with the material here, and experiment to see what works best for you. No one person or one organization knows everything there is to know about content that converts. If they did, they would call it the Bible of Content That Converts and then you’d only have to read one book to know everything. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.
So good luck, and remember to never give up and never let your content get stale and old, especially if it is not working.
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