Content marketing can accomplish different things for different businesses. Some firms make use of it to raise their profile. But many utilize content marketing as a method to drive sales or acquire leads.
Ensure that your content is designed to encourage buyers to purchase if your business falls into the final category. Below are some tactics to help produce sales with content marketing.
Marketing that Generates Sales
Create a Content Marketing Plan
Gary Shouldis of 3Bug Media asserts that one of the blunders both marketers and salespeople typically make is neglecting to create a content plan. You understand the importance of generating content, and you are aiming for an increase in sales. But that’s not enough. You need to devise a plan to identify and access the people you would like to target, in order to persuade them to become customers.
Understand Your Target Market
To generate successful material, it is imperative that you are aware of the intended audience for your work. Be sure to identify who your target audience is, and create content crafted specifically to them. Speak to them directly in every piece of content you produce.
Know the Common Concerns Your Customers Have
Clients who are taking the time to read up on your content instead of immediately buying your products or services are likely in a state of uncertainly. To assist them in arriving at a conclusion, you need to reply to their queries and allay their apprehensions. You can incorporate answers to common customer questions and worries within your content if you are aware of them.
Listen to Your Customer Feedback
Generating inquiries to form the foundation of your material can be as easy as tuning in to your current customers. If you receive a number of emails with the same queries or challenges repeatedly, it would be a good idea to turn these into content.
Take a Look at Keywords
You should also check out the words and queries that direct visitors to your site. People will frequently type in queries in search boxes when they cannot easily locate an answer. If you notice shared concepts, that could be a further option for your material.
Make a List of Questions
Shouldis advocates that in addition to being aware of usual customer issues, something more should be done. He proposes a workout for companies looking to leverage their content to enhance revenues.
In an email to Small Business Trends, Shouldis suggested making a list of the 20 most commonly asked questions about your product or service and making content to answer them all in depth.
Take a Look at the Buying Process
Try to imagine what it is like for customers when going through the process of purchasing something and use that to help devise relevant questions and topics for your content plan.
Shouldis advises to dedicate time to understanding the path people take when they buy your product or service, and then establish material to facilitate their purchase.
Create Content for Various Buying Stages
You can adjust each part of your content to various stages of that process. Maybe customers often get hung up when comparing prices. You could come up with a post that provides contrasts. You could make a post that illustrates the worth of your product, not just the cost.
Concentrate on the Bottom of the Sales Funnel
There is a greater probability that general information will attract people to your website. Content tailored to those who are prepared to make a purchase has a more likely chance of turning into sales.
Keep Content Focused on Just One Topic
Materials that are intended to persuade someone to make a purchase should be concentrated on one subject and straightforward. You don’t need to make any attempt to present your substance as amusement or anything else. Provide the data that your customers are searching for.
Use Key Phrases in Your Headlines
Ensure the headline for your post or content accurately reflects the particular topic you are writing about. A simple title will help to draw in the specific people that your content was intended for.
Include Questions in Your Headlines
Content can be generated from customer queries. Headlines that incorporate long-tail keywords can be valuable assets as many people utilize them when looking for information online. Additionally, this will inform customers who have the same inquiries precisely where to discover answers.
Point Out What Makes Your Business Different
Highlight the amazing qualities of your goods or services as a content subject. Pay attention to the characteristics or cutting-edge qualities that make you stand out in the business world.
Compare Your Business to Competitors
You can also make content that explains in detail the distinction between what you offer and that of your rivals.
According to Shouldis, when people are in the final stages of deciding, they may be debating between choosing you or an alternate option. This is your opportunity to illustrate the distinctions between you and another option and underline what makes you the preferable choice.
Give Customers What They Need to Make a Decision
No matter what kind of format you go with for your material, try to ensure that customers have all the facts they need to be certain about buying from you. Consider what data could be useful to them and provide it in the form of content.
Have an End Goal for Each Piece of Content
It is likely impossible to give every customer each and every detail they need to buy something in just a single blog post or video. Everyone should contribute something towards the principal aim. Establish modest targets for every piece of material you generate so that all will help to generate more revenue.
Determine Which Platforms Your Potential Customers Use
When it comes to releasing your writing to the world or boosting it through the internet, you should select your places judiciously. Investigate which services your current and prospective customers use, and ensure that you consider those when making your plan.
Try Out Different Types of Content
There is no limitation that says you must only possess one kind of content. Not having a blog stops you from being able to make videos as well. By providing multiple styles of content in your plan, you can attract even more probable shoppers.
Choose Your Format Based on Your Message
The data you are furnishing can also be utilized to decide what kind of content to develop. If you need to demonstrate to people how something works, creating a video might be the most effective approach. You could consider using an infographic if you plan on displaying comparisons visually. Figure out which type of medium is most optimal to get across the point you wish to make.
Other Marketing Tips
1. Check your webpage by utilizing pop-ups that have bonus deals or incentives. Yes! This hack will earn you some subscribers.
2. Make sure your website is mobile optimized. Not sure if it is? Run it through Google’s mobile-friendly test .
3. Consider utilizing personalization on your website depending on where your guests are in the buyers’ journey to increase the number of conversions.
4. Utilize well-crafted calls-to-action to hasten and facilitate the sales funnel process by delivering appropriate material to customers dependent on their place in the purchasing cycle.
5. Ask people to review you. Think about beginning a triggered message plan that politely inquires customers who appreciate your company to provide online evaluations.
6. Stop doing what’s not working. Postcards, television commercials, and radio spots that lack quantifiable results. Try things you KNOW will have measurable impact!
7. Rev up your content marketing efforts. The easiest way to begin is with a blog. Begin by producing posts that can support your search engine optimization rankings.
8. Create a high-quality, informational post to serve as a cornerstone of your SEO plan.
9. Secure the top 20 most asked customer queries and produce a blog post explaining each one.
10. Examine your highest ranking blog posts to recognize a subject area to focus your attention on.
11. Update an offer that is already doing well and advertise it again to your target group of people in order to improve your website’s search engine rankings.
12. Hold an “Ask me Anything” session with a notable figure in your business sector and devise a specific nurture series/flow program for new enrollees.
13. Your CEO or other higher-up should write a post for LinkedIn Pulse to enhance recognition of your business.
14. Attempt to create 20 different pieces of content to post to well-trafficked and pertinent blogs within a four-week period.
15. Promote local activities such as charity drives on your social media pages to demonstrate that your business is an important part of the community.
16. If you think you don’t have the time to keep up with social media, concentrate on just a couple of areas, such as LinkedIn and Twitter (depending on who you’re trying to target).
17. Design visuals for your most successful deals and create a timeline for their promotion.
18. Get a Pinterest business account. By adding certain features to your website, you can gain increased functionality, like a Save It button, Pinterest Analytics, Promoted Pins, and Rich Pins.
19. Conduct a test on a social platform that you don’t have much of a presence on.
20. Use social media as a customer service channel. A third of people who use social media prefer to contact a business for customer service through the platform.
21. Construct an agenda of promotional activities sufficient for one month and plan them in advance.
22. Try advertising or running a contest on Instagram.
23. Direct those who are inactive to a specific promotion with a coupon, and use Facebook or Twitter for retargeting those who have already expressed an interest.
24. Launch an advertisement strategy specifically tailored to your most successful promotions and bestselling items.
25. Get personal. Upload images of your staff to social media platforms and describe their part in the company so customers can observe the people who run the business.
26. Team up with other local businesses to show the strength that can be found by collectively hosting a weekend shopping event.
27. Encourage user-generated content (UGC) on your online channels. It’s a terrific method to get individuals involved with your company (and it won’t cost you anything!).
28. Initiate a conversation in the Inbound.org forum where you can share ideas and opinions with other professionals in your area of expertise on what strategies have been successful and which ones have not.
29. Add a live chat feature to your website so that people can ask questions and get answers in real-time.
30. Construct a VIP program that gives your most devoted customers preferential treatment such as early entrance to sales, invitations to events, and the opportunity to place orders in advance.
31. Organize a customer gathering to create excitement around the introduction of a new product.
32. Include a customer reference page on your website to facilitate investigation for prospective buyers, or make them available as part of the sales process to hasten the results at the close of the sale.
33. Gather feedback from your customers through both your website and face-to-face interactions.
34. Take the opportunity to express your gratitude to your local area through a video, posting on social media, or sending an email. Doing so helps to increase your visibility and provides shareable content with minimal effort.
35. Be sure to create a timeline and arrange email and social media postings with related seasonal material. This provides buyers with a greater impetus to act quickly.
36. Divide your email lists into distinct parts in order to send different types of communication to people in different life stages.
37. When writing email campaigns, avoid using words that could activate spam blockers. Subject lines written entirely in capital letters, a low number of words compared to the amount of images, and HTML code revealed within the content of the email are all typical indications of possible spam.
38. Advise your sales representatives to create a process for advertising a new content piece you have created.
39. Produce a customer feature focusing on assisting your sales staff (such as a video analysis).
40. Inquire of your sales personnel what their problems are and examine if there is some marketing material you can devise to meet those needs.
41. Google Analytics is a free program that enables you to monitor user engagement on your website through the addition of a generated code snippet to your homepage.
42. Find out how many websites are linked to your site at www.linkpopularity.com.
43. Set up Google Webmaster Tools to spot any problems with the speed of loading pages and the use of keywords on your website.
44. Research your competition. What position do they hold on Google.com when different search terms are entered? Are there any chances of little competition on a significant phrase?
45. Ensure that the website link for your webpage encompasses the essential keywords.
46. Ensure that various key phrases are integrated into the Title Tag of each page on your website.
