Content that Converts: Your Ultimate Guide to Creating Persuasive Content
Let’s face it, the primary aim for any content on a website is to influence visitors and prompt them to take the desired action. In order to achieve this feat, it’s important to churn out the Content that Converts.
A reader visits your site to either buy your services or look for information. In both cases, you need to establish a lasting relationship with the visitor that makes him/her visit you more.
Getting the basics of communication and content right is imperative if you want to stand out from the rest of your competitors online.
Your content has to be appealing and persuasive that puts you at an authoritative place. Eventually, you reach a point where you dictate what your audience has to do next.
Now consider this:
Jay Shetty, the monk-turned-entrepreneur has over 10 million followers and 1 billion views for his videos.
He has inspired and motivated millions through his excellent videos, where he talks about life. In the viral world of today, he has a clever way of putting his content across – By making wisdom go viral.
So, what is the first step to achieving success through content? How are you going to persuade your readers to do something that you want them to do? What is the secret mantra to develop content that converts?
In this post, let’s discuss how to create compelling content that makes your audience trust you over the competitors. Get tips on how to always create content that converts and learn how to win your audiences’ trust.
To start with, let us consider this situation;
Some pages of your website may have higher conversions. If your landing pages aren’t producing increased sales, the most likely reason affecting lead generation could be your web copy.
The Website copy has to be appealing to the reader and must answer some questions in their life. Users spend time reading web pages for their own reasons. The pertinent question they ask each time they land on a page is, “What’s in it for me?”
What Are Your Capabilities?
Customers want to know how your product/service is going to help them make their lives better. Surprisingly, there are still a lot of businesses that haven’t understood this basic principle.
There are plenty of corporate websites where the focus of the page is squarely on the company.
Websites write lengthy articles, telling the readers how professional and efficient they are. They list all the accomplishments and awards won but fail to explain how they can help the readers with their problems.
If there is one thing that can improve conversion rates dramatically, it’s convincing the users that you have the best solution for their needs.
Sell More Efficiently
Don’t just write about your business, talk to people about what matters to them. Explain how your products can help them.
Let’s start with the headline. This is the most vital part of your article as it’s the first thing that most of your readers will see.
Your headline must tell readers what the page is about. It should be optimized in a way that makes them want to read more.
Not all headlines can drive an audience, which is why testing your headline is critical. This ensures whether your headline is drawing people to read more or if it’s driving them away.
How to Write Magnetic Headlines?
Your headline plays a crucial role in attracting the reader’s attention and making them share it with their friends and colleagues.
Have you noticed how some companies are very good at creating content that goes viral across the internet?
They find success with almost every article or post they write. What are they doing differently that brings popularity almost instantly?
Fortunately, we have the answer to this for at least one company. Upworthy keeps no secrets about how they do what they do, week after week.
There is a presentation posted online explaining the formula that they use. They follow this five-step process to create compelling content every time:
The steps are:
- Find amazing content
- Frame it for Facebook.
- Promote it on Facebook
- Test it
- Profit from it
Upworthy encourages the sharing of their content on Facebook. If you’re writing blog content, then this is a great marketing strategy for digital marketers to reach out to a broader audience.
If your content is more sales-based, then you may want to promote it via other means too. Whatever you do, ensure your content is as useful as it can be for the audience before you start the promotion process.
A/B Testing for Sales Based Content
Testing your content is essential to see if you can improve its performance. You may be surprised by how much of a difference small changes have on a headline, like using a different graphic.
To decide which of the headlines perform better, there is a very simple technique that you can apply- A/B testing. This lets you take two versions of the page and see which performs the best.
Bit.ly is a great tool for A/B testing. It lets you publish the same post in two different versions by making minor changes in each of them. Ensure that you only make one change at a time or you won’t know which change made the difference in the responses.
It isn’t just the main copy that you should examine. You may think that only the main text is responsible for creating an impact on your conversion rate. The truth is that every section on the page makes a difference and decides whether your conversion rates improve, stays the same, or even declines. Most successful online businesses have learned how to leverage their microcopy to improve results.
Let’s take a look at Amazon,
On their page, you can see the message “click here to shop in your local currency.” You can always remove it later or replace it with something else.
If you scroll below, you can also see messages like:
Notice how all of those messages are aimed at reassurance. Amazon understands that for many of their visitors, taking the plunge and committing to buy a product is a significant step. They would instill their visitors with confidence and remove obstacles that pull them back from making a purchase. They go out of their way to make buying from Amazon appear as risk-free as they can. It is this technique of managing user anxiety that helped push conversion rates higher than many businesses. Taking the time to answer the visitor’s questions and to deal with their fears and concerns will go a long way to reassure your visitors.
Many buyers will be more comfortable visiting a brick and mortar store where they can view the product physically and talk to a real person if they have any questions. Your job with the online copy is to give your reader hope. You must anticipate the possible questions each person may have about the product and attempt to answer them throughout your copy. It may be as easy as letting the reader know that the product is physically in stock and that shipping is easily possible.
Try to put across your message in simple sentences and take time to clarify any points that you think might be of concern. If you use jargons for the products on your websites, possibilities are that your potential customers may leave. Discuss the unique features of your products and how it can be helpful to others. The unique value proposition should be promptly displayed on your website where they can’t miss it.
A good web page should have white spaces to allow the reader’s eyes to rest and not be constantly scanning from line to line. One area where online reading differs from a printed magazine is the way the content is consumed. In a printed magazine, most readers will start from the first page and read all the way to the end. Online reading is frequently different. Not only can you be unsure which page on your website readers will start with, but readers also skim through your page, hunting for a particular piece of content.
What if your copy still doesn’t convert?
Sometimes, you may feel that you have created the best content, but it’s not performing as good as you had expected.
First of all, take a long look at all of your website copies and see whether your overall message is clear. Is there any way your audience could be misunderstanding what you are offering?
If the message is clear, are you sure that it’s a message that is valuable to your audience? You don’t get much of a response if your audience doesn’t consider your message valuable to them. Does your audience trust you? Have you taken the time to establish trust and credibility with them? Unless your visitors trust you, your conversion rates will continue to remain the same.
Even if a customer buys from you, are they emotionally primed for you? What is your next message after they have used your services? What will you do to keep them engaged with you? Can you talk about all these points in simple, clear, and in fewer words? This is a great challenge for marketers as well as writers.
Don’t prolong your content for the sake of it. Keep it short, simple, and informative.
Things to Remember While Creating Content
Understand What Your Users Want to Read?
Check the currently trending hashtags on Twitter, find out what is going viral on Quora and other social media channels, and try to create content around these topics. Instead of writing something of your own, attempt to create a post that your readers want to read. Research and find out what are the things that your readers want from you. To make that process easier, you can create a poll and learn more about your customer’s tastes and preferences. Based on the poll results, produce something that is appealing and is also intriguing. Most importantly, it should be able to answer the questions that your readers may possibly have.
Original Content Creation is Proven to Convert
Producing original and unique content is vital for any website. However, remember that quality also plays a major role. Whatever you create needs to be relevant to the website that you’re writing for. Consider evoking the reader’s emotions by adding a personal story or by writing content about a controversial viewpoint to spark a conversation surrounding your original content. Bring your perspective to your work. People eagerly listen to stories about the human experience.
Most of Your Audience is Using Mobile Phones
Whatever you’re writing, remember it will be mostly accessed by mobile phones than desktops. Hence, remember to optimize and format your content accordingly. Make it readable- stick to simple, one-column layouts and shorter content that features more visuals, like photos and videos.
Add More Visuals and Infographics
As per the research published by Nielsen Norman Group, visitors, on average, only read about 20% of the content on the landing page.
Hence, it’s your job to ensure that all the key points of your content stand out through visuals, bullet points, and infographics.
Add a bit of urgency if you’re writing promotional content. Nobody in the right mind would want to lose out something that is a valuable resource. However, it is important to remember not to overdo this.
A Sense of Anxiety in Your Content
You can use anxiety to either increase or decrease conversions. If used positively, it makes your customers want to make a purchase right then and there, whereas its negative use can scare your potential customers.
To invoke the right kind of anxiety, make your title appealing and catchy. Here’s an example that makes the user anxious in a good way:
Avoid Too Many Distractions
Marketing Experiments provided research that stated how providing too many texts on a page causes conflict and distracts a visitor. This leads to a direct loss of revenue. Your landing page must be free from unnecessary product links and options. That, in turn, will help you boost your revenue.
Check the image below for the red highlighted areas. What do you feel? Comment below!
Write As You Talk
Make your content personal. Reading content should be effortless, and it has to address the target audience directly. Even Seth Godin, the famous author of 15 bestselling books, believes that writing in the style of the way you talk is a simple way to express yourself better. This technique establishes a one-to-one connection between the brand and the visitor.
However, this doesn’t mean you’re free to create anything, even if it’s low-quality or ignores the basics of writing. It only means you can write your heart out while also providing relevant examples and backing it up with proper case studies.
Add Call to Actions at Right Places
A blog post or web copy without any call to action is a job half done. Although it depends on the intent of the content in the first place. However, if you want a better result, try to add a call to action phrase with proper backlinks to the landing page when the emotion is high.
Conclusion
All in all, if you haven’t realized the power of content marketing yet, then you’re on the losing front because the businesses who did are a step ahead of you. The present online world is running on content, and the future is also content. Though it may come in various formats like pictures, videos, and podcasts, the content will forever be the king and the tactics you apply to market is your queen.
As per studies, Americans now spend around 11 hours a day consuming content. With trillion bytes of existing content and millions of bytes being added every day, how are you going to stand out in the content game?
I genuinely hope this blog post helps you to create great content that converts. A suggestion for you would be to incorporate these steps. In the long run, these will definitely help you achieve your goals.