7 Tips For Creating Content That Converts

There isn’t a shortage of queries in Google based on the keyword “how to create content”. If anything, search engines are packed with questions based on keyword mapping and driving traffic. This alludes to businesses starting to realize that good content isn’t just about putting a few words together and hoping for your prospects to recognize the value your brand offers.

It’s about making the reader aware of your unique voice and style of writing that gets cemented in their memory as a one-of-a-kind piece of content that resonates on a deeper level.

Here’s why investing time and other resources into regularly drafting the content based on your leads’ interests is more vital to your conversion rate than you might think:

There’s nothing quite like a well-written landing page or a blog post that lets the readers know who you are and what you do. Whether you decide to dabble into ‘how-to’ guides or concentrate on educational videos, you’re bettering your chances of landing on the first page of Google. This gives you better exposure and the opportunity to boost your traffic while simultaneously engaging your audience.

To make the most of people becoming familiar with your brand, take some time to understand your target audience and analyze customer data to draft the best-performing content strategy.

Reuse your content on a variety of social media platforms and you’re virtually guaranteed to make it known to the world what you bring to the table.

If you position yourself as an industry expert, you’re likely to be perceived by customers as an authoritative brand and source of information. To achieve this status, you should ensure that the content you put out provides value and answers your audience’s questions in full.

Aside from your customers, search engines will also be inclined to rank you high which, in turn, will portray your company as credible.

The same applies to a loyal customer base that develops as you offer knowledge that genuinely helps. Thanks to word-of-mouth, even those who aren’t necessarily interested in your products or services might still recommend your brand to their friends and family if your content is relevant, engaging, and interactive.

Basically, the more value you pack in your content, the more your customers will trust you enough to purchase from you.

Aside from appealing to your prospects, premium-quality content is also a real jackpot for search engines. Google, Yandex, and the likes will be prompted to show your company to a bigger number of browsers if you make an effort to make your content SEO-friendly.

Long-form content and appropriate use of keywords are the easiest strategies to apply when trying to make search engines give you the recognition you deserve.

Start with conducting thorough research on what your customers are searching for. Follow up with catchy headlines and well-optimized meta descriptions that motivate the readers to learn more about your brand. Ensure that your content is mobile-friendly and easy to read so that everyone who clicks on it finds value in the message you’re trying to convey.

Regular content updates along with smart internal linking and backlinking are a cherry on top.

That's where the Serpstat Backlink Analysis tool comes in handy.

Here you can track your and competitors' backlink profile dynamics, detect low-quality backlinks that harm your rankings, collect high-quality backlink donors, and more:

As a business, your main goal is to attract as many leads as possible and turn them into customers. 

This is possible with content marketing techniques aimed at choosing the right channels to engage with your target audience and crafting data-backed pieces of content on a regular basis. The result — better-quality leads to whom your strategically-placed Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons are bait. 

Content can be used to drive passive browsers to your landing page in hopes of persuading them to make a purchase. Don’t shy away from giving out free content — everyone loves freebies, and your prospect isn’t an exception. 

The whole point of using content as a tool to engage customers is to make them stick around for the long haul. One-time buyers aren’t going to contribute to the growth of your business to a big extent, so nurturing and retaining leads should be your top priority.

Creating great content that resonates can thus become an asset you can use to keep your customers coming back for more useful information that adds value to their lives.

Take financial services as an example of an industry that highly benefits from retaining its customers. The cost of gathering profits from the same customer over a prolonged period of time increases with each year.

Just a 5% increase in the number of customers retained leads to an over 25% increase in overall profits. This happens as a result of customers buying more from you over time and referring others to your business as well.

Sounds like a good enough reason to keep pumping out content that captures the attention of your target audience.

Now that you know the reason behind content still being the king in this day and age, you might want to learn more about how you can start producing highly-converting content today. Keep on reading to get the hands-on tips for creating content that converts.

Regardless of the content strategy that you choose, doing keyword research is the first step toward writing up articles and landing pages that convert well. Even before you decide on the type of content to write, you should take some time to figure out what your prospects are searching for.

Giving them the answers they need without them having to consult a different company’s website will be your biggest competitive advantage.

But not all keywords are created equal. Some are easy to incorporate into any text and get a good amount of clicks. Some require a little more thought and the right placement for the content to sound organic.

Whilst the rule of thumb is to use the combination of both short-tail and long-tail keywords, 70% of all search traffic comes from the latter. This means that to attract a niche audience, you’ll be better off juggling with a few longer-tail keywords that your potential customers are typing into their Google or Bing search bar.

You should also pay attention to the keyword search volume which refers to the number of searches done in a certain time period. The higher it is, the better are your chances of attracting sufficient traffic that will inevitably lead to more conversions.

Say, if someone is looking for an easy dinner recipe, this keyword can also be paraphrased as simple dinner recipes, dinner ideas in 20 minutes, and quick dinner ideas. Optimizing your content around these keywords will give you better exposure and access to prospects who are genuinely interested in what you have to say on the topic.

And how do you collect the best-performing keywords for your website?

Serpstat Keyword Research tools: expand your semantics, create a content plan, analyze your competitors, find out what's trending, and more:

Just like with a landing page, every piece of content that goes public on your website — or any other digital platform, for that matter — should have a value proposition that’s well-communicated.

You have to get it right so that your customers find your offer attractive enough to go through with the purchase. If you fail to demonstrate how choosing your product or service over your competitor’s will benefit your customers, they’ll be quick to dismiss your company even if your offer is objectively the best on the market.

To ensure that your customers are convinced in your business being the better option, make your copy as clear as possible. That is, don’t stuff your content with lengthy paragraphs that will go unread, and steer clear from using fonts and font sizes that make you look amateur.

We can assure you that using complicated phrases, jargon that’s overly niche, and overexplaining simple concepts whose short definition your customers can Google will ruin their perception of your brand.

Fine-tuning your content also means making it relevant to your segmented audience. Whether it’s millennials who stay on a tight food budget or teenagers consuming junk food, keep them in mind when designing your content strategy.

It pays to press on your prospects’ pain points to persuade them to act quickly. Also referred to as an urgency creation tactic, this FOMO-inducing approach helps your leads gauge that if they aren’t fast enough, they can miss out on a good deal.

Some of the trigger phrases include:

• “Last chance!”
• “Don’t miss out!”
• “Exclusive offer”
• “24 hours left before the prices go up”
• “Limited time only!”
• “The only tool you need”
• “End of season sale”

P.S. Don’t forget to include the aforementioned phrases in your meta title and description for search engines to pick up on the urgency as well.

Headlines contain the first few words your prospective customers see when they click on your blog post or email newsletter. So, make them worthy of clicking.

How? By grabbing the readers’ attention — which might sound cliché — from the very first word. We’re not talking about clickbait headlines that are misleading at best and repelling at worst. Think snappy, urgency-filled headlines that hit the spot and end up ranking well in Google search.

If you didn’t know already, 80% of people don’t get past the headline. This means that merely 20% actually get to read your content and form an opinion about it. Not too promising when you’ve invested time, effort, and perhaps even financial resources to come up with a compelling piece of content.

Compare the headlines below with the level of engagement they get. This should give you a pretty good idea of what headlines you should retire and which ones are bound to bring you the most traffic and conversions.

Judging from the Facebook engagement the above headlines received, it’s safe to say that headlines that are able to create emotional connections perform the best. This isn’t anything new — emotions have long been a widely known trigger used in advertising.

Whether it’s a YouTube ad telling a story about an injured athlete who found solace in watching videos of himself training on the brand new tablet or a Hallmark-type poster encouraging you to call your loved ones before the Christmas holidays with the new phone plan, these commercials invoke strong feelings that prompt the consumers to make the move.

Drafting up headlines is no different. Make the readers feel some type of way when they come across your blog post and they’ll likely be inclined to click on it right away.

Storytelling has always been at the forefront of content marketing. It’s how marketers evoke feelings and engage with the audience in an empathetic and relatable manner. It’s also how prospective customers develop an emotional connection with the product or service the company promotes via content.

In the survey above, engaging and compelling storytelling was voted as the number one element impacting the effectiveness of the content. It’s even more vital than originality and the customization of the content tailored to a particular audience.

This isn’t surprising. Your customers resonate with stories better than they do with cold hard facts. And although the latter serves as proof of the former, cutting through the noise is only feasible via telling stories.

On top of that, stories also help get rid of monotony which is common to long-form content. To avoid sounding like a broken record, give a background story on what made you want to find a solution. Go to these lengths of creating almost a diary-like entry that makes you sound credible.

Your content is more likely to lead to sales if you follow the next few steps aimed at taking your storytelling to the next level:

Every blog and social media post needs a strategically-placed CTA button. We’d go as far as to say that ebooks, white papers, and even video content require a couple of them too. It’s that magic component that helps reach the goal of converting the lead into a customer.

Take a look at the Babbel ad below. The masterminds behind the widely-known subscription-based language learning app and e-learning platform know how to grab the attention with an enticing, urgency-inducing offer that makes the Facebook user want to learn more about it. It helps to have keywords like lifetime access and 60% off, along with the “get offer” CTA button placed right under the image.

Observe that we used the word ‘appropriate’ to emphasize that it’s not just any CTA button that will do the trick. You need the one that will go beyond the prospect just bookmarking your offer to check back later (if ever). You don’t want him to second-guess whether it’s the offer he’d like to accept today or not but instead decide to do business with you on the spot.

Give your CTA an eye-catching design and use the following phrases to make the most of your copywriting:

• “Start getting the latest news right into your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to get access to them today!”
• “Don’t miss out on the best deals — enter your email address down below to always be the first one to know!”
• “Take 40% off this week’s workshop. Seats are limited, so hurry up!”
• “For more information about the package prices, download our brochure right here.”

Speaking about emotions, they serve as a great tool to motivate leads to go through with the purchase and become customers. When incorporated into written, audio, or visual content, they help bridge the gap between the needs and desires of your customers and your product. Without them, it’s tricky to drive them to even look in your direction.

The reason why it’s vital to appeal to humans instead of customers is that your goal with the content you produce should be to help and advise. Sales pitches sound fake, and people are quick to spot and disregard them. So, in an attempt to not sound too sales-y, keep in mind that you’re addressing humans and adjust your content accordingly.

Here’s how you can accomplish this:

Sure, blog posts are the go-to for the majority of companies. They’re easy to write, there isn’t much research involved, and they don’t require multiple skill sets. But the written word loses its excitement when put against images and videos.

The proof is in the pudding — over 90% of marketers consider videos to be an essential part of their marketing strategy, with 86% of businesses using videos as a marketing tool. It’s, therefore, a good idea to dabble into other forms of content to appeal to every member of your target audience.

Recycling content is one way to go about it. You can turn your blog posts into videos and post videos both on your website and social media platforms. There’s also an opportunity to repurpose an existing 500-word article into a long-form guide with more detail. Or, if you’re feeling particularly creative, you can compose a white paper or an ebook based on the long-form blog post.

Webinars are gaining popularity too. As many as 60% of businesses host them with the intention of converting attendees into paying customers. It doesn’t even have to be a lengthy event — a 1-hour webinar can bring you plenty of leads if you organize it well.

To A/B test your content — and see how well it converts if at all — consider incorporating a few measures that would give you valuable insights. This will help quantify your efforts and adjust your content strategy if needed to get the best results. Here’s what you can do to check how well your content is performing:

There’s arguably nothing more crucial to your business’s success than the message you convey to your audience.

No matter what form it takes, it’s a mirror of the essence of your company that sends the signal to your prospects about whether or not to do business with you. It’s also the main ingredient for standing out among millions of search results in search engines like Google, Yandex, and Bing.

If you want to do more than just draw the attention of customers for them to make a single purchase and forget your company existed, you should go a few extra miles when designing your content strategy.

Focus on adding a storytelling element to your content, appealing to the emotions of the readers, and using the right keywords. Having a clearly defined value proposition and headlines that make the reader click without thinking twice about it will win you conversions and loyal customers down the line too.