Content is king. No blog can consistently drive organic traffic without high-quality, fresh content. However, website content that doesn’t drive sales and help convert visitors into paying customers isn’t very beneficial. Producing high-quality content on a regular basis requires a lot of money, time, and effort. That’s why you should always focus on creating web content that has the potential to drive sales — while still being engaging, informative, and useful for your target audience. Here are 5 tips to help you create content that drives sales and converts website visitors into customers.
1. Create content according to your conversion funnel
Before you start publishing blog posts, white papers and eBooks, you need to create a conversion funnel. It is also known as ‘sales funnel’. A sales or conversion funnel maps a website visitor’s roadway from first knowing about your product or service to purchasing what you are offering. A sales funnel can be of many different stages, but here is a common format that most bloggers use:
- Stage #1 — Awareness (Top of the funnel)
- Stage #2 — Research (Middle of the funnel)
- Stage #3 — Purchase (Bottom of the funnel)
Having a firm grasp on your conversion funnel will help you create better, more targeted content for each phase. For instance, for the top of the funnel, you can create informative blog posts, checklists, email newsletters, how-to videos, etc. On the other hand, for the bottom of the funnel, you can create an engaging pricing page, case studies, customer success stories, testimonials, etc. By aligning your user’s journey with the right type of content, you would be in a better position to sell.
2. Treat your blog posts as landing pages
When compared with blog posts, landing pages often have a higher conversion rate. It is because — unlike normal blog posts — landing pages are created in a way to encourage sales. Therefore, you should take inspiration from your high-performing landing pages with above-average conversion rates. Optimise the copy of your blog posts as you do in landing pages. Address your target audience. Identify a major issue that they are facing and present a solution to them. Use an engaging and attention-grabbing headline. Talk about your product and service whenever it is appropriate to do so in the blog post. Be creative and persuasive — while still being informative and engaging — to ensure a higher conversion rate from blog posts.
3. Optimise for buyer keywords
When creating content, your #1 goal should be to create maximum value for your readers. This means not obsessing about the inclusion of particular keywords. However, when you are trying to drive more sales, you would want to create — in addition to the informative and helpful content for your readers — content pieces that specifically target buyer keywords.
These keywords include:
- Reviews
- Discount
- Deal
- Where to buy
- Buy
- Download
- Cost of
The inclusion of these “buyer keywords” will help you attract the type of traffic that is willing to spend its money.
4. Always include a call-to-action
Will you ever leave a landing page without a call-to-action? No. Then why would you that in a blog post? Always include a call-to-action at the end of your blog post. That CTA could be about contacting you or signing up for an email newsletter; it does not always have to sell a product or service. Try to craft a CTA that is helpful for the readers. For example, if you have a blog post series, link to its remaining part at the end so the readers can easily find the full series and get all the information. For blog posts, the best way is to redirect users to a gated piece of content or an email newsletter. Once you establish a two-way contact with that, you can nurture leads and later sell them your products or services.
5. Improve readability
Unfortunately, only 16% of website visitors read a blog post word-for-word. This means that a lot of your content will go unnoticed. If nobody is reading what you have to say, why would they buy from you? You can overcome this problem improving the readability of your articles and make them more easily consumable. Break your posts into smaller chunks. Create several shorter paragraphs to convey your message. Use shorter sentences and easy-to-understand words. Most importantly, divide your articles by several interesting subheadings. Ideally, those subheadings should attract your reader’s attention and guide them through the entire blog post.
Conclusion
Blog posts are generally used to educate and inform readers and collect leads. But they should not be restricted to those roles. You can create blog posts that drive sales and convert people into customers. The above-mentioned 5 tips will help you with that goal.