800.979.3177
+1.412.785.7671Struggling to Create Content That Converts? Try These Tips
Creating content that drives leads can feel like an uphill battle. You pour time and effort into crafting blog posts and landing pages, social media updates and product pages. But the conversions aren’t rolling in as expected.
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry—the digital marketing experts at DOM have proven strategies to help you increase conversions on your website.
Table of Contents
- Meet Your Audience Where They Are
- Awareness Stage
- Consideration Stage
- Decision Stage
- Craft Compelling Headlines
- Focus on Value-Driven Content
- Optimize for Search Engines and User Experience
- Use Clear Calls to Action
- Leverage Social Proof
- Experiment and Iterate
- Drive More Leads To Your Website With A Digital Marketing Partner
- Key Takeaways for Content that Converts
Meet Your Audience Where They Are
You must understand your audience before you can message to them in a way that will compel them to take action.
Knowing their pain points, desires, and questions is key to creating content that resonates. You can get a grasp on your audience by diving into website analytics, customer feedback, and social media interactions. These sources will help you get a clearer picture of what your audience needs.
At Direct Online Marketing (DOM), we’ve driven leads for our clients by helping them develop content in three distinct buckets: awareness, consideration, and decision.
Each visitor to your website is in a different place; you need to craft messaging that speaks to the various points they might be at along the way to purchasing from your business. They’re searching for information, solutions, and ultimately, the best partner to help them achieve their goals.
Awareness Stage
Imagine someone experiencing a problem. They’re likely searching for information and answers. To cater to people in the awareness stage, your content should focus on educating and building trust (not a hard sales push).
Blog posts, articles, and videos are a great way to provide valuable insights that establish your brand as a thought leader. Give people in the awareness stage plenty of material to peruse that shows a broad swath of the quality goods and services you provide.
Lay out your wares. Let people take a look at their leisure. (Don’t ask them to take action yet.)
Consideration Stage
The consideration stage refers to people who are intently seeking solutions to a problem but aren’t quite ready to pull the trigger. They’re comparing options and researching potential providers.
This is where content that positions your business as the ideal solution comes into play. Robust resources—such as, case studies, testimonials, and side-by-side comparisons—can demonstrate your expertise and value proposition.
Decision Stage
This is the final stage where prospects are ready to make a purchase, the decision stage. Your content should now focus on removing any remaining doubts as to why your business is best-suited to meet the user’s needs.
Demos and whitepapers, free trials and webinars are the meaty kinds of content that often compel people to take action.
We do this kind of thing with our own website. Check out our free guide to content marketing as an example.
By the decision stage, you’ve provided information for people to look at in their own time, you’ve backed that up with forceful presentations of your unique value proposition, and now you’re encouraging them to convert.
Craft Compelling Headlines
Headlines must grab people’s attention.
Face it—people don’t read online word-for-word. They skim.
You’ve probably jumped around a bit in this very blog. Likely you’ve dived in at the point that seems most potent in driving more leads to your business.
Your headline is often the first thing a potential lead sees. (It might also be the only thing if it sucks.)
So it needs to be attention-grabbing and relevant. A strong headline should spark curiosity and clearly indicate the value that the content offers.
For example:
- Tips for Better Marketing
- 5 Proven Strategies to Drive More Leads to Your Business.
The second headline is specific, promises actionable insights, and directly speaks to the reader’s goal of generating leads.
Dig deeper with our 7 Tips to Craft Compelling Headlines.
Focus on Value-Driven Content
Provide advice in your content that your audience can implement immediately. That’s value-driven content.
Some of the ways that we help our clients at DOM deliver this kind of content to drive more leads is in the form of how-to guides, case studies, and actionable lists.
And you don’t have to start from scratch.
Try taking a list of features about your goods and services and turning that into a narrative about how those features come together to solve problems. The subtle shift from features to benefits (time saved, increased budget efficiency, greater client buy-in) helps people feel the tangible value of choosing your business.
Optimize for Search Engines and User Experience
Balancing SEO with user experience is crucial for driving more leads to your website.
Low-hanging fruit on this front is commonly to incorporate relevant keywords naturally into content; to write meta descriptions that signal to search engines the main theme of a page; and to make your website easy to navigate with intuitive menus and dropdowns.
You get more leads from a website that’s SEO optimized and user-friendly. We’ve seen this time and again at DOM.
Read about the impact of user experience on SEO.
Use Clear Calls to Action
A well-crafted CTA can significantly increase conversions on your website.
CTAs that are precise and action-oriented, while also being aligned with the content’s message, tend to yield the best results. Instead of a generic “Click Here,” try something like, “Download Your Free Guide to Increase Conversions.”
Experiment with placement and wording to find what works best. For instance, placing a CTA at the end of a blog post that provides valuable insights can encourage readers to take the next step in their journey toward converting with your business.
In light of the discussion of user-engagement stages above, CTAs are best employed in the final, decision stage. You can’t ask much of people online, so when you do entice them to take action, take your best shot.
Leverage Social Proof
By social proof we mean testimonials, reviews, case studies, quotes from satisfied clients, and star-ratings from review sites. These are signals of trust; they build credibility in the user’s mind.
See a sample results page with case studies here.
As we’ve seen over the years for our clients at DOM, prospective leads are more likely to convert when they see that others have had positive experiences with your business.
People don’t buy from websites. They buy from people.
The social signals that your business has garnered from good service in the past may be the most potent tool you have in closing deals and driving more leads.
Experiment and Iterate
If you set-it-and-forget-it, well, you can probably forget about increasing conversions on your website.
Content strategy requires continual iteration. Test different approaches to see what resonates most with your audience. Use tools like A/B testing and heat mapping to compare the performance of headlines, CTAs, and content formats.
A simple split test you might conduct is to compare two versions of a landing page: one with a video; one with a static image.
Learn more about the power of videos to drive conversions on your site:
Let the test run long enough to attain statistical significance as to which version drives more conversions.
With the results in hand, you can quickly update other pages on your site with your learnings.
Then create a new hypothesis. Rinse. And repeat. You’ll incrementally improve the conversion rate of your website by applying the learnings from multiple, easy A/B tests.
Drive More Leads To Your Website With A Digital Marketing Partner
Creating compelling content is the foundation of increasing conversions on your website.
Check out our digital marketing resources for expert advice from the DOM team through webinars and guides, checklists and podcasts.
Further, by really understanding what people need, crafting compelling headlines, offering valuable insights, optimizing for SEO & user experience, and leveraging social proof, you can create a holistic experience on your website. You can create a unified, rich experience for users wherein each element is nudging them to convert.
That is, your website can function as a helpful guide on the conversion journey—never yelling, always gently suggesting a bit of useful information or an easy way to sign up.
You can turn various elements of your online presence into powerful lead-generation tools. See the range of services we provide at DOM.
Drive more leads and sales with our full-service internet marketing agency, where we manage all digital marketing services and advertising channels, unifying your message across each platform.
Key Takeaways for Content that Converts
- Understand Your Audience
Tailor your content to different stages of the buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, decision) by addressing their specific needs and concerns at each stage. - Craft Compelling Content
Focus on providing valuable insights and showcasing benefits. Use storytelling to engage your audience. - Optimize for Conversions
Improve search engine visibility through keyword optimization. Enhance user experience with clear navigation and formatting. Plus use strong calls to action to guide visitors towards desired actions. - Leverage Social Proof
Build trust and credibility by incorporating testimonials, reviews, and case studies that demonstrate exceptional customer experiences. - Test & Iterate
Regularly test and analyze your content to identify areas for improvement. A/B tests and heat maps are key ways to surface actionable insights.
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