If the traffic on your site doesn’t convert, it’s nearly useless because conversion is a vital element in your marketing strategy. Use these tips and stick to them to drive a more holistic and effective content optimization strategy and boost your conversions, and get better leads.
Getting a decent traffic to your site every month? That’s good! Is your traffic converting into leads? Not sure? Probably you are not optimizing your content correctly.
If the traffic doesn’t convert, it’s nearly useless because conversion is a vital element in your marketing strategy. If you successfully turn visitors into buyers at a high rate, it will skyrocket your sales and revenues.
The secret to gain a better conversion rate depends primarily on the content. Content can help convinces the prospects to take action. Many enterprises struggle to create compelling content that converts readers into loyal customers.
Here I will share my best practices to optimize content that helps you better engage your target customers and persuade them to purchase from you.
What is a Conversion Rate?
The portion of website visitors who convert or take any desired action, expressed in percentage is called Conversion rate (CR). And the system or strategy to boost that percentage is called conversion rate optimization (CRO).
How Do You Calculate Your Conversion Rate?
You can calculate the conversion rate of your website by dividing the numbers of potential buyers and total website visitors and multiplying by a hundred.
For example, if your site has 3,000 visitors, and only 90 converts into leads (bought from you), the conversion rate can be calculated as
(90/3000) x 100 = 3 percent
What is a Good Conversion Rate?
The average landing page conversion rate is different according to the industries and country. But the excellent conversion rate globally is between 2% and 5%. If you have a conversion rate of 5% or higher, then you must be the champion in CRO.
How to optimize the content for a better conversion rate
1. Analyze the sales funnel
Before start working on the content, the first thing you need is to analyze the sales funnel, which has four main segments.
This marketing funnel helps you understand what exactly makes your prospects convinces and convert. Inform your audience by educating or giving answers to their problems with awareness content like informative articles, social media posts, and blog posts.
Become their trusted advisor with the educational content and stir interest in your product. Keep them engaged with multiple content ideas such as infographics, video tutorials, question answers, surveys, demo videos, or anything in between.
Last but surely not the least, encourage them to purchase from you by offering multiple discounts and offers to convert them into customers.
Once you have analyzed the marketing funnel, let’s check out the tactics to optimize your content for the four stages of it.
2. Focus on quality, consistency, and volume to skyrocket your chances of going viral
Content is like blocks. You can’t build a brick house with a single piece of a block; you need multiples of them laid on each other create a firm foundation to erect a house. Likewise, you need multiples of content pieces created from a defined content strategy to start getting traffic, leads, and sales.
It takes time, requires constancy, and flourishes with a combination of quality and volume. As long as you want organic growth, one exhaustive content piece won’t cut it.
3. Avoid the Jargon
“Write as you talk”-Paul Graham
Persuasion begins with clarity and most of the marketers struggle with it. Do not try to capture the attention of visitors with fancy words or complicated business language. Keep it simple yet engaging; nobody will buy from the site where they have to open a dictionary to understand what services or products they are offering. Write for people, not for companies.
4. Inform your visitors about your product
Tell your audience what they are going to get. Use the power of words to provide them with all the necessary details they need to know about your services or products. Its features and benefits, the possible uses, how they can get it, and who will benefit most from it.
5. Get them excited
“Power doesn’t come from content; it comes from the content that moves.”-Mark Schaefer
Power of words is greatest of all. If you want to get your visitors eager and excited about your product, use emotionally-charged words, and incredible storytelling to sell. Human is an emotional creature, and if you hit the right core, victory will be yours.
6. Test out different content lengths
To find out the ideal length of your content that works best with your audience, you have to test various lengths. Write long-form or short-form contents focusing on your niche, product and audience. Check out whether short copy outperforms long copy or vice versa.
7. Use impartial action-packed words to sell
Try using action language that spurs visitors to take action. You can use action verbs like reserve your seat, get a discount, let’s connect, quote now, grab yours, try now, get a free trial, etc. while testing out a different call-to-action.
Here are few of many action-packed words that help you create striking email subjects, CTAs, headlines, or product descriptions.
8. Carve your landing page with click-bait CTAs and swaying headlines
A landing page of a site works like a reception area where visitors find all the useful information about an organization or the product. It should be creative enough to spark interest.
Create your landing page that has all the details about your services or products which persuade visitors to click and buy. The two essential sections of a landing page are the headline and the CTAs buttons.
The headline should tell the visitors about you; it is like a summary of your site. It should be relevant and clearly states the purpose. Brainstorm at least 10 possibilities and come up with a short and catchy headline.
Call-to-Action buttons encourage visitors to take the desired action.
It should clearly stand out with action-packed words and unique colors. Sprinkle call to action buttons throughout the landing page. It includes sign up for the newsletter, sign up for a free trial, grab the offer now, download your free resource, participate in a webinar, connect with us, get a quote, etc.
You have to optimize your content exceptionally well here that tells your visitors exactly what you want them to do.Test multiple iterations with authoritative statements or actionable words that make the most sense.
9. Use testimonials to build trust and humanize your site
Testimonials help your visitors to trust you. It helps converts prospects into leads. When your visitors read quotes from your high-profile clients, it encourages them to invest in you, and you will notice a remarkable conversion impact soon.
10. Pay attention to your Social media content
No one can deny the strong influence of social media. Today, more than half of marketers use social media and about impressive 88% who have used it for at least a year increased their exposure. We all know that social media is all about visuals, but don’t think the use of content and less on this platform.
Visuals attract the audience but content such as quotes, slogans, taglines, breaking news, personify it. You can share a quote from the CEO with his photo instead of just sharing a text tweet. You can share images and articles, or launch a new product with energetic captions.
11. Turn your long-form content into a video
Videos help expand your audience and bring in new leads. If you have written a long-form article of about 4000 words, turn it into a video and share it on your YouTube or in the blog. You could make explainer videos, product videos, screencasts, or interviews or a summary of a giant article.Test multiple formats and analyze what works best for your audience.
12. Add user-generated content
User-generated content helps build trust and credibility. To gain maximum conversion rate, optimize your content by involving your customers in content creation. Why? Because people always make their decision on the first-hand experience and trust your customers more than you.
Showcase your customers using your product or benefiting from your product with product reviews, photos, videos, or testimonials. You can also interview your customers to share their success stories or case studies.
13. Check the readability score of your content
Once you are done with writing, check the readability score to match it with your audience preferences. Hemingway, Grammarly, readability score are some ideal tools for this purpose. Avoid using difficult or obscure words, or words that are too simplistic; for that matter; it may alienate some of your visitors.
Your Catch?
Use these tips and stick to them to drive a more holistic and effective content optimization strategy and boost your conversions, and get better leads.
Get creative with your offers, test different techniques more often, identify the barriers that keep your prospects from converting and cut those roadblocks out of the way.
Find the sweet spot where you are actually gaining leads. So go forth confidently and slay your competitors by wowing your prospects with these fundamental content optimization techniques.