James’ Secret Formula for Creating Content that Converts
You’ve got a website and it looks great so you’re ahead of 50% of NZ businesses who don’t have one.
But….
….the incoming traffic isn’t what you expected and there’s bugger all conversions and sales. i.e. it ain’t making you $$.
There are well over a billion people using Google Search and yet you are invisible to just about everyone.
This makes you want to bang your head against the wall, right?
Well don’t.
What you forget is that a website is just the tip of the iceberg. As the saying goes “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”.
Your website cannot do what you expect of it if you don’t have a plan and the right tools to get found. You can’t break the ice with just a website. You have to communicate with your prospects, give them something of value and build trust with them.
These things take time but they’re worth it. One day you will have a site that generates leads and sales automatically.
Creating Content for Search Rankings
Search engines are tools that you can use so that prospects find your website. You have to befriend Google and feed it with valuable content. By doing this you are feeding your prospects too.
When creating content for search rankings, keep in mind that your content should:
- Be accurate and provide valuable information to your readers
- Be relevant to your products or services
- Include optimised keywords that you readers are using
- Be in line with Google’s search algorithm
You need high quality content to build authority for your website and eventually sell your products or services. There is no point in producing content that doesn’t have a purpose.
That is why you need to establish your buyer persona. Get to know your audience and take the necessary steps to determine your target market. This is your key to success.
Conduct Market Research
Doing market research can be daunting. You can simplify the process by creating and using a buyer persona profile.
What exactly is a buyer persona? It is a profile of your ideal customer; the one that you need to influence with your content.
Market research will provide you with the necessary data about your buyer persona. It will decode your audience’s most urgent needs. It will enable you to focus your content on the people who are interested in your business.
The core of your research must answer the following questions:
What are their problems that need solving?
- What factors are they focusing on when they make a buying decision?
- What are the remedies they are looking for to fix their problems?
Planning your Content
Time to get into the meat of this. You want to know my secrets don’t you?
Before you start writing do these four steps:
- Know the purpose of your content
First you need to understand why you are creating the content in the first place. What do you want to achieve? What particular group of people are you trying to reach? What are the topics that you need to highlight in your content? These are the questions you need to answer before you begin creating anything.
- Determine your target audience
You must get to know the people you are targeting. Once you understand your target audience you can move onto the next step. Before you move on read my article on creating buyer personas. If you don’t have a buyer persona already take the time to create one.
Now it’s time to organise all your personal opinions, ideas, thoughts and the information you have gathered.
- Get information from credible resources
When you post content on your website, it needs to be accurate and reliable. You don’t want to create the wrong impression since one of your goals is to build authority within your market. When collecting information make sure your sources are kosher and keep track of the websites you use.
- Highlight your brand
Your brand should stand out in all your content, so you need to be consistent. You do not want to confuse your audience by shifting to various topics that are not relevant to your business. Make sure you only tackle topics that are closely related to what you offer in your business.
Types of Content for your Website
There are different types of content for your website. It all depends on the goal you want to achieve. You may want to write content that can:
- Entertain
- Educate
- Persuade
- Convert
You may think that the most important thing is to persuade your prospects and convert them into paying customers – think again! You should produce content that entertains or educates or both.
Entertaining content helps you reach your target market more effectively. This sort of content is emotional and very shareable.
But you need to give your readers some substance – you want content that educates your readers and opens their mind on how they can benefit from your brand.
Are you familiar with brand storytelling? Big names like Apple, Coca-cola and Lego are using this. Did you take your kids to see the Lego movie? It really is awesome because it is a great big piece of brand storytelling.
Brand storytelling ties emotional content that has the capability to draw in your prospects closer to your brand. Great storytelling has the power to convert the usual site visitor into an avid and supportive customer. All you need to do is to tap into their emotions and give them a reason to follow and share the content on your website.
A good example of brand storytelling is Coca-Cola and its popular 20-20 project. This emotionally connected content can be found on YouTube. Coca-Cola boldly used content marketing as a major driver of growth for their company. Consumer-generated stories are featured in their 20-20 project. Its impact is huge if we count their ads that have gone viral.
The Importance of Headlines
Do you click on articles with boring headlines? Or do you click on headlines that interest you and offer you something? Headlines are crucial and they will make or break your content.
Create clickable headlines by:
- Putting special emphasis on the first three words
- Make sure it’s within the 65-character mark or less for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes
- Making it concise and direct to the point – your audience must immediately understand what your content is
The anatomy of a good headline starts with a good, short and catchy phrase. It must be easy to read and generate enough curiosity that the reader will be compelled to click on the article. Here are some good examples of strong headlines:
- Home Saving Hacks for Busy Mothers
- The Shocking Truth About Information Overload
- 13 Surprising Reasons Why Your Business Fails
- How to Generate Leads without Burning Your Pocket
Make the Necessary Revisions
Get in the habit of revising your content until you find it worthy of your website. Keep in mind that you must post high quality and valuable content. You have to refine your content before you hit the publish button.
When revising any content, you need to check the following:
- Check your grammar – you can use Grammarly or any other free online tool to check for grammar or spelling errors in your content.
- Examine the structure of your content – always remember coherent content will lead the reader through a clear line of thinking.
- Review all the parts – starting with your headline, then the introduction, body and ending. Each part must have a purpose and relevancy to your topic.
- Assess the overall value of your content – before you publish the content put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and ask yourself this: “What value will I get from reading this?”
If you have now created an epic piece of content it’s time to publish it on your website.
Download my Content Creation Checklist and follow my easy but extremely effective guide.
