Your primary role as a content creator is to write content that sells, attracts traffic as well as achieve all the outcomes set out for your business.
But, regardless of the fact that this is the goal of every content marketing effort, writing content that converts readers to buyers is not a cakewalk.
A lot of content writers are having a real hard time when it comes to using their content to convert readers to buyers or even attract website traffic. But, this doesn’t have to be so.
I know you’re wondering; so, what can i do to write content that sells and attracts traffic? Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this tutorial. In this guide, I will show you how to break free from mediocre results and finally write content that can convert readers to actual buyers.
As someone that’s been in your shoes at some point, in the following paragraphs, I’ll be sharing with you result driven strategies you can use to transform your content from zero to outstanding results…
Identify Your Goal
The first thing you need to do as you set out to write content that sells is to clearly identify what want to achieve with that piece of content.
So, start with asking yourself this question, What Do I seek to Achieve With This? This is one of the first questions I ask students in our content marketing class.
And it’s by far one of the most important information you want to identify, if you plan to write content that drives conversion.
Because your goal shapes everything about your content. And the moment you define your goal, you can then use it to adjust your content and the marketing strategy you’ll use to push it out, in a way that the results can be achieved easily.
Doing this enables you to align the content accordingly, using specific strategies that will help you to achieve the goal you have in mind.
Without identifying the goal for your content, you’ll hardly be able to create content that sells.
Find your Audience
To write content that sells, you have to write for who’s willing to buy. So, it’s time to identify who’s buying before even creating the content.
When I started out content marketing, I didn’t have a clear idea about who’s my target audience.
My entire goal was to create content and keep the blog updated. And I did this, day in, day out.
Unfortunately for me, this approach hardly delivered any result. It didn’t drive in traffic or bring in any buyer until I later went out of business.
Are you currently experiencing this kind of results with your content with your content marketing effort? If you just said yes, then trust me, you don’t want to wait to run out of business like I did.
So, first of all, I want you to realize that content marketing is not a hit and run marketing strategy.
It’s a process based on creating solution based information to a need, from a clearly defined audience in order to get them to take a specific action.
Based on the foregoing, to create content that sells and converts your readers to buyers, you have to identify your target audience or differently put…
Find out the people who’ll be interested in reading your content and buying from you.
When you do, you’ll be able to know the kind of content that matter to these people, their needs, solutions they need, key words they use to search for this solutions and what they expect to get in return for every search.
Getting armed with this information already has you equipped for the kind of content that maters to this audience. And from there, you can then go ahead to tailor your content to meet up with this audience and their expectations.
Optimize for Visibility
To create content that sells, you need visibility. And to get this kind of massive visibility, your content has to be visible to the search engine and after that, it also has to appeal to the person that searched for it.
So, to achieve this, you’ll need to optimize for search engine visibility using keyword research and analysis. Doing this will demand that you understand the popular key words used by your target audience and be able to use same in your content.
You can learn more about keyword analysis and SEO here.
The second step is to optimize your header titles and introduction in a way that both will appeal to your target audience.
It might sound very insignificant but, the title of your post is one of the most significant part of your content that cannot be ignored.
Because, your post title and description is the first thing a potential reader sees on Google Search Results Page, after they make a Google search.
So naturally, your post title can decide whether a reader will click through to read your content or not.
To write content that sells, you need to have a headline that will sell. And to make this possible, you have to pay attention to your headlines.
The more you pay attention to creating a compelling headline that’ll grab the attention of your audience, the more your chances of getting them to click through and read the content.
The third part of your content you can optimize to keep a reader’s interest in your content is the intro.
Beyond your title, you need a compelling introduction that will ignite the interest of the reader to continue reading your content.
Anything less than this might get them to bounce back, after clicking on the content. And this is not good for your blog’s SEO.
Evolve a Solution
Content that sells is a piece of content that provides a clear solution to the need of a clearly defined audience.
Now that you’ve been able to identify your audience your next step is to find out their needs and then evolve a solution based on this need in form of a piece of content.
One of the easiest ways to find out the needs of your target audience is to follow through their search history, by doing a keyword research.
Find out, what exactly are they searching for on the internet? What keywords are they using to search for these things?
Doing this will give you a clue about the problems faced by your target audience or simply put, the things that matter to them and the solutions they need.
There are a handful of Keyword research tools that will be helpful in your research here, including tools like WordStream. Others include Ahrefs Keyword Generator, Google Keyword Tool etc.
You can use these tools to further research your target audience and their needs so you can find the best solution for them with your content.
Convince to Convert
Before you can create content that sells, you need to sound so convincing in your writing that a reader will have no choice but to consider checking your offer, after they come in contact with your content.
There are certain important elements of content writing that will come into play if you plan to convince your audience so you can sell to them.
And one of this elements is the tone you write your content.
As a matter of fact, the tone or how you sound while writing a piece of content is largely dependent on two things viz: your goals and the specific kind of audience you’re writing for.
For example, John Doe’s goal for writing Content X is to create the image of a well established expert in the mind of his audience.
For John Doe to achieve this goal, he’ll have to selectively choose words, phrases, and adjectives that’ll make him sound like an expert all through the content.
Anything less than this and the content will flop.
On the other hand, another content writer, Jane Doe writes very well but she is in a niche with an audience that’s typically skeptical of her kind of content.
For Jane Doe to create better results with her content, she’ll have to utilize a lot of case studies and social proof in each piece of content she creates.
In a nutshell, the moment you identify your audience and your goal, you need to align your content to fit in with their own realities.
And to do this, you have to build trust by establishing your authenticity, demonstrating your expertise, and using a combination of adjectives and emotional trigger words to convince them.
Here’s a complete guide on how to identify your target audience.
Connect & Engage
Creating a strong connection with your audience is very crucial when it comes to writing content that sells.
For your audience to be able to buy from you, they need to be able to relate to your content.
If your content is meant for single mothers for instance, as a single mother landing on your website, I need to be able to relate to the content and everything about it without feeling out of place.
To achieve this result as a content writer, it is important you pay attention to the words, adjectives and phrases used throughout your content.
Also, share relatable stories. This helps in creating a deeper connection with your audience.
It also has a way of doubling your engagement. Because people want to share, comment and like what they can relate to.
Remember, people love stories. And the more relevant stories you share through your content, the more you build authenticity while improving your engagement rates.
PS: While sharing your story, be sure you don’t create a disconnect with your audience. Focus on sharing only relevant stories and anecdotes.
Here’s a complete guide on how to create content that connects with your audience.
Create a Compelling CTA
After all is said and done, to successfully create content that sells, you need to create a compelling CTA also known as call to action.
This is the resolution.
I have seen a great lot of Content with great offers but zero call to action. You don’t want to do this with your own content.
You want to work on creating a call to action that is not just there at the end of your post but one that’s both visible and strong enough to get a reader to take action.
Beyond placing a call to action at the end of each post, try to make your CTA visible throughout your post.
It can come in the form of links or natural phrases that directs your readers to tale actions. Doing this increases your chances of actually having them take actions.
I usually tell marketers, although all your readers may not click on your CTA but truth is, the more compelling your CTA, the better your chances of getting clicks.
Check out this article by MasterClass to learn more about how to write an effective call to action.
Final words
Now that you know the fireproof strategies to create content that sells, it’s time to head over to your dashboard and start creating fast selling content.
But while at it, always remember that to create better conversions with your content, you need to get more visibility.
So, there’s need to put in place strategies to drive in more views for your content like search engine optimization, keyword analysis, content promotion etc. Doing this will enhance the results you get from your content.
That said, we already know, content marketing cannot be exhaustively learned in one piece of content… That’s why we have a content marketing academy where you can join writers like you to learn the bolts and nuts of content marketing. Click here to join a class.
So now, it’s over to you. I’d like to know; what’s your biggest challenge when it comes to writing content that sells?
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