Business websites need content, call-to-actions, and your company’s contact information. While you only have a few options for the how to give contact information, you have much more flexibility when it comes to the content and calls to action.
Here are ten types of content you can publish to your site to generate and convert more leads:
Blogs
Blogs are arguably the most important content type in this list. They need a minimal investment in time and money, but pay great dividends in the long-run.
The best part about blogs is that they hang around in Google’s SERPs (search results). This HubSpot article illustrates how effective they stay months after their publication:
“The effort you put in yesterday can turn into hundreds of thousands of views and leads in the future. In fact, about 70% of the traffic each month on this very blog comes from posts that weren’t published in the current month.”
Give it a year, and you’ll be getting traffic from your first and most current blogs and everything in between. It’s a sustainable way of attracting qualified leads to your site. It’s an often overlooked part of SEO ( and one of the easiest although it is a “long game”)
Videos
One of the best ways to get a user’s attention is to place a video right at the top of your homepage. Videos are engaging, informative, and stay relevant for a long time. Professional ones are relatively expensive, but you won’t need more than a few high quality ones per year. Quick DIY short videos that are useful to visitors are great for social media and can be re-purposed to be used on your webpage.
Evergreen content
Your website needs standard content that informs prospects about your company, its history, and its values. This is known as evergreen content, and it rarely needs to be changed or updated. Blog posts can also be evergreen. Informative posts where the information doesn’t change a lot over time are great for the longevity I mentioned in the “blog” section at the beginning of this post. They can also be updated if things change from time to time giving them even more power.
FAQs
FAQs are wildly popular among searchers since they condense a lot of information into bite-sized pieces. FAQ pages should be easy to browse and contain a lot of white space. Google is doing some very clever things (especially with voice search) that make FAQ pages even more important. They give visitors the answers to the questions they are asking themselves (and their smart phones or Alexa) and so this sort of content is becoming even more important in marketing and conversion.
eBooks
Like videos, ebooks require a significant time investment, but creating one will last you a long time. These are a great opportunity to show your thought-leadership and expertise.
According to this Practical Ecommerce article, you should consider hiding ebooks behind a gate to get a lead’s contact information:
“Gated content is anything behind a form. It is any content that requires a user to give some information — usually personal information, like an email address — in order to see, read, or interact with the content. For example, almost all B-to-B eBooks are gated.”
This is a common content marketing strategy. Prospects think they’re getting an eBook for free, but in reality they’re paying you with an email address.
A more modern form of this same principle is a checklist or other short from content. Its more easily consumable and in many cases more effective.
White papers
White papers may not be fun or interactive, but they’re certainly informative and credible. They’re great for sharing research with your industry and prospective customers. You can also choose to exchange these for a lead’s email address.
Infographics
If you’ve got a lot of information to share with prospects, consider organizing it into an infographic. These are a good choice if you have several interesting statistics to share with your target audience. (this can also be used as gated content)
Case studies
Prospects like to see work you’ve done in the past. By writing about this in a case study, you can illustrate the benefits of your product. Story telling is hugely powerful – how better to show what you can do for people than to show how you have done is for someone else?
Testimonials
A customer endorsing your business is good for your reputation. When you publish it on your website, it’s also good for your search engine site rankings. These are especially important for prospects at the end of the sales funnel who need an extra boost of encouragement. Putting scattered testimonials across your site at key points in the “buyers journey” can increase conversions dramatically. You could also consider dedicating and entire page on your site just for testimonials.
Company news
You need a place on your website to post company updates and other related news. This is important for keeping your customers up-to-date. Keep in mind that you should be able to share this link in emails and on social media to give it more exposure.
These are just some of the types of content you can add to your site. For more information about the different types of content you can publish, contact us today.
