In content marketing, your brand has two goals to fulfil. The first is achieving visibility through SEO and paid advertising. Once that is achieved, however, your goal is to inspire conversions – to transform readers into clients and customers. To achieve that, you need to focus on how your content converts. Then, improve those results with the process of conversion rate optimisation.

Fortunately, this is a procedure that has been well-established. If you want your content to convert, the following seven steps will help you achieve and increase conversions with any content strategy. Let’s dive right into the best ways to encourage your audience to take desired actions.

The Basics of Conversion Rate Optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation is all about inspiring action. Conversions can be defined as any action you want your readers to take. This includes signing up for a newsletter, creating an account for your online service, buying a product, or booking a consultation. The goal of your content is to transform curiosity into a desire to take that action, while providing the means of completion.

Optimising your conversion rate relies on understanding how conversions are achieved and improving both the motivation and action-taking elements of the process.  We can help you achieve your goal of conversion rate optimisation in seven essential steps.

1) Identify Your Audience and Their Needs

First, identify your target audience and the needs or desires they seek to fulfil. A sporting goods brand targeting athletes may focus on their desire to boost athletic performance. In contrast, when targeting casual athletes, the brand may emphasize comfort and motivation to exercise. A gardening brand may focus on reader’s desire for seasonal seeds and the supplies needed to nurture them indoors or outdoors.

Knowing your audience and what motivates them will help you create content that is both appealing to the right people and directs your readers toward products or services that fulfill their desires.

2) Address Pain Points and/or Goals

Seek to help your readers solve problems and achieve goals. Each piece of content should focus on one problem or goal. Runners may be looking for the perfect sock that doesn’t bunch or soak. Or you might target the unique needs of gardeners who live in apartments. It helps to create a full list of individual challenges, pain-points, and goals that your audience might have to create your content schedule.

Then write insightful, interesting, and useful content to help solve these problems, with some element pointing toward your products as an answer.

3) Encourage the Audience to Take Action

Provide actions that your audience can take to address their problems and goals. Persuade your audience to take actions that will benefit them and guide them closer to conversion. Encourage them both toward DIY solutions and solutions that include your product or service. Content should be empowering and uplifting, getting readers in the mood to take action when they finish reading your piece.

4) Incorporate Calls to Action

A call-to-action is a statement (and often a link or button) that gives readers a specific action to take. “Contact us today” or “Try the X product” or “Sign up for our newsletter to learn more” are all common – if basic – examples of calls to action. These remind readers who reach the end of your content to transition to action-taking instead of simply scrolling to the next page.

You can also embed calls to action in the middle of your article. Placing them near the top can help catch the attention of readers who are skimming for specific solutions. These readers are often more ready to take action quickly.

5) Cater to Different Learning Styles

Consider presenting your content in different formats to accommodate different learning styles. Some people absorb information better when it is presented visually, like an infographic. Others appreciate a video or even just an audio track so they can listen to the article instead of reading it. Even interactive calculators and simple web activities can help engage more tactile learners.

6) Regularly Update and Refresh Your Content

Keep your content current. Even the best-converting pages “grow stale” over time if there have been innovations, trend changes, or new technology introduced since the content was written. Search engines also favour pages that have been more recently published or updated.

7) Measure Your Conversion Success

Lastly, measure your success and constantly find ways to improve your strategy. This is where conversion rate optimisation becomes an ongoing process. Determine the conversion rate of your existing pages by tracking how often readers respond to your call-to-action or transition to shopping/signing up on your website after reading the content. Then adjust your strategy to hone in on engagement, motivation, and action-inspiration with each new piece of content you release.

Effective content creation and focus on conversions can have a profound impact on your brand. When you are creating content that answers popular questions, solves common problems, and effectively motivates readers to engage with your products or services, you will quickly notice an increase in both web traffic and new client transactions.

For professional search engine and conversion optimisation services, contact us today.

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