Your website has a tough job. It must appeal to your site visitors in a way that encourages engagement and moves those visitors toward action, and it must do this without necessarily knowing anything about your visitors when they first arrive.
It must appeal to your site visitors in a way that encourages engagement and moves those visitors toward action, and it must do this without necessarily knowing anything about your visitors.
Once a visitor has been on your blog or connected with you via social media or email, you have much more information to work with — assuming you have good CRM and marketing automation tools in place.
But even without that information, your site needs to do the following:
- Address prospects’ problems or pain points
- Educate
- Demonstrate your experience and expertise
- Prove effectiveness of your solutions
- Build trust
- Provide a way to reach you
With all that is required of an effective marketing website, the planning and strategy that go into the site before the first line of code is written will have an enormous impact on how well your site performs. The tips below will make the process more productive.
Good Website Copy will Make or Break You
When it comes to content marketing, having great website content can make or break all of your marketing efforts.
You not only have to create copy that resonates with your current customers but you also have to keep your future customers in mind.
With only a few seconds to grab website visitors’ attention, your website content needs to tell a story that engages, adds insight and educate your visitors. Copy should be memorable, thought-provoking, useful, and interesting.
If you can’t capture your visitors’ interest, they will quickly leave your site to go to your competitors.
To get you on the path to writing great website content that your future customers will love, I’ve outlined a few tips below.
Focus on Your Customers’ Interests
When people are seeking information online it’s to find answers, to relieve their pain points or solve a problem.
HypnoArt / Pixabay
Website copy needs to address the questions that your visitors have.
You need to anticipate their needs and focus all of your content on the reasons why these visitors are coming to your site in the first place. So, while you’re writing copy, take yourself out of the equation and focus on the future customers that might be reading it instead. There should be more “you” than “we” in your writing.
Take yourself out of the equation and focus on the future customers and focus on your customer’s needs and what they are looking to read instead. Your website copy and blog articles should be more about the customer and their problems and pain points than about you.
Let’s be honest; no one cares about you or your brand.
Accuracy is a Must
Factual mistakes, half-truths, and outright misleading information can and will do real damage to your company’s reputation.
You’re putting out information to be known as a thought leader; if your content isn’t correct, you’ll be known as the opposite: as a company that people can’t and will not trust.
Accuracy is critical with grammar and spelling. You don’t want preventable and dumb mistakes to make you look bad, so have someone else proofread content before uploading it to your website.
Put Thought into Your Headlines
Your headline is the first glimmer of information that your website visitors will see.
The headline needs to capture their interest and make them click on your link to read more.
You want to excite and engage them.
The headline maybe the sole reason someone decides to read your content or not.
You need to make sure your headline is actually related to the information you’ve written on your page—no one wants to feel like he or she was tricked into coming to your website with a click-bait headline.
Originality Matters
Creating original content will not only help you with your search engine rankings, but your visitors will appreciate it too. Rehashing the same old ideas and concepts as your competitors won’t help you stand out in the crowd. No one will seek out your information if he or she has heard it all before.
Rehashing the same old ideas and concepts as your competitors won’t help you stand out in the crowd. No one will look at you as a thought leader if your information if they have heard it all before.
Bring Value
Hermann / Pixabay
Unless information is useful to the reader, what’s the point of writing it? Your website content should be educational, so your readers can learn from it. After all, they’re seeking out information so they can become more knowledgeable. It should also be actionable, with tips and advice that they can apply to their own lives—but without telling them what to do. Simply writing down your thoughts without truly thinking about how valuable it is, will be a waste of time and resources.
Your website content should be educational, so your readers can learn from it. It should solve a pain point or assist with managing a problem.
People are seeking information so they can become more knowledgeable and make better, more informed decisions.
Content should also be actionable, with tips and advice that they can apply to their own lives—but
without telling them what to do.
Simply writing down your thoughts without truly thinking about how valuable it will be a waste of time and resources.
Use Different Mediums
Not everyone wants to read a blog post to figure out an answer to a question.
Some people would rather watch videos, view infographics, or listen to podcasts to gain knowledge.
So when you create website content, mix up your delivery methods so you can target as the many types of learners as possible.
Gain Traffic with Great Content
Poor quality and misinformation on website content will get you nowhere. In fact, it will damage your reputation, potentially permanently.
Taking the easy path and not putting in the time and effort it requires to create awesome content won’t attract and entice your future customers. To gain traffic, your website content needs to be exceptional, so focus on your future customers, pay attention to headlines, be original, provide value, and create different types of content.
To gain traffic, your website content needs to be exceptional.
Focus on your future customers, pay attention to recent headlines, blog comments and similar for ideas of what their pain points are.
Most of all, be original, provide value, and create different types of content.
Ask for Action
Every page of your website should lead naturally toward one thing: the next step in the buyer’s journey.
That might simply be the next page on the site, subscribing to an email or newsletter, downloading a white paper or eventually reaching out for contact with your sales team.
The difficult task here is balancing the need to maintain this tight focus while also presenting the visitor with reasonable options for their next steps. Again, planning and strategy will determine what those options should be and how they should be presented.
If you’re successful at defining success, moving prospects toward that end goal and giving them opportunities to engage and commit, you will have created all the elements for success.
You’ll have a content marketing site that converts visitors to subscribers, subscribers to leads and leads to clients.
Source: B2C
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