20 Content Marketing Tactics That Convert Traffic into Customers
Content marketing is one of the top methods of attracting customers and keeping them interested in your brand. You should create great content that will keep your audience coming back for more. But it would be best if you made sure that the content you create is valuable to your customers.
You need to figure out what to write about and what you should say in your content. Your content marketing strategy will depend on your goals and what kind of content you will provide.
Some content marketing tactics include blog posts, video blogs, eBooks, infographics, social media, email newsletters, whitepapers, podcasts, webinars, etc. All of these types of content are valuable and effective.
Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing tactics to build your brand and business online. Content marketing allows your company to create high-quality content and publish it on various platforms.
When you use content marketing, you’re doing two things at once: creating compelling, helpful content for your audience and publishing it online where your target audience will see it.
If you’re not using content marketing yet, you’re leaving money on the table. Here are 20 content marketing tactics you should be using to generate sales and build an audience.
You can use these content marketing tactics to increase your conversion rates by 5X. This guide looks at 20 different tips that can help you.
Table of Contents
1 – Provide Value
If you’re new to content marketing, you’re probably looking at it as a one-way communication tool: the people who read your blog posts will get something out of them. But content marketing doesn’t just have to be something you offer to your audience; it can also be a conversation with your audience.
When you think about it, a great piece of content should have two parts: a message that informs people about you and your company and a second part that gives the reader a chance to engage with you.
This is a crucial step when you are planning a content marketing strategy. If you don’t give anything away, people won’t be interested in your content. They will think that the content is too dull and doesn’t offer much value.
If you post content on your website or social media channels, make sure that you have something valuable that you want to share. You might want to use a case study or testimonial to illustrate the value of your content.
When people read your content, they will be persuaded to do something. It is possible to sell your products or services through content marketing, but you need to have a compelling reason why you want to give something away to your readers or followers.
2 – Be Human
It’s easy to get lost in the data. So while you should always include data in your content marketing tactics, there is no need to sacrifice humanity or emotion when creating content.
People can smell phoney, and if they sense something that feels artificial or robotic, they will ignore your message. Instead, focus on what is true about your brand and what makes it real.
What are the values behind your brand? What are the beliefs, goals, and emotions that drive your brand? Then craft content that aligns with those qualities. The better your content is, the more likely people will relate to your brand and feel more connected to it.
If you’re in any way trying to persuade someone to do something, people need to understand why they should care. People respond to emotional appeals more than rational ones and even more than informational ones.
Emotional appeals tend to be more persuasive, allowing people to connect more easily. There are two significant forms of emotional appeal.
The first is altruism or making others feel better. This works well in appeals to help others. The second is the feeling of empathy. Empathy means being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and imagine what that feels like.
3 – Make It Easy
When you are trying to promote your business or website, you want to ensure that you present everything clearly and concisely. For instance, if you are trying to sell a product, you don’t want to add too many details. You don’t want the visitors to get confused and leave.
The same goes for websites.
- Make sure that you have a clear layout.
- Add relevant content and make sure that it is accessible to all users.
- Don’t use too many images because that can slow down your page load time.
- Make sure that your content is easy to read and understand. If it is, people will come back to visit your website often.
A recent survey conducted by Content Marketing Institute found that consumers prefer one company over another because of ease of access to information.
The research also showed that consumers are more likely to convert to customers if they are offered easy access to content and information that answer their questions. The key here is offering content that is easily accessible through various channels.
4 – Give Them Something to Say About You
It’s all about the story. You might be wondering how a company with such a simple product name can be so successful. If you’ve ever visited the website of H&M or Zara, you know that they are brands known for their ability to tell a story and give people a reason to purchase from them.
While they are known for cheap fashion, they have built their business around the fact that they can create a connection between the brand and its customers.
According to Content Marketing Institute, 82% of marketers actively seek ideas and inspiration about content marketing strategies and techniques. Yet, according to The Hubspot Blog, only 18% of businesses use content marketing to its full potential.
So, what’s holding you back? Maybe you don’t have much time to craft killer content? Or maybe you aren’t sure how to create compelling and engaging content? Or maybe you’re simply afraid of trying something new?
5 – Show Them How Good You Are
If you want to become an expert in your field, the best way is to show how you are knowledgeable. Publishing informative content that others find helpful is the best way to earn respect in your niche. You’ll attract readers who want to learn more about the topic.
You can use content marketing tactics to promote your business and increase sales. You’ll build authority in your industry, which means more people will seek your services.
Content marketing isn’t all that complicated, but it is time-consuming. You have to spend some time writing and editing content. But, once you get the hang of it, you’ll find that it’s easy and enjoyable to do.
But don’t just talk about the stuff you’re trying to sell, and don’t talk about your stuff without talking about your audience.
Content marketers can often get into trouble with customers because they don’t understand the difference between the two. Your readers will feel as if you’re talking down to them. When you talk about your audience, you talk like your audience, giving them a reason to care. By doing so, they’ll begin to trust you.
6 – Make It Easy to Share
If there is one lesson marketers and brands have learned from social media platforms, sharing is easy, and the more often people can share a piece of content, the more likely it will become viral.
So, it should come as no surprise that social sharing features are becoming increasingly integrated into content creation platforms.
How is it that a picture is worth a thousand words? It’s true. According to statistics, images are worth twice as many shares as text alone.
In addition to that, people often use photos to illustrate what they’re talking about. When creating your content, don’t overlook the power of pictures. A great way to share content with others is to include relevant images in your social media posts. If you want to see some examples of what I mean, look at some of my Facebook page updates.
You need to make it easy for people who want to share your content. Otherwise, they might just as easily share something else instead.
On average, people share 4.1 times per week. The more time they spend sharing on social media, the more likely they will share your content. So make it easy for people to spread the word.
7 – Tell a Story
The easiest way to persuade people to do something is to tell a story. According to author Gary Keller, writing compelling content can be challenging. But he says that if you’re putting yourself out there, you have to be clear about why you’re doing it.
One way to keep your content compelling is to give it a hook that keeps readers coming back for more. The hook is the beginning of your story. The rest of your content is the middle, and the end is the punchline that ties your story together.
To tell a story in your content marketing tactics, you need to provide context and value. To do this, it’s helpful to think about the audience and why they care about your brand.
Once you understand your target audience and why they’re interested in your company, you can start to think about the emotional aspects of the product or service. Your customers need to be engaged with your brand emotionally to take action.
8 – Give Them a Reason to Buy
One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when using content marketing is forcing customers to buy. This is usually the result of two things:
- An entrepreneur doesn’t understand the power of content marketing to increase customer retention
- An entrepreneur feels compelled to overcompensate because they are a new brand and have trouble generating leads.
Here’s a fun tip: don’t make people read your entire piece just because they have to. Give them one if you have a reason to read through. When we talk about creating a reason to read, we’re talking about how to connect to people.
Make sure they stick around and read the whole thing, making it worth their time. People will often choose to read a piece if they see the word “free” or “easy.” These two words are great motivators.
For example, you can use urgency to build momentum around a special promotion or offer. Or you can use urgency to encourage people to share their opinions. The main thing is that the message is clear: “If you don’t take advantage of this offer now, you’ll miss out on it!”
9 – Give Them a Reason to Return
Content marketing is hard work, and it’s tough to make money from it. But if you can figure out a way to entice people to come back, you’ll have an easy time making a profit.
Once people have an emotional connection to your content, they’ll be more likely to engage with you again. Make it easy for them to return to your blog with a sign-up form or a subscribe box.
To get an audience interested in listening to your story, you must first start with an emotional appeal. A compelling emotional appeal will leave people feeling angry, happy, or sad about the topic you’re talking about.
Some stories are better than others, so you should try to choose one that’s relevant to the audience. You can start by telling a story that shows how the topic you want to talk about affects you.
Another way to get people emotionally invested is to use vivid language that gives people a clear understanding of what you’re trying to convey. Use stories and illustrations to get people thinking about the topic at hand.
10 – Engage in Conversation
While content marketing can take many forms and be implemented in many ways, it can also be boiled down to two main tactics: publishing content and engaging in conversation.
Content marketing is a form of PR because it can help your brand build trust and credibility with consumers. But it is also PR because it’s a conversation between your brand and its audience. And because it’s a conversation, it’s an opportunity for you to have meaningful dialogue with your readers.
Engagement means being stimulating. It means providing something new and compelling to people and something worthwhile to say. So, if you’re wondering how to engage your content audience, start by thinking about how you can make yourself stand out. Be a little weird and quirky, and always put some personality into your posts.
11 – Provide Real Value
Value. Is it valuable? Yes. Is it unique? No. There’s no reason for you to write something that hasn’t been written before. Make sure your value prop has been thoroughly vetted and is as unique as possible.
Don’t just throw words together that sound good, and try to sound smart. If you’re not adding value, you’re wasting people’s time. Your customers don’t care about your brand—they care about their own goals and problems.
You have to do more than give away stuff for free. Indeed, the best content marketing tactics give away a little to get a lot. But the trick is to make it clear to readers that you’re giving them something of value. In other words, don’t just say, “Hey, check this out!” Instead, explain exactly how what you’re offering will help them and why it’s worth their time and money.
12 – Give Them a Chance to Win
Many people, even those willing to spend money on a product or service, will not purchase if they don’t feel like they’re getting something worthwhile in return.
In fact, in one study by the Harvard Business School, researchers found that “when the potential value of a product increases, consumers demand greater levels of free samples.” Free samples, offers, and contests all help increase the perceived value of a product or service, which means more sales.
When people think of content marketing, they think of marketing in general: long salesy paragraphs filled with lots of text. But many times, that isn’t the case.
You should focus content marketing tactics on giving your audience something valuable for free and then offering them a chance to win. For example, let’s say you wanted to write a blog post about how to choose a mattress.
Your goal is to give away something valuable for free (like how to choose a mattress), but then give people a chance to win something they care about by letting them know about a new product or service you’ve developed.
13 – Make Sure They Feel Like They Matter
Don’t just make them read about numbers. Tell them the story behind the numbers. This will make them feel more like they are essential to your brand.
For example, if you promote a new product or service, you could share how you met the company’s CEO and how the product was born. Or, if you are talking about a new website or social media post, you can share a funny story about the person who created it.
In addition to sharing stories, you can also use graphics and photos to show people how important they are to your brand. Your readers will want to come back if you create the right content.
As a content marketer, you’re responsible for telling the company’s story in its entirety. From a technical perspective, your job is to be a reliable resource for the information your audience needs to make decisions.
But your audience also wants to be part of the decision-making process. Your job is to make sure that your audience feels like they matter when you share information. One way to ensure that they feel like they matter is to show them that your content is relevant to the specific needs of your audience.
14 – Make it About Them
Content marketing tactics should be about the audience and not the brand. This is true in every type of marketing, especially in content marketing.
When creating content, start with the people you’re trying to connect with.
- How do they like to receive content?
- What’s the tone you want to set?
- How will they respond to your call to action?
- What’s your unique value proposition?
These are all questions to ask yourself.
This is a simple yet effective way to build trust and generate leads and sales. By getting your target audience involved with the content you share on social media, you show them that you value their opinions and have something worthwhile to say. It’s a simple but powerful way to connect and build relationships.
One of the most common mistakes marketers make is to forget that their customers are human beings and people. They need to relate to them and their problems.
And if you’re selling something, you need to get to know your customers. What would they like to see happen in the world? What are they struggling with? What do they care about? What would they like to buy, and why?
15 – Create a Call to Action
A call to action (CTA) is the most crucial element of any website or landing page. The single piece of text or image guides a visitor through the entire purchase process and eventually leads them to a confirmation email or phone call.
By adding a CTA, you tell the customer exactly what you want them to do, how to do it, when you expect them to complete the action, and where they can get more information.
But we’re not only talking about a call to action that leads to an opt-in email. We’re talking about the kind of CTA that will entice your readers to act and take action immediately.
If you’re going to make them take the next step in the sales process, you have to put a solid call to action at the end of the article. And if you don’t, they’ll be gone.
16 – Promote Social Sharing
Social sharing can be beneficial if you want to get traffic to your website. You can get more likes and shares to your posts by using social media. When others share your content, you can get more traffic. However, this is only beneficial if you build a substantial social following.
You must have a significant social network presence and a reasonable engagement rate to get this. Engagement means that your followers are willing to interact with your content.
The two main ways to use social media to promote your business are organic and paid. When it comes to organic social media promotion, it refers to comments, likes, retweets, etc., that happen naturally due to your content being shared.
This happens automatically and organically. But if you want to use paid social media for promotion purposes, you have to pay for people to like, retweet, share and comment on your content. It’s not cheap.
A study has shown that organic social sharing generates four times more traffic than paid sharing. In addition, organic social sharing is free and doesn’t cost you anything. It only costs you time and effort.
If you want to use social media to promote your business, you need to find an effective way to make sure your content gets seen. The first step is to create content that is valuable to your audience.
Next, it is crucial to find a social media platform that works well for you. For example, Twitter is great for short messages; Facebook is great for personal updates.
After you have found the right platform for your business, you need to get involved. Post regularly and engage with your audience. This will increase the chances of other people sharing your content.
You can also use tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule your content to be ready to go when it is published. This will ensure that it is more likely to get shared.
Finally, it is vital to plan your social media marketing. This will help you stay on track and ensure that you don’t miss any opportunities.
17 – Connect the Dots
To put together a complete picture of your content marketing efforts, you need to connect all the dots. Once you do that, you’ll see which parts are working and which aren’t. The whole reason to do content marketing in the first place is to get people talking about your company.
However, you need to ensure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck, looking at your content from as many angles.
We’ve already discussed creating a compelling call to action, but we haven’t yet looked at what makes a CTA click. To make sure your copy can convert better, start by connecting the dots between what your customers want and need and what you offer.
Once you know what your customer needs, what you can provide and what you offer, your CTA becomes clear. Think of it this way: What’s the one thing that solves all their problems at once? Your CTA will be clear and compelling if you can answer that question.
18 – Don’t Be Afraid to Be Weird
As a small business, you don’t have much room for wackiness. After all, you’re spending every dollar you earn trying to build your company.
If you’re spending your hard-earned money on content marketing tactics, don’t be afraid to take a few risks. Just make sure you have a plan if things don’t work out.
Many marketers fall into the trap of assuming that they should be talking in a traditional tone because they’re talking to people. But it turns out that most people don’t like being talked down to, which is fine. You don’t need to be a traditional marketer to speak to people, and you can still use humour in your content marketing. No law says you have to be boring in your marketing.
19 – Be Honest
Today, it is common for companies to promise things to their customers. This is done to get their business. However, the problem is that sometimes the promises made aren’t kept.
Companies do this because they know that they will make money if they keep their promises. But the problem is that when they don’t keep their promises, their reputation is damaged and many customers feel let down.
It’s easy to get caught up in a sales pitch and forget about the importance of keeping your promises. But if you are going to promise something, it is essential that you follow through.
So, how much of your content marketing tactics directly result in sales? And how much is driven by other factors, such as branding?
A good rule of thumb is that you should never be marketing something you don’t believe in yourself. To do so only increases the chances that you’ll alienate your audience and be seen as a disingenuous brand.
20 – Tell a Story
For urgency to work as an effective persuasion technique and sales driver, the consumer must believe that buying now is the best option. You can’t just assume that someone will act on urgency if you don’t present them with the facts. You have to tell a story in your content marketing tactics to drive urgency.
Stories are fascinating. They’re easy to remember, and we love telling stories about ourselves. We like to connect with others through the power of stories.
Stories are a powerful persuasion technique. They can be an even more effective persuasion tool than data. The only problem is that when you’re just telling a story, no one knows if you’re telling the truth or if the facts are accurate.
Content marketing tactics that include storytelling are an effective tool to connect with and build relationships with prospects. Stories are a powerful form of communication because they are often more memorable than data.
In addition, the audience is more likely to share content that includes personal accounts than they are if the material is just factual. In other words, storytelling creates empathy between the writer and the reader. Marketers need to figure out what story they want to tell to get started with content marketing.
Conclusion
When building a brand and growing a business, marketing is far more than just throwing stuff up online and hoping it will go viral.
It requires a strategy, a plan, and a consistent focus on making a profit. But if you have a well-built product, an effective sales process, and a great brand, you can grow your business through content marketing tactics.
If you’re struggling to convert traffic into customers, it may mean that you’re missing out on some of the best content marketing tactics that are currently available. By using them all, you’ll find more visitors who are ready to buy and a considerable percentage of those who will become customers.
You can’t just write great content and hope people find it. Use these content marketing tactics to make your content stand out from the competition.
