Content Strategy for a Website:
The Guide To Increase Website Conversion Rates
They say content is king, but producing content just for content’s sake is simply not good business. While time consuming, content marketing when done well is a key component to boosting your brand and increasing conversions on your website.
In this in-depth guide you’ll learn:
- A branding and content strategy for a website
- What to say in your content to increase leads and sales and keep search engines happy
- How to increase your sales through content
It’s time to capitalise on the content opportunities that may be right in front of you, and win more customers online.
Contents
Chapter 1:
Digital Branding Strategies
In this chapter we cover getting your positioning right and using brand awareness to attract new people to your website.
Growing your brand online requires a content strategy that moves a prospect through a customer journey.
Starting with brand awareness, and ending with advocacy, your website's job is to support this journey.
This will include image choices and a colour palette your customer avatar will like, as well as website pages and blog posts, and other content designed to get them to convert into a lead and eventually a customer.
Focus on Increasing Your Brand Awareness
Building your brand into a recognisable and trusted name is essential in order to stand out in an increasingly competitive environment.
To do this you need to boost your brand awareness by creating compelling, useful content like blog posts or podcasts, and then distributing it to where your target audience hangs out online.
This will support the ongoing goal to generate new visitors to your website, and in turn, drive those visitors to become loyal customers.
Use Great Website Design
We all want a website that is both visually appealing and also converts visitors to take action. This can be difficult when you have limited space (and a short visitor attention span) to work with.
This becomes even more of a problem considering that now the majority of web traffic comes via smart phones. The best website designs must also always be mobile-friendly and load fast!
Focus on using unique colour and font combos, and impactful images. That is what will differentiate you from other businesses.
Check out these ideas for photos and images you can use on your website. From making stock photos more unique to capturing your own imagery that reflects your brand and personality, you can really make your website visually stand out and design a website you (and your visitors) will love!
Chapter 2:
Copywriting Formulas
Great copywriting all starts with understanding who your ideal customer, or avatar, is. When you really understand their problems or desires, as it applies to what you sell, then you can meet then where they are in their customer journey with you.
There are two main types of copy - educational and direct response copywriting.
Your educational content will help build trust and your direct response copy will guide them to take action with you.
This chapter will give you formulas to get your copy read.
Focus on Writing Content for Your Ideal Customer Avatar
The success of your content strategy hinges on knowing who your target market is. Copywriting without a customer profile in mind is almost pointless because your messaging can become too broad.
While traditionally creating customer personas has been about defining demographics such as age, gender, etc, you might get more clarity on your target market if you focus on the specific problem you solve or desire you fulfil for them.
Once you have established your perfect customer avatar and understand exactly who you’re talking to, you can adapt your marketing to more effectively communicate with and relate to the audience you serve, ultimately differentiating yourself from the competition.
Write a Catchy Home Page Headline
Your homepage headline is likely to be the first thing people see upon entering your website. You need to be strategic with this text, but you have such a limited amount of space to do so.
We have 2 simple tips for writing a home page headline (also known as a ‘benefit statement’) that will ensure your web visitors do not even think about leaving your site.
They involve answering the questions ‘what’ and ‘how’. Start with what benefit you provide to your target market. This can be your core headline. Then say how you specifically deliver that. This can be a sub-headline that sits underneath.
And the most important element to remember – keep your customer at the heart of your headline.
Use Different Marketing Hooks
The most effective marketing hooks will be able to turn web visitors into leads, and leads into customers. But how do you resonate with consumers best?
It can be useful to think about three different types of customers or personas, and then adapt your messaging to each as needed.
Some of us respond to emotive content, some of us are more logical and some like to imagine what it would be like to be a customer of yours.
For example, you can speak to the customer’s emotions and tap into their feelings and/or beliefs. You can talk to the logical thinker, with facts and specifics and sound reasoning to sway their decision. Or you can play into their imagination and curiosity, conveying exactly the type of experience they will have with your business being your customer.
Make sure to use all three.
Get More Clicks with Headline Formulas
Impactful headlines are crucial to your website content strategy and overall digital marketing campaigns.
Headlines are used in email subject lines, the captions in social media posts, digital ads and as blog article titles.
You only have a few precious seconds to hook your visitor and capture their attention enough to make them want to stay and and consume your content.
Get more people to read your content, and hopefully convert to leads or customers, with these top 10 formulas for catchy, click-worthy headlines.
Treat Your Videos as Sales Tools
Video marketing is now arguably the most effective way to sell your products and services, and increase your website conversions.
If you haven’t considered using video sales letters (also known as ‘VSLs’) on your website, it might just be the perfect time to do so. The best placement for these is on your key pages - such as your home page and sales pages.
There are some specific elements you need to use to ensure your video sales letters are as successful as possible. You need to nail your script with a catchy hook right from the opening, an engaging story and a powerful call to action (CTA).
You also should consider making your video as short as possible to deliver the key messages and use additional transitions and video filler footage to keep the person who is watching interested.
Supercharge Your Marketing using Storytelling
Using storytelling in your marketing can be a very successful sales tactic when employed effectively. It is perhaps the best way to help customers build an emotional connection with your brand, and therefore turn them into raving fans.
It gives your business an identity, a personality, bringing it to life. No matter what your business sells, be it products or services, and regardless of the industry you’re in, we can bet you have a story, or indeed many stories, to share that will allow you to better connect and resonate with your ideal customer.
Not sure where to start? Try sharing why you started the business and personal or professional achievements and failures (yes, being vulnerable works!).
Run a Sales Webinar
Webinars are a powerful marketing strategy that can help you generate highly qualified leads and easily sell your offers. If you're currently using webinars as part of your marketing strategy or looking to start, it's important to plan carefully to ensure you're maximising conversions.
To improve your webinar conversions, you can follow this simple copywriting formula:
- STEP 1: Welcome your attendees by validating their decision to attend.
- STEP 2: Hook them in by outlining what they are about to learn.
- STEP 3: Introduce yourself with an elevator pitch.
- STEP 4: Teach something, but don’t go overboard. You don’t want to give them so much info that they can take it and go elsewhere or do it themselves.
- STEP 5: Share testimonials to support that you know your stuff.
- STEP 6: Add in a CTA (Call to Action) to tell them what to do next, such as to book in a sales call.
Chapter 3:
SEO Content Writing
As part of your content strategy for a website, your pages and blog posts need to be written and optimised for both people and search engines.
This chapter will give you a foundation of how to use the right keywords and where to position them so your pages can be found in Google.
Creating and maintaining a blog is also a great way to assist with your SEO friendly content because each article is a possibility to rank for a new keyword phrase.
Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
Blogging is a fantastic way to ensure you keep your prospects and customers informed and up to date through ongoing content you post on your website.
In fact, blogs are not only a great marketing and selling tool, they also help with your SEO.
Search engines, such as Google, favour posts that are longer in length, targeted to a keyword phrase, easily readable and contain multiple images, and in some cases a video.
Regularly updating old content and consistently publishing new content on your site is also highly recommended to increase the shareability and rankability of your content.
You can dive into more detail about each of these steps here - how to write blog posts for SEO.
Use Alt-Text
You may have heard the term 'alt text, wondered what it is and if you need to use it. Alt-text (alternative text) is invisible text that describes the appearance or function of an image on a page.
It helps with SEO by enabling search engines like Google to ‘read’ or interpret your photos and images.
It’s also used by screen readers and other assistive technologies. These tools help people who can't see use websites with images by reading out the alt-text.
You can add this text where you add in photos to your pages, near where you give them a title. Limit the number of characters used to less than 125, and include your target keyword, or variations of it, where appropriate.
You can learn more here about how alt-text helps boost SEO.
Chapter 4:
Make Money as a Content Creator
Let's face it. You create content either to sell more content or to sell your products and services right?
You can "sell" from your content in different ways. You can either package your knowledge into an online course or membership, or you can use content in sales pages on your website that promote your products and services.
In this chapter you will learn about tools you can use to create courses for your WordPress website and the #1 thing that helps you sell more... regardless of what you are selling.
Package Your Knowledge into an Online Course
If you’re looking to sell an e-course, you might already be aware of several platforms or tools that allow you to do just that - like Kajabi, Thinkific and Teachable, to name a few.
However, you might not know that you can just as easily sell courses through your WordPress website, and therefore conveniently keep everything in one place.
And you can still have the amazing user experience and design elements from the other platforms mentioned above.
All you need are a few extra plugins or add ons to get you started. These include a Learning Management System (or LMS), payment gateway, and potentially also a membership portal – all of which can be readily integrated into your WordPress website design to help you package and sell your e-courses. We recommend and use oan LMS called Learndash.
Set the Right Price for Your Course
When pricing your online course, it's important to understand your value and the perception of value for your course when coming up with the price.
Here’s what to consider if you want to charge a higher price:
- Understanding then communicating the value of your course
- Building your brand so others see your value as a teacher
- Getting good at storytelling so you can share the value in ways other than features and benefits
- Understanding your target market's problems and desires
- Packaging your course into an offer
- Creating a reason for people to buy now
You can dive deeper into these areas in this resource 👉 How much to charge for an online course.
Use Irresistible Offers to Sell More
We are often asked for our number one piece of advice to sell more on your website.
Our answer every time is to use an irresistible offer. These can be applied to your overall content strategy - not only promoting via your website, but also on your social channels and/or in your email funnel communications.
Your offer should sell something beyond just your product or service. It’s a way of packaging what you sell so there is an overwhelming amount of value for the price. You can bundle items together for example.
Whenever possible, give someone a reason to buy now. In marketing, we call this urgency and scarcity. Urgency is when you use a deadline. Scarcity is when you have a limited number of spots or stock available.
Use an Email Nurture Sequence
Did you know that 74.4% of people who sign up for a newsletter or email list expect a welcome email? An email nurture sequence is a series of emails sent over a period of time to keep new leads engaged and help move them towards becoming a client.
To ensure that new subscribers don't forget about your brand, it is important to send them valuable content as soon as they join your list. You can set these emails up as an automation in your email marketing tool or CRM. This article will share a simple email nurture sequence formula and tips on how to increase the chances of your emails being opened.
Whenever possible, give someone a reason to buy now. In marketing, we call this urgency and scarcity. Urgency is when you use a deadline. Scarcity is when you have a limited number of spots or stock available.
Conclusion:
Website content strategy is a must-have!
If you need a content strategy for a website, and require some help in effectively implementing these to boost your conversions, feel free to reach out to us.
Whether it's strategies in digital branding and marketing, copywriting help, setting up your site for on-site SEO or learning how to translate your content into sales, we are more than happy to share our expertise with you.
