Goal setting is essential in any endeavor. This couldn’t be more applicable in content marketing, which is both an art and a science.
As an art, content marketing enables you to be creative in your choice of topics, as well as how you present it to your audience. As a science, this aspect of digital marketing requires you to be exact in your ways or strategies.
In content marketing, following a prescribed set of rules or steps—starting with setting goals—can help you achieve the results you want. Some of those goals may be to enhance brand awareness, generate leads, increase traffic to your website, engage audiences, or improve your conversion rates.
Once you’ve determined your marketing objective, the next step is to create content that matches your goal. With that said, here are some ideas or pointers to help you create goal-oriented content for conversions:
1. Craft a compelling headline
Your headline or title plays a role in helping content consumers decide whether they want to continue reading or viewing what you have to say. Since it’s the first thing that people see, you need to make sure that your headline will capture your audience’s attention within the first few seconds of landing on your site or blog.
Experts recommend that you think of the 4 U’s when writing your headline, which stands for Urgency, Usefulness, Uniqueness, and Ultra specific. What this means is that, from your headline alone, you should be able to show that the link your readers are about to open can help them solve their most pressing problem in a way that they can best or personally relate to.
2. Deliver on your headline’s promise
It’s one thing to attract people to your headline, and another to give them just what you promised in your headline. From the intro to the body and the conclusion, the information you provide should match exactly what’s in the title of your content without any inconsistencies or deviation. Otherwise, you won’t be able to offer so much value to your target audience.
3. Use a reader-friendly format
Writing for online users can be tricky since they have unique reading habits. Specifically, more users are scanning web pages, with only a small percentage reading text-based content word for word. Hence, you need to format your content in such a way that it’s easy to scan. This means that even if you’re writing long-form content, you should make your sentences or paragraphs easily digestible for readers.
Here are some of the things you can do to make your content more scannable for online users:
Limit your paragraphs to no more than five sentences. Short blocks of text are more enticing to read than lengthy paragraphs.
Use bulleted lists to introduce or describe an idea. This is similar to writing one idea per paragraph, which gives readers the freedom to skip any information that they may already know or find the least interesting.
Break up your content with meaningful subheadings to signal to readers that they’re transitioning from one section to another.
Use a conversational tone. The trick is in writing as if you’re talking to a student in the lower grades. Convert technical terms into a simpler language that anyone can understand.
4. Add a call-to-action (CTA)
Having visitors read your content is a good thing, but you don’t want to stop there. The end goal is to convert that visitor into a lead, which is why you need to include a CTA at the end of your blog post or any other piece of content.
Your CTA should tell your visitors what to do next, such as signing up for your email list, following you on social, or sharing your content. Keep your CTAs short, clear, and simple, without being a hard sell.
The bottom line is, a conversion-driven content is one where you’re able to keep your audience engaged and motivated to find out more about your brand or your offerings.
