So you know content marketing is effective when it comes to attracting targeted customers but aren’t sure where to start?
This blog post is for you.
When done correctly, content marketing can yield great results for your business.
This is evident by a report by SEMrush that suggests that 75% of companies use content marketing to drive high-quality leads and 71% of them to drive traffic to their site.
Unfortunately, 60% of companies find it challenging to produce content consistently. Besides, 63% of businesses don’t have a content strategy.
From those stats, it’s evident that driving quality leads to ultimately generate sales seems to be a serious struggle for many businesses.
Are businesses underinvesting in high-quality content?
Typically, creating content that attracts people is an art and science.
You have to be creative to produce blog posts that attract readers and satisfies their needs.
That’s why before you write your blog posts you need to know what readers are looking for on the internet.
And once you produce compelling content, you need to know how to promote it.
This means that you have to implement an effective content marketing strategy…
…and this is the part where most content marketers and businesses find challenging.
It gets better.
In this blog post, you’re going to learn 12 content marketing hacks for your strategy to help you drive more customers and generate sales.
Let’s get started.
1. Understand Your Readers’ Pain Points and Solve Them
No matter how awesome or high-quality your product is, chances are that people aren’t going to care about it.
Why? Because people care more about their problems. So, perhaps your readers are looking to solve their pain points yet you’re busy promoting an incredible product that doesn’t help them with their existing problem.
That means that you need to learn your customers’ pain points so you can produce blog posts that attract them and satisfies their EXACT needs.
Understanding your readers’ problems helps you produce meaningful content which ultimately builds a lasting relationship with your target audience.
So how do you understand your readers’ problems?
Ask them.
Use the following strategies to identify your audiences’ pain points.
Interact with them in-person
It’s not easy, and it takes time but having a one-on-one conversion at least 15 minutes with your target readers could help you learn a ton of things that are giving your readers sleepless nights.
Take advantage of email marketing
Email is a powerful tool that can help you understand great insights when used correctly.
You can use your welcome email to learn more about your readers’ problems by making it as an informal survey where you ask your readers some questions related to their challenges.
Send email surveys to your readers
Distributing email surveys to your email list is also the best way to understand your readers’ problems. However, you need to keep your surveys short and straightforward- approximately three to four questions. Studies suggest that short surveys get 80% completion rates.
2. Find Viral Content Ideas
There is content that blurts the internet and there is content that goes unnoticed.
You need to aim for the former.
But here is the thing.
To create content that goes viral, you need to brainstorm ideas, craft useful content that evokes fear, anger, laughter, or pain.
Once you do this, watch as your content goes viral like the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, entertaining content gets shared the most on social media.
See, unlike in the past when the focus was on creating content geared toward search engines, these days if you want to attract customers, you need to craft content that resonates with them. In other words, you must focus on generating content that solves their pain points.
You don’t have to win viral ideas every time you publish a new blog post. You just need a few high-quality blog posts per month that drive targeted customers and leads to your business website.
To brainstorm viral content ideas, start by addressing the following questions:
- Is there a trending idea that people are looking to learn about?
- How funny or exciting is the idea?
- Is your idea controversial?
- Does your idea evoke emotional responses (laughter, anger, pain, etc.)?
- Does your idea integrate with other types of content i.e. images, infographics, and video?
- Are there high-performing blog posts of those already published on your site?
You can use tools such as Buzzsumo, Ubersuggest, and many others to find viral content ideas. Another incredible way to identify viral ideas is to check on online communities i.e. on Facebook groups, Reddit, Quora, etc.
3. Create definitive guides
In-depth blog posts increase traffic and conversions as people love to read detailed articles.
Creating in-depth blog posts means writing almost everything about a topic. This involves conducting extensive research and crafting blog posts of 2,000+ words long. In fact, most of the top 10 articles tend to perform well as they are in-depth.
Besides, people love to share long-form articles and this can increase your traffic and rankings greatly.
To craft in-depth articles that stand out, you may use Brain Dean’s Skyscraper Technique where you find blog posts that are already performing better on the internet then make them more in-depth and better.
You also want to include relevant images, target long-tail keywords, link to relevant authoritative sites, and include call-to-action to your blog posts as well.
4. Make your content readable
Use skimmable and reader-friendly formatting when crafting your articles.
It’s not a secret that most people aren’t readers but are skimmers.
Besides, humans have a short attention span.
They want to get what they are looking for like yesterday.
That means that when they land on your site, they scan your content looking for information that satisfies their needs.
To help people find the information they are looking for easily and fast, you need to follow the strategies below when creating your blog posts:
- Use headings, subheadings, bullets- many of them. Yes, break text with a lot of headings and include bulleted lists.
- Always create an outline for your blog posts before you start writing to achieve this.
- Use short sentences. Short sentences aren’t only easy to read but they also simplify your writing process. A good rule of thumb is to keep your sentences at least 65 characters long for your desktop readers and at least 40 characters for mobile content consumers.
- Use short paragraphs. Keep your paragraphs at least three lines long, writing one idea on each paragraph.
5. Use Mouthwatering Headlines
Your headlines can make or break your efforts to attract traffic to your online business.
And if you want to craft articles that grab your readers’ attention then you have to use compelling headlines.
Remember that you only have a few seconds to captureyour readers’ attention before they bounce back.
So, you want to grab their attention immediately they arrive at your blog posts and get them to continue scrolling.
But you need to attract them to click to read your content.
So how do you achieve that?
You need to craft headlines that promise your readers something and give them right that as they continue reading one sentence after another.
Some studies suggest that longer headlines tend to perform better than shorter ones.
You can use the Headline Analyzer tool by Advanced Marketing Institute to craft headlines that trigger emotions. This tool will give you an EMV score for your headlines. It’s advisable to aim for a score above 40% for all your headlines.
6. Make Your CTA Buttons Clear and Persuasive
CTA buttons play significant roles in your content when placed on visible locations. They also need to be persuasive as well.
Typically, the color, size, and shape of your CTA buttons can make or break your effort to attract readers to click.
So, you not only need to test your CTA buttons’ location but you also need to know how to include call-to-action buttons that people will click.
A general rule of thumb is to avoid using too many colors on your CTA buttons. In fact, you should find out what colors your target readers like the most when adding CTA buttons to your content.
7. Take Advantage of Guest Blogging
In his own words, Matt Cutts, former Google webmaster declared guest blogging dead in 2014.
Here is what he said:
“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company”
First, forward to 2020, guest blogging is not dead.
So, how is it dead according to Matt?
Before we get into that, guest blogging is the process of publishing your articles on high-authority and relevant blog posts with links pointing to yours.
Well, if you’re doing guest blogging, you should make sure your articles are 100% original, well-researched and written, and are relevant to your audience.
Anything that doesn’t follow the above rules is dead.
Note that, even though guest blogging is still an effective way to attract customers to your online business, you shouldn’t focus solely on generating backlinks to increase your Google rankings.
Make sure you’re sharing content that adds value to your readers and that of the destination blog.
So, first, identify relevant and high-authority blogs, approach the webmasters of those blogs with your guest blog topic ideas then when accepted, publish your blog post.
Guest blogging is an in-depth topic that requires a separate blog post on its own so we just summarized the whole process in one sentence.
8. Attract Customers Using Multimedia Sources
Content is king but it’s not enough to depend on written content such as articles and blog posts if you want to attract tons of traffic.
So you want to take advantage of other types of content to reach a huge audience.
Here are some of the powerful multimedia channels to take advantage of:
Mobile Marketing
People are using their mobile devices to perform online transactions today than ever. Besides, mobile traffic surpassed desktop a long time ago.
For that reason, you need to create mobile-friendly blog posts. You also need to use a mobile-ready design on your site.
Video
People love video content. It’s sweet to consume and is memorable.
Thankfully, YouTube enables you to promote your content with ease.
Video content marketing works like charm when done correctly. Pat Flynn of the famous affiliate marketing website Smart Passive Income uses videos and infographics to promote his works.
9. Take Advantage of Email Marketing
And follow the rules.
Email marketing is also another effective content marketing hack. However, when doing it, you need to follow the rule of 7.
This rule implies that when people subscribe to your email list, you should share valuable content with them consecutively for seven days before you sell your products to them.
Remember that the reason someone took their time to opt into your email list is to learn, get inspired, and entertained. So don’t start selling to them right away but focus on educating and informing them before you sell to them later.
10. Take Advantage of Current Trends
New things are coming up every day. In the online world, Google is rolling out new algorithm updates every new day and companies are launching new products.
Who knows, perhaps your readers are following up with what’s happening every day.
To stay at par with your target readers (or to educate them on what’s happening- at least for those who aren’t up to speed with every day happenings) you should create blog posts around the latest trends.
It’s much easier to attract great traffic if you capitalize on the latest trends especially if there are no published blog posts yet.
To stay up-to-date with the current trends, you may want to attend many conferences and seminars and interact with industry experts or read blogs that share regular updates in your industry.
TechCrunch, for instance, is a blog that shares the latest articles in the tech and entertaining industries whereas Search Engine Land shares current trends in the SEO sphere.
You can follow these blogs and many others so you can read new topics as they get published.
11. Take Advantage of Social Media
If you’re an online business owner, a blogger, or consultant looking to drive more traffic to your business social media shouldn’t miss in your content marketing strategy.
And when sharing your blog posts on social media, use images that are tailored to your target audience on specific channels.
Blog posts with attractive images tend to perform better on social media than those without.
12. Give Your Existing Content New Life
You can also attract more customers to your online business by updating your existing content.
If you have articles published several years ago, get back to them and give them a new life.
You can do that by adding video, images, or changing the headlines just to make sure they speak the language of the current trends in that particular topic.
As the online world continues to evolve some links become obsolete and some techniques change. Make sure you read over your previous articles and update every element to make them fresh.
Over To You!
Undoubtedly, attracting more customers and better leads is no easy thing. Thankfully, if you follow these 12 content marketing hacks, it’s possible.
Well, of course, the strategies shared in this blog post won’t produce great results overnight, but the patience is worth it in the long run.
The good thing is that the hacks we’ve outlined above have been tested, used, and yielded great results for top brands like HootSuite, HubSpot, etc.
Besides, most of the hacks here aren’t costly to implement. You just need to create an effective strategy and follow it to the latter.
Start implementing the hacks now and attract more customers to your online business.
Author Bio
Charlie Svensson is a content marketing geek who is skilled in content writing and blogging. He also works as a freelance writer at the best assignment writing service. Charlie writes content on topics like SEO, education, social media, self-growth, marketing, and education.
