Once you get potential customers to your site, your content can make all the difference in converting them to paying customers, clients, or patients. Clear content that is accurate, informative, and grammatically correct builds trust with potential clients. Emotionally sensitive content shows you understand potential customers’ needs so they feel you can satisfy those needs. And content targeted across the buying cycle increases conversions, customer satisfaction, and referrals.
This page lays out some of the basics of my content writing approach to conversion optimization, but how content can be used to increase your conversions depends on your business. For information targeted to your industry, please call 720-917-4928 or contact Writer MC today.
Conversion Optimization Is Trust Optimization
Before someone will take a chance on your business, they have to feel they can trust you. How much trust they need depends on the service you are offering. For doctors, dentists, and lawyers, the trust barrier is very high. It’s also very high for any expensive product or service, such as roofing, landscaping, or automotive service.
To build trust, your content must speak with authority. This means it should be grammatically correct, factually accurate, and up-to-date. Your content also builds trust by:
- Sharing your experience, expertise, and results
- Demonstrating unique insight into your industry
- Being open about risks and creating reasonable expectations
Content that performs these functions will increase the amount of business you see from your traffic.
Be Sensitive to Needs
People come to your website considering a purchase because they have needs or desires. If you don’t show you understand those needs, how can you convince customers that you can meet them? Content that converts begins by meeting your potential customers in their moment of need. Whether they are considering a beautification procedure, have been in an accident, or have a leaky roof, there is an emotional component that drives them to seek help, and must be courted to create a conversion.
Emotive content takes potential clients on a journey from their current difficulty to some future point where your product or service has improved their quality of life. Properly done, this is subtle and doesn’t overstep the bounds of reasonable expectations.
Content for All Seasons
Conversions are never an instantaneous impulse. Even the seemingly spontaneous conversion is simply the speed-of-thought fruition of long-gestating ideas. In order to increase your conversions, content must reflect the decision process, what is often described as the buying cycle. There are many ways to represent the buying cycle. Here’s how I look at it and see the role of content at each stage:
- Awareness: People become aware of their need and become aware, through Internet search or other means, that your business can fulfill that need. At this stage, content must enhance search optimization and clearly state what services you provide.
- Ideation: People consider different ways to meet their needs and imagine how each option will benefit them. For some needs, this is very short, just the time it takes to imagine how tasty a burger will be, for example, but for other needs it can be very long, such as the years that cosmetic surgery patients spend thinking about their procedures. At this stage, content must reflect emotional needs and present scenarios for improved life (e.g. studies show that a whiter smile makes people think you are younger, healthier, and friendlier.)
- Selection: This is when customers are trying to decide whether you or a competitor will best meet their needs. This is where trust is key. All of the work your content did during the ideation stage can’t help if people don’t trust you or feel you can’t fulfill your promises.
- Purchase: This is when customers actually decide to select your product. At this point, content must facilitate the purchase decision by directing customers to your contact forms, phone numbers, shopping cart, or other purchase method.
- Postpurchase: Many people think of the final stage of the buying cycle as “repurchase,” which, ideally, is part of it, but even if people do not purchase from you again, they will live with the purchase they made for the entire life cycle of your product or service. Cosmetic service patients will be reminded of it every time they look in the mirror. Legal clients will be reminded that they chose you over a competitor every time they get (or don’t get) an update on the status of their case. Second-guessing is inevitable: your content should overcome it by promoting customer satisfaction and reminding them of their benefits and also reaffirming realistic expectations.
In this age of social media, that final stage of the buying cycle becomes increasingly important. Your content should keep clients focused on the quality of their choice and give them opportunities to share their satisfaction, which can lead to significantly more business in the future.
My Conversion Optimization Experience
In more than five years of writing website content, I have written thousands of pages for hundreds of clients in a dozen different industries. I have seen the impact writing can have on the conversion rates for these clients, and I always approach writing content with the goal of bringing you more business. You know that it’s often impossible to guarantee results, but I have rewritten content and seen conversions jump up 300% or more. I am confident you will see significant results from my content.
To learn more about how my content can help you, please contact Writer MC today and let me know about your project.