Content marketing in my opinion is all about creating content that attracts, engages and ultimately turns your audience into customers, let’s face it we all have bills to pay. So let’s look at a number of key ways that your content influences your customers. It depends on the type of content.
7 Ways Your Content Influences Your Customers
Factual Content
Your buyers need to know who you are and why they should pay attention to you and do business with you. Factual content at your site shows who you are and what you know. A high quality website or blog with useful content for your target audience lends an air of credibility and authority to your business. It also drives free traffic via the search engines, through search engine optimization (SEO).
Search Engine Traffic
SEO works through keywords and keyphrases, which inform the search engines like Google what your web page is about. When a person enters a search, Google sifts through all the pages related to that search phrase (keyword) in order to find the best matches – that is, what they consider to be the most relevant search results. So nothing can really happen at your site without niche-related content. Your content influences buyers via search engines to come and learn more about you.
Product-Related Factual Content
Shoppers want the facts laid out clearly. They don’t want to spend time hunting for the information they need. Your product description should have full details of the item if it is a physical product – such as size, weight, color choices and so on.
If you’re selling digital products, state exactly what important features would be of most interest to your target audience. Use bullet points to list features and their benefits. Use images, charts, diagrams and more to make it easy to find what they need to know in order to make a purchasing decision.
Reviews
Reviews help influence buyer opinion. Just look at Amazon. Reviews are considered to be an endorsement of an item. Studies have shown that users on social media take recommendations from their peers more seriously than any marketing material produced by a business. This being the case, make it a point to get honest reviews from your happy customers.
Testimonials
Testimonials are slightly different from reviews in that they are usually given by named people who are considered to be a top figure in their niche. Since they are top figures, they are supposedly better informed than the average person and readers should therefore appreciate their expert opinion.
Images
Clear images of the item for sale are essential online in order to persuade buyers. A picture can be worth a thousand words.
Videos
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video can be worth tens of thousands. There are several important types of video. The first is a sales video that describes the item for sale, giving factual detail and trying to get people to buy. Demonstration videos, like infomercials, can be even more influential. Screen capture videos are becoming more and more popular. They are great for demonstrating new software, for example. Tutorial videos can be the most impressive of all, showing people how to use an item. It shows the business cares about their success.
Now that we’ve covered how influential content can be for your buyers, start to create the kind of content they really want and need, and see what a difference it can make to your brand and business.
