Tag Archives: Content Writing

Importance of content writing throughout the sales funnel

Content writing is not just about improving SEO – although without content writing there can be no SEO, but that’s another matter.

Throughout your sales funnel, high-quality content plays an important role. Even small oversights can send your prospects away to your competitor.

Read Content matters at every layer of your marketing funnel.

Typically, a sales funnel looks like this:

As you can see in the image, normally there are four stages in your sales funnel:

Awareness and education
Interest
Decision
Sale

Actually, there should also be an after-sale section in the sales funnel but normally it is not included (it should be).

The need to make your customers and clients aware and educate them about the benefits of your product or service underpins the essence of content marketing.

These days I’m working with a client who is planning to launch his service. He believes that most of his clients are unaware of the benefits of the services he is planning to offer. Hence, in the beginning, he wants to focus on the “awareness and education” part of the sales funnel through his content. For that he is hiring my content writing services.

Content writing for awareness and education

In this phase of the sales funnel, you may be targeting, typically, two types of customers (or clients):

Those who are totally unaware that they need your product.
Those who know what they need but don’t know how to find a solution and where to find it.

The first type of customers under this stage of your sales funnel, those who are unaware that they need your product, need to be educated. They have no idea what they are missing.

Suppose, there is a company that is going through work-management chaos, but it has never crossed their minds that a tool like Slack or Asana can help them streamline their operations. They might not even be aware of the concept of some “project management” tool.

Since they don’t know that such a tool exists, they may not even look for it. Although, day by day it’s becoming very difficult to manage their projects.

You need to make these people aware. You need to educate them through targeted content writing.

Again using the project-management-problem scenario, one of the managers may search for “how to solve project management problems”, or “cannot manage projects properly”, or “project management tips”, and such.

If you are selling a project management software, wouldn’t it be nice if people searching for such solutions come to your website?

A good example is Open Forum by American Express. The blog provides hard-core business advice. People don’t even have to be American Express customers. They may not even know what sort of services American Express provides. But they have business-related problems and solutions to these problems exist on Open Forum. When they visit Open Forum, when they visit it regularly, they begin to realize that many of the business problems that they face can be solved by using some of the American Express financial solutions.

You can apply the same content writing technique to make people aware of your product or service and educate them about its benefits.

During this phase, it is also important that you capture email addresses of your prospective customers so that you can send them regular updates. It is only due to the strength of your content writing that people subscribe to your mailing list.

Content writing during the “interest”phase of the sales funnel

In the interest phase of the sales funnel people are interested in a solution. They need to be convinced. They have different options in front of them. Through consistent and quality content writing you must convey to them there is a great solution to your problem that exists and it exists with you.

This is the phase when they know that (referring to the above project management problem) there are various project management software solutions available for their particular problem.

You need to keep in touch but not in the conventional sense.

Provide them valuable content on an ongoing basis. Keep their interest alive by providing them quality content on a consistent basis. Without being pushy, constantly, subtly, keep communicating to them how your solution can solve their problem.

He or she may explore other options available in the market. All the more reason you stand out by continuously publishing quality content on your own website as well as using other platforms. You should be visible and your content writing should be relatable to your business.

The decision-making stage of your sales funnel

At this stage, your customer is ready to buy from you. This is a crucial stage. Often the customer develops cold feet (because he or she finally must shell out money). At this stage, you should reassure him or her that he or she is making the right choice.

Your existing content plays a very important role. Your content writing needs to hook your customer who is about to buy from you so that he or she is not distracted or, there is no confusing information on your website to change his or her decision.

You must have noticed that above I have continuously used the expression “phase”, but suddenly I started using “stage”.

I did that purposely.

A phase can last for a long time, in many instances, even years. A stage, on the other hand, is short and hence, more crucial.

The importance of content writing when the sale has happened

Your job is not done as soon as the sale has taken place. Through high-value content writing you can always keep in touch with your existing customers. The chance of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% while the chance of selling to a new customer is 5-20% (source).

Many companies claim that 40% of their business comes from existing clients so, feeding high quality content to existing customers – customers who have already purchased from you – is as important as, and in many cases, even more important than, writing content for completely new customers.

How can your content writing help you keep in touch with your existing customers?

Provide answers to all their after-sale questions so that they don’t have to depend on your support team.
Create a comprehensive FAQs section and regularly update it.
Send email updates solely to your existing customers with new offers or complimentary offers or related offers (based on their past purchase decisions). Cross selling, for example, and up-selling.
Create an online community through your blog and bulletin board where your existing customers can interact with their fellow customers and interact with you and fellow customers.

The importance of content writing throughout your sales funnel needs to be well defined and recognized. Optimizing and publishing high-quality content throughout your sales funnel can help you create a tightly packed, high-performance sales-funnel that turns casual visitors into hot leads and hot leads into paying customers and paying customers into repeat customers, on an ongoing basis.

5 website content writing tips you can start using immediately

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Quality website content writing is one of the toughest tasks faced by businesses and entrepreneurs eager to use content marketing to promote themselves. This Content Marketing Institute research says that more than 78% B2B content marketers find writing quality website content the most challenging task to achieve while implementing their content marketing strategy.

Read Writing persuasive website content.

Although website content writing tips typically may include telling you how to write great website content but when you are writing content for your website, it’s more than writing great content: it is understanding your audience, understanding their problems and aspirations, before beginning to write content.

The main website content writing tips are:

Write a great, attention-grabbing headline
Mention the most important information within the first paragraph
Organize your text using headlines, sub-headlines and bullet points
Use very simple language and shorter sentences to make it very easy for people to read
Offer quick solutions people can implement immediately

Website content writing is all about performance and whether you follow 5 tips or 100 tips ultimately what matters is how much business your website content writing generates. So, when I talk about website content writing tips I don’t just focus on writing well, I also focus on the issues faced by your prospective customers and clients and then writing website content to address those issues.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind while writing content for your website is that we live in times when average attention span is very low. You don’t have an hour to put across your point of view to your visitors. They may leave your website within a couple of seconds. To that extent, I think writing content for newspapers and magazines is much easier compared to writing content for websites because when you’re writing content for websites your content is fighting with hundreds of distractions and your users’ ability to move on with a single click. The moment they come to your website you need to grab their attention.

How do you grab attention? You can start with a killer headline. Read A good list of killer headline creating formulas.

Listed below are

5 website content writing tips you can immediately use in order to create high-quality, engaging content

Create a list of your main keywords and search phrases

A major part of website content writing is writing your content using your keywords and search phrases that people may use in order to look for your website or your service or your business.

Read Does keyword-rich content help you improve your SEO?

This is why it’s very important to understand the psychology of your prospective customers and clients.

In most of the cases they are not looking for products and services, they’re looking for solutions. So, when you are writing content for your website, talk about solutions and benefits rather than features.

Use your keywords and search phrases while creating your title and while writing the headlines. This is a tip you can start using right now. Do some basic keyword research using Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends.

Write for your visitors and not for search engines

When you get too bogged down by the idea of writing for search engines you don’t write good website content. Remember that it’s humans were going to read your content.

Read How to write content for humans but optimize for Google and other search engines.

Of course, search engine crawlers and algorithms are going to process your content but remember these days your search engine rankings don’t depend only on the number of times you have used your keywords and search phrases within your website content.

It is just one of the factors.

There are many factors that affect your search engine rankings and all these factors can only be affected by quality writing. Use your keywords, but write in a conversational style, in an engaging style. Try to solve problems instead of harping about your product or service greatness.

Keep everything above the fold

In order to access useful information people shouldn’t have to scroll down. This is more important when you are writing business website content. Whatever important you want to say about your product or service, bring it up within the first paragraph or within the first 1-3 paragraphs that are visible without someone having to scroll down the page.

Don’t ignore mobile users

A majority of businesses these days access your website or blog using a mobile phone or tablet.

So, always write your website content keeping them in mind. Write shorter sentences. Use shorter paragraphs. Highlight important portions. Make your text scannable. Use simple language that people can read even in shaky environments (for example riding a train or bus). Use clear language. Remember that you are not aiming for a literary award. You don’t want to confuse your readers.

In fact, many suggest that you use as many familiar words as possible so that people don’t have to wonder what you are trying to say.

Don’t assume people already know what you’re talking about

Remember that most of the people coming to your website will be coming from links other than your homepage. They will come across your links in search engine results or other websites so they may not have any clue what you’re talking about.

So, a very important website content writing tip is that paint a complete picture whenever you’re writing a web page or blog post. Even when you are introducing concepts you have already talked about, link to those concepts and briefly explain them.

These are the main 5 website content writing tips that you can start using immediately in order to create great content for your website or blog.

Although you may come across a blog post talking of 15 website content writing tips or even 50 website content writing tips but they are primarily the subsets of the tips that I have mentioned above. Stick to the fundamentals. Empathize with your readers. Use the language that they use (use keywords and search phrases). Offer them solutions they can use immediately. Make your content readable on all devices.

Should content writing come first or web design?

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Many times my clients (especially web design agencies) send me a design/layout and then ask me to create content that fits into that layout.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when recently one of my clients, after having a look at what I had written for her organization, decided to ditch the design she already had. She insisted that first I should have all the content ready and then the web design will be done around the content.

This is a new development: that content should be written within the various sections of the web design. Sometimes they insist that you just write 100 words because one section of the website will not accommodate more than 100 words. So, whether the message needs more words or not, you have to fit everything into 100 words.

This happens mostly because people these days by predesigned templates and most of these templates are made to look aesthetically pleasant whether they can accommodate content flexibly or not.

I believe if web design takes precedence over content writing, you are worried more about the looks and less about your conversion rate. Are you getting a web design because you like the design or you want to do business with it?

Design and content need to be modular these days, especially when more and more people may access your website from their mobile devices. I’m not saying you have 25 paragraphs of content on a page and then you design a website that can go on and on vertically – nothing wrong in that by the way.

But you need to keep in mind that it’s the content that is going to do business for you. It’s your content that is going to convert people. It’s your content that is going to get you better search engine rankings. It’s your content that is will engage your visitors and turn them into customers and clients.

Hence, if there is a choice, content writing should always come before web design.

4 stages of buyer’s journey and the role of effective content writing

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Different marketers may have different views on how many stages a buyer goes through before making a purchase, what comes to my mind is that the 4 stages of a buyer’s journey are:

Awareness that one needs a particular product or service
Research, and information gathering and idea exchange about the needed product or service
When the buyer decides to go with a particular product or service
The buyer purchases that particular product or service

At every stage of a buyer’s journey your content writing can play a vital role. Whether it is stage 1 or stage 4, your content is indispensable, and even a small oversight can send your prospective customer or client scurrying away. Now let’s explore these individual stages and see how your content writing can lead your prospect up till the conclusion of the fourth state.

Awareness that one needs a particular product or service

This awareness can be voluntary, induced by a friend, a family member, or a colleague, or by your content. Your content writing becomes crucial in this first stage of the buyer’s journey if you need to make the buyer aware of the need for him to go for your product or service.

Take for example my content writing and content marketing services. You hire me because

You know that effective content writing and content marketing can improve your conversion rate, your search engine rankings, and consequently, get you more business;
You have read material that has made you aware of the fact that you can use effective content writing to grow your business without spending a ton of money on online advertising.

Sometimes the buyer knows that there is a particular product or service that is being used by many people, but somehow, she is not convinced that she herself needs that product or service. At this stage, your convincing content writing can make her aware of the fact that even she requires that product or service.

Sometimes the buyer isn’t even aware that she needs your service. There are many business owners with very badly written content on their websites and consequently the conversion rate is either zero or very low. They are totally disappointed with the website. They either end up thinking that what they offer is not needed or at least not needed from them, or they try out various things without really knowing what they want.

In such circumstances, educational content can help. If your business is not doing well due to your content, through my content writing, I can make you aware. But how are you going to find me without knowing that you need my content writing service?

For that, you must be able to find my website for search terms like “how can I sell more from my website?”, “how can I improve my conversion rate?”, “how can I improve my search engine rankings?”, and so on. Through strategic content writing, I must make you aware that there is a solution available for your problem.

Research, and information gathering, and idea exchange about the needed product or service

Once a person realizes that she may actually have a use for a particular product or service, she starts doing research. She wouldn’t like to settle for the first product (or service) she comes across. She would like to know all her options. Normally she will do research on Google. She may also look through various forums. She may ask on Facebook and Twitter. She may read blog posts.

This is the stage when helpful content that you may have published elsewhere (other websites, blogs and social networks) may prompt her to visit your website. Even content published on your own blog may help her know more about how her need can be satisfied with your product or service.

Many people decide to hire my content writing service after reading my blog posts. I share so much information on content writing and content marketing that my clients are convinced that I know my stuff.

When the buyer decides to go with a particular product or service

Just because a buyer has decided to go with your product it doesn’t mean you can rest assured. She can leave in the middle of making a payment. Once your customer has decided that she is going to do business with you, you need to convince her that

You are reliable and trustworthy
You are going to provide value for money
You are going to be there in case there is a problem
She is getting a good deal by not getting the same product from somewhere else

The buyer purchases that particular product or service

Most of the businesses claim that 40% of their business comes from repeat customers – customers who have already done business with them and have had good experience.

Your existing customers are your best leads; don’t let them go and don’t let them forget about your business. Maybe you are selling multiple products or service. Having experienced satisfaction after doing business with you, they would rather do business with you again than try someone untested, even when they’re purchasing something totally different.

Having gotten a few blog posts or webpages written by me, many of my clients return for random content writing assignments or even for ongoing content writing jobs. This is because even after years, they remember my services because I’m constantly publishing content on my blog and also send them email updates.

Your content writing can help your buyer throughout her buyer’s journey.

Is content marketing a misleading term?

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I was just reading this interesting take on content marketing and content marketers. The author says that when the “content marketers” are charging $50 per blog post (what he means is they are just providing cheap writing labor) they are simply misleading the clients because the truth is that they have no idea what they are doing.

What should they be doing?

The author says that they should be helping their clients build their mailing lists because the money is in the mailing lists.

I agree with him that in most of the cases the “marketing” in “content marketing” is missing. Marketing, whether it is content marketing or traditional advertising, needs to make money, it needs to attract money, it needs to generate money.

I’m not sure if the author has some interest in mailing lists but I cannot disagree with him that one of the biggest purposes of content marketing should be building a robust mailing list. Other than that, it seems like a rant against the concept of using content for generating traffic. He is missing the point. Not about the so-called content marketers merely writing content, but about the entire concept of using content marketing for generating traffic.

You see, I agree that there is already lots of content on the Internet and many websites provide a ton of information to help you decide what you want to purchase and what you don’t want to purchase. But this information is on other websites not on your website so all the traffic is going to go to other websites and not your website.

There is lots of confusion when it comes to employing content marketing, but people don’t realize that confusion is also there when people use conventional advertising. In fact, conventional advertising is just like throwing darts in the darkness, hoping that some of the darts may hit the target. Yes, analytics have advanced a lot and every click and every entry into the website can be traced, but for a small business, it can turn out to be very expensive.

Why businesses that understand content marketing, use it?

To increase search engine rankings
To avoid PPC expense
To increase the authority of their brand
To inform and educate their customers and clients
To create presence on social media and social networking websites and apps
To build their own broadcasting platforms

I know some of these words may sound very big, but on the Internet, they are not. Remember there was a time when email used to be very geeky. Only engineers and scientists used to have email ids. These days even your dog may have an email id. What I’m saying is, even as a small business you can establish your authority or your brand’s authority and build your own broadcasting platform to increase your visibility.

Content marketing, of course, doesn’t just mean relentlessly publishing content. The “marketing” part is a big part. Marketing here doesn’t just mean you are marketing your content. It means you are using content for marketing. You are using content to increase your visibility. You are using content to improve your search engine rankings. You are using content to create a buzz around your brand, product or service. At the center of your marketing activities, lies your content. This is why it is called content marketing.

It is not, contrary to what the author of the above post has tried to establish, a snake oil remedy for the starry-eyed business owners. Billion-dollar businesses have been created around the business of content marketing.

Having said that, just like any other business branch, there are big players, there are smaller players and then there are players who are just goofing around hoping that they will make some money with little effort. This is not something specific to content marketing; these sorts of entrepreneurs are in every business.

So, if you are simply writing content for your clients, do you call yourself a content marketer? It depends. If you are

writing content
disseminating that content
coming up with new topic ideas
trying to make sure that the content that you create increases traffic for your client

then yes, you can call yourself a content marketer, because basically even when you are writing content, knowingly or unknowingly, you are helping your client market his business.