How to Optimize Your Content for Conversions

What is every marketer's goal? Obviously to convert people into customers. It's no different with content marketing. Each blog post, infographic, video, case study or eBook you create needs to ultimately convert. Otherwise, it serves no practical purpose.

Master Digital Marketer Andy Crestodina outlines four basic steps to optimize a website for conversions.

Research Audience Questions

The first step for any content marketer in optimizing for conversions is to research what questions your target audience is asking. What are they wondering about? That's what they will be searching for on the internet.

How do you discover these questions? Talking to sales reps who regularly deal with customers or reviewing logs from your call center are both great ways to gain valuable insights.

If you're a one-person show, you can always poll existing customers. Maybe offer an incentive, such as a discount, if they respond. Keyword research is another great way to find out what people are searching for online.

Answer the Question

Once you know the questions your audience is asking, answer them by creating content--videos, articles, etc.

It's quite simple. If you don't answer the audience's questions, your competitor will. It's tempting to create content around what we want, but we need to create content that our audience wants. It's not about us. It's about them.

Provide Evidence

Answering the question is not enough. Why should your audience believe you? What makes you stand out? Anyone can create content about anything and slap it on the internet. That doesn't make it credible.

One way to provide evidence is through testimonials. Feature customers who have had a good experience with you. When doing this, don't keep all your testimonials on one "Testimonials" page that no one would go out of their way to visit.

Instead, sprinkle in relevant testimonials on the pages where they make sense, like your offer pages. People need to see evidence when they're about to convert. They shouldn't have to navigate away to a separate page. Once they leave,they might be gone for good.

If you have a large following on social media, you might also consider sharing that number. Our herd mentality pushes us to follow others. Seeing a large following on social sends a signal that what you have to say is legitimate.

Call to Action

After answering your audience's questions and providing evidence that you should be believed, it's time for the most important step of all. Drive them to ACTION.

The type of action depends on your particular goal. Maybe you want to make a sale, or maybe you just want visitors to download an eBook after typing in their email address. Make this clear in the call-to-action button.

Note: "Contact Us" is not a call to action. It's a weak, overused suggestion that your audience will likely ignore. Be specific and clear as to the value gained by taking the action. If there isn't a good reason to complete the action, why would anyone do it?

There is much more to content optimization, but these four basic steps are the backbone. Follow them, and you will be well on your way to a higher conversion rate.