Do you want more sales, new clients,
or a better return on your investment?
Most businesses do. Your brand’s
success is often tied to how persuasive your prospective clients and customers
find the copy on your website, blogs, e-mails and collateral materials.
Well written content that you publish
on your website and elsewhere is essential for your future business success.
Turning casual site visitors into interested leads, and interested leads into
paying customers, should be one of your goals.
And as many well-known brands will
attest, valuable, authoritative content can be extremely effective. In fact,
B2B brands that blog multiple times each month on a consistent basis enjoy
almost three times the traffic of those that blog once a month or not at
all.
Persuasive content that your
prospects and customers find compelling and informative is both art and
science. It takes time, talent, and practice to develop world-class persuasive
copywriting skills.
In fact, most small business owners
who focus on content as part of a strategic marketing plan find that they
simply don’t have the time to create enough interesting and relevant content
for their audiences. That’s where experienced professional content providers
can help you like The Mullikin Agency.
Let’s take a look at some of the
ways you can leverage the power of well-written content to improve your brand’s
bottom line.
STEP 1: Create A Business Tagline
A good tagline may
not be the first thing you think of when you begin creating marketing materials
for your business, but it shouldn’t be an afterthought - or worse yet, ignored
altogether. The right tagline helps create an easy reminder for your
prospective clients or customers of your values, benefits, and experience.
A tagline is simply a catchphrase used to help sum up a brand’s mission or
values, as well as the products and services that you offer. The best taglines
are memorable, captivating, and powerfully associated with their respective
brands.
Your brand’s tagline should convey a
positive association and make your prospective customers want to do business
with you and your brand. Yet a good tagline moves well beyond sales talk to
“buy now.” The best taglines tell your users why they should buy your product
or services.
Tips for Creating a Business Tagline:
· Start
with your USP (Unique Sales Proposition) or more broadly your UAP (Unique
Advantage Point) - i.e. the thing that sets you apart from your competition.
What do you do better than everyone else, and how? Try to see if you can keep
it to around 12-15 words or so.
· Clear
and memorable are always better than clever and funny. By all means, infuse
your tagline with your brand’s personality if you can, but don’t sacrifice
clarity and persuasion in the process.
STEP 2: Create Valuable Content For Your
Readers
A consistent stream of reliable, authoritative and interesting content published on your blog or website can convince prospects that may be on the fence, to make a decision and put their trust in your company.
However, good content takes time to
research, write, format, and publish. You also have a business to run, of
course, so you can make one of two choices in regard to content creation,
writing the content yourself or you might want to consider outsourcing the
actual content writing to professionals like The Mullikin Agency.
If you’d rather do the writing
yourself, you can save time and effort by outsourcing editing and proofreading
services of your draft content. Even tiny errors can ding your reputation. Writers
often become “word blind” to their own work, overlooking punctuation and
typographical errors. A separate edit by a fresh pair of eyes will help you
polish and perfect your content.
Or, if you’d prefer, you can quickly
draft a one-page informative “creative brief,” explaining to a professional
copywriter or editor exactly what sort of content you’re looking for and
providing any style guidelines you’d like them to incorporate into your posts
and articles. You can then outsource the writing of the content itself to a
copywriter, who will use your brief to ensure the finished product meets your
needs and expectations.
Insider Tips to Creating Valuable Content for
Your Readers
· Consider
each stage of your buyer’s journey when planning your content. You should aim
for a mix of content: informational content to introduce your brand to browsing
visitors, more in-depth content to persuade visitors that your brand is
trustworthy, and persuasive content to convince them to buy from you.
· Be
as specific as possible in communicating. Describe your targeted audience for
the piece, where it will be published, what the goal of the piece is, and what
you want your readers to do after they read the article (i.e. the call to
action).
· Think
carefully about the length of your content. Some audiences prefer longer, more
detailed posts, while others want quicker “Bite-sized” content that they can
read and digest in a hurry. Above all, aim to make your audience happy.
STEP 3: Write About Your Service Or Products
While blog posts and similar kinds
of content are usually aimed at educating the audience, other kinds of copy on
your website should be written specifically to market your services and products.
The content on product pages, for
example, must be persuasive, compelling, and descriptive, showing the product
to its best advantage. That’s a completely different kind of writing than the
educational or “how-to” blog post.
Sales copy also tends to be more
static and longer-lived. Written descriptions and copy on product and service
pages don’t typically get changed or updated frequently, so it deserves its own
special focus. It’s generally more vivid, with a greater degree of descriptive
content, and relies more heavily on the second-person -- i.e. “you,” instead of
“we” or “they.”
For service providers, the
principles are the same, although the execution might vary a bit. You won’t always
have a physical product to describe, but you can still reach your prospective
client by selling a result or process to them in a similar way.
Think of how you can describe what
you do for your clients, not in terms of techniques or specific services, but
in terms of what you can accomplish for them. That usually boils down to one or
two benefits:
· Helping them reach a deeply desired
goal
· Solving a problem or removing an
obstacle
· Saving them money, time, or both
Insider Tips for Writing About Your Service
· Whether
you’re starting from scratch or revising or updating
copy, it’s helpful to start with a list of each individual service or
product. You can then prioritize according to your specific revenue and sales
goals, and sort into logical groupings or categories.
· Consider
the upsell. Whether you’re selling products or services, in many cases certain
purchases seem to logically flow into others. For example, a consumer who wants
to get fit might start out buying a book about running, but then decide to get some
new workout gear as well. Figure these pairings out so you can connect the
pages in some way on your website with
your written content.
These
strategies can help any business leverage the power of digital marketing to
meet their sales goals. Remember to infuse all your content with a consistent
“personality” reflecting your brand’s voice, values, and mission. Always look
to differentiate your business from the competition. Write for those who don’t
know you as well, not yourself!
