It Starts With Research
As a marketer, you want to create content that converts casual readers into motivated buyers who are ready to speak to a sales representative. You know that this is the key to driving revenue growth through marketing. But creating content that guarantees high conversion rates is not as easy as it sounds.
The first step is to understand your target audience. But we don’t mean a surface-level knowledge of what they do, what their titles are, and what industry they’re in—we are talking about in-depth knowledge of your specific buyer personas.
You should seek to understand your buyer personas on a deeper level, almost like a close friend. You should know the answers to these crucial questions and more:
- What motivates them to succeed?
- What goals do they aspire to achieve? For example, are they seeking a certain lifestyle, role in their company, salary, or something else?
- What are their typical buying habits? Do they prefer to spend or save their money?
It’s not just about understanding the pain points of their industry in general—that is merely foundational knowledge. To create content that truly reaches buyers and resonates with them on a deeper level, you have to understand them as individuals. This is something B2C marketers are familiar with, but B2B buyers are still catching up.
Storytelling From the Point of View of the Audience
Now that you’ve done your research and developed an in-depth understanding of your customers, you can start the process of content creation from a well-informed place. Using your understanding of how your customers communicate and what they want to achieve, you can design a story that appeals to them individually.
Remember that your goal is to spark interest in your product. You want customers to research your company further, read more of your content, and eventually start a conversation with sales. That process starts with a compelling story.
You should start by drawing readers’ attention with an eye-catching headline and introduction to your story. There are plenty of articles out there discussing the most compelling headlines and the keywords that will get the most clicks—but the truth is, what will make your content stand out is your in-depth knowledge of your target market. Use your understanding of your customers’ needs to speak directly to them.
Continue with this approach through the rest of your content. Consistently deliver well-researched and readable information that is both informative and valuable to your target market. By the end of the piece, readers should have learned something useful, which will elevate potential buyers’ opinions of your company and increase your chance of making it to the shortlist of vendors they will contact.
Design as Visual Storytelling
At this point, you’ve written your copy—it’s insightful, useful, and ready to spark buyers’ interest. Now you have to think about the visual impact of your content. The next step of the content creation process is to package your information in a way that illustrates the point you’re trying to make.
Through your design choices, you have the chance to tell your story visually. It’s not just about creating something that looks nice—it’s more important to make thoughtful design choices with the goals you want to achieve in mind.
For example, you should consider your choices in terms of font, text size, and balance between white space and text, all of which will impact readability. You should also be thoughtful when choosing the more obvious visual elements, like pictures, graphics, and videos. Think about it from your reader’s point of view—what kinds of visual elements will be most compelling to them? Most shareable? Most informative? With this thoughtful approach to design, you can maximize the impact of your content on your potential buyers.
Add it All Up—It’s Expensive
To summarize, we have introduced three key elements of creating content that converts: research, writing, and design. To create content in-house, your company must satisfy each of these steps, which requires a team of employees that can cost $35,000 to $50,000 in payroll alone—each month. This is more than the typical marketing budget can handle.
However, in today’s increasingly digital world, content is crucial to a successful marketing strategy. Potential buyers probably won’t pick up the phone when your sales reps call, preferring to read about your product before they start a conversation with sales. On average, buyers are over 70% of the way through the purchasing process before they contact sales—which means that they’re making crucial decisions based primarily on your content. So, how do you create content that converts prospects to sales without burning through an excessive amount of money?
Creating content as a subscription is the answer to all of these worries. With a subscription, you can save time and money while still generating all the compelling content you need to fuel your marketing campaigns. Take SOMAmetrics’ Creative Content River™, for example. Our subscription-based content creation service delivers compelling content for 55% to 58% of what it would cost to accomplish in-house. This will transform your marketing department into a center of revenue generation and maximize your company’s growth rate—all with one monthly subscription.
Looking for more information about creating content that converts? Download this white paper for an in-depth discussion of the content creation process and what the Creative Content River™ can do for you.