Content and sales are interconnected, in fact, your content can feed you leads, customers and sales. Of course, we are referring to business content crafted with some planning and with the objective of sales and conversions. Content alone will not get you anywhere and that’s where clever content marketing tactics that reach more audience comes in.
“Content is the soul of your business and is the best sales tool you own,” says Marcus Sheridan on Social Media Examiner.
Content Correlates with Brand
Content should be aligned with your brand; what is the nature of your business, what products and services do you provide, why should anyone buy from you, what is your expertise and experience. You can build your brand using content to remind, educate and provide proof of what your brand stands for.
Volvo stands for safety, and this image was built on years of crash test data and product reviews. Similarly, you can build your brand name and image based on your content.
Create Stories Around Your Product and Services
Stories are very powerful as they are relatable. Build a content library over time with as many case studies and success stories as you can. These can encourage potential customers to take the next step. Stories can also put potential a customer’s mind at ease as they can see other people have bought from you and have enjoyed your products or services.
Using cleverly placed ‘call to action’ or CTA buttons that are embeddable anywhere is a great tactic to increase sales within your stories and blog posts. “Buy” buttons can be placed anywhere within a blog post, a social media post or even an email newsletter to subscribers. BigCommerce offers a customizable “Buy” button that can be embedded anywhere with ease.
Here is an example of how the Buy button can be integrated into the content experience.
Answer Every Question
Creating content is relatively inexpensive and easy to get started. You can answer every question from your potential customers through content and blog posts. When people search on search engines there is a good chance your content can help answer those questions.
For example, you can answer the following questions through your content:
- Why is a particular type of product or service better than the other?
- How long does it take to see benefits using the product or service?
- What is the cost?
- How long do they last?
- How to take care so the product lasts long?
- What problems or issues can they solve?
Your customers will become ‘sales ready’ with well-crafted content that addresses customer questions at different stages and nurtures them through the sales lifecycle.
The Upside of Content
Content can be created within a few days if required and the cost is relatively inexpensive. So there is no limit to content creation, one can keep churning content as long as it is helpful and provides business sense. There are many formats of content such as social media posts, blog posts, images, infographics, videos and podcasts which can provide some variation to your consumers. Content is currency in the digital world where the web never sleeps and is constantly running 24/7.
Conclusion
Content alone won’t cut it if you want to keep feeding the sales cycle constantly. You need some levers to help pull the customers in. Using search engine optimization tactics to get more readers is one such trick.
Content marketing is another clever tactic used by online marketers to get more reach for their content. The content you produce has to reach more and more audience so you can get the best return out of it. For example, sharing content on social media, sharing them using influencers, guest blogging on industry sites, answering related questions on sites like Quora can all help. By marketing your content you can reach more buyers.