If you want to know how to boost sales, you’ve probably heard that “content is king.”
And while no one can argue with that statement, what that “king” is really depends on what you expect your content to achieve. For some people, that means more organic traffic, ranking better in search results, or increasing their subscriber base. However, the ultimate goal is always the same - getting more sales.
If you’ve ever wondered if you can actually get more sales from content - here is why it’s possible and how to actually do it.
Focus on transactional keywords
In the world of SEO and content marketing, you generally start every initiative with keywords. When you write a piece of content, you want to make sure it’s something that your target audience is searching for. Choosing the right keyword can make or break the success of your content marketing efforts, so you really need to do your research. Our tool of choice for keyword research is Ahrefs, but there are other excellent apps as well, such as SEMRush.
Once you find a keyword you want to write content for, you take a look at its data. There are generally three points you want to look at:
- Search volume (how many people search for the keyword per month)
- Keyword difficulty (how hard it will be to rank on page 1 on Google for this keyword)
- Clicks (you want the ratio of search volume and clicks to be as close to 1:1 as possible - which means that people are actually clicking on search results)
Finding the ideal keyword can be really difficult, but it’s essential if you want to boost sales. Everyone is looking for keywords that have lots of volume (searches per month) and a low difficulty, but that doesn’t happen very often. But then again, there is the fourth piece of the puzzle that Ahrefs won’t show you - the intention.
Not all keywords are made the same. Let’s take our case for example. Our software is used for “sales documents”, and this is a pretty good keyword to write for.
It has a low volume, but it’s also super easy to rank for. However, the people searching for this keyword are not looking to buy. Most of them are researching what sales documents are, what types of them exist, and other general information. In other words, this is not a transactional keyword and it’s unlikely that an article around it will lead to new sales.
On the other hand, there is a keyword such as “proposal software”. Someone searching for it already knows what business proposals are and that there is a software to create them. They are much more likely to purchase if they land on your website after searching for this keyword. In other words, this is a transactional keyword.
It has a much higher difficulty (69), but writing for it makes a lot more sense in terms of sales.
If your main goal is to sell with content, write for transactional keywords and not those with lots of volume, no matter how tempting it may be.
How to boost sales from organic traffic
If you’ve been doing content marketing for a while and you’re wondering why there are no sales, despite an increase in visitors, then you’re doing something wrong. Getting hundreds of thousands of visitors to your website is a great result. However, just having someone read your content doesn’t mean much if they’re not buying.
The reason why they’re not buying? You’re not asking them to buy.
Once a potential customer is on your website, of course, you want them to read your content and enjoy it - that’s the primary goal. However, you also want to nudge them in the direction of making a purchase, and there are quite a few ways to accomplish this.
First, use calls to action and promote your product (subtly) within the body of the content. Don’t go and spam about the quality of your product every other sentence, but don’t shy away from mentioning it and linking to your landing/product pages.
Moreover, split up your content with blocks of calls to action and different banners. The advantages are twofold. First, your content will be easier to read because it won’t be a wall of text and second, your readers can click through and buy immediately.
You can also use various pop-up formats to entice your visitors to stay and make a purchase. From exit-intent popups to welcome mats and various other popup formats, you can encourage visitors to check out your product and buy. You can experiment with the placement, format, copy, CTAs and more to increase your conversions as much as you possibly can.
To sum up - no one will buy if they don’t see the option to do so. Make sure your readers know what you sell and where they can make a purchase. Don’t ask them to put 2 and 2 together - do it for them.
Write content for different stages of the sales funnel
Now let’s explore how to boost sales by writing content for different buying cycle stages.
Before content marketing really took off, there were very few brands that did it very well. One of them was Hubspot, and they’re still one of the greats in the world of content marketing for SaaS. There are a few reasons behind their success, one of them being that they churned out more articles per day than anyone else out there. Another one is the fact that Hubspot has a solid content plan and each piece they publish has a place in the sales funnel.
Just like you should have your ideal target audience, you should realize that not everyone in that audience is at the same stage. Some are unaware of the problem they have, others know that they have a problem and they’re looking for (your) solution and others know that they need your product specifically.
You can’t write the same kind of product for all of these groups in your target audience.
Smart content marketers sort their keywords (and topics) into buckets. Each keyword is targeted at a different stage of the sales funnel and it aims to inform, educate or convert a certain demographic. That way, each piece of content has a specific purpose, rather than just “make sales”. You will never write a piece of content that doesn’t meet its purpose again.
Wrapping up
Content is indeed king and it can do lots of great things for your business. If your aim is to get sales through content, make sure that every piece you publish has a specific intention and purpose and you’ll be able to turn a good chunk of your visitors into buyers.
StoryChief is one simple tool for all your content marketing. Learn more about StoryChief and contribute to our blog.
