Content creation strategy: how to attract trusty customers

Home > Marketing | 156,921 views | 8 minutes read
23-06-2012

You have a website and constantly fight to increase your traffic and attract new visitors. You built a great SEO campaign and keep improving your marketing strategies to reach that goal. But did you think about your content strategy?

Common mistake

The common mistake of people who sell online is to neglect the content.

When creating your Ecommerce page, the first thing you focus on is the product. That makes complete sense as it is what your customer first care about: why would anyone buy your product if you can’t provide some quality item?

You would then take great pictures, give a nice description, integrate it in an easy user-friendly page and integrate the whole in a cool design.

Your next step is most probably trying to build an efficient marketing strategy using SEO and SEM.

 

Your SEM might be based on online or offline advertising, bringing awareness to your page and dragging people there in a short term basis.

Your SEO is more of a long term strategy: how to make your website as search-engine-friendly as possible to encourage Google pushing your page first on some key terms.

Both together represent your overall marketing strategy to create online traffic and awareness, and that is exactly what you need in order to sell.

 

If you are currently working on your strategy, I invite you to read my article “How to become rich within 24h and see your website first on Google? The secret Marketing ” stating the most common mistakes and traps to avoid when building SEO strategies.

The problem is that people buy only from shops they trust. What do you do for your customers to trust you with their money and private information?

 

A good content creation strategy enhances both the results of your SEO and the level of trust your visitors place in you.

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What is a content strategy

A content strategy is simply a plan in which your page focuses not only on the product you sell and on your arguments to sell those, but on a real content offering valuable information to your visitors.

Let’s use some empathy for a second and put ourselves in your customers’ shoes. What are they looking for when browsing the internet?

Some of them surely look for a product: they already have their credit card in hand and are looking for what they need, ready to purchase. For those, you simply need to convince them that your product is better than your competitors. To achieve that, a great SEO / SEM strategy is almost enough: as long as they find you, they will purchase from you.

 

But let’s be realistic: what percentage of your overall traffic do those people actually represent? A few percents at most. What about the others? Those that might potentially buy your product but never find you because they were not specifically looking for it in the first place? They would most probably never find you, and if they do, they might not buy because that was not their initial purpose.

We must face it: most visitors are looking for information only. They do not want to purchase anything specific, and that is your job to convince them they need your product.

 

How to achieve that? With a real content strategy.

The idea behind this concept is very simple: offer your visitors what they are really looking for: information. Not product information: only few people already interested in purchasing are looking for product information. All others are simply looking for information.


 

In order to be more concrete, I will take an example.

Imagine that your passion is your dog. You spend hours playing with it, and when online, you look for information to take good care of your companion. How could you happen to arrive on a dog’s accessories webshop if you did not look for it in the first place?

Imagine that you are browsing Google, typing “dog’s teeth” to find more information on what is living in your dog’s mouth: what you are really looking for is an informative website with text and picture describing the problem and solution. You are not looking for an ad telling you “this product is the optimal solution”. What could then bring you to purchasing such product?

You found an informative webpage describing very clearly your situation problem and solution, and, within this page, you find links to efficient products giving you a perfect solution: that’s how you get to a product page willing to buy.

 

How to create efficient content

Efficient content is targeted content. Always make use of empathy, putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and think like them: what are potential customers interested in?

JulienRio.com: Content creation strategy: how to attract trusty customers 

In our previous example, we considered someone interested in his dog’s mouth’s health. You happen to sell biscuits that clean dog’s teeth. Now, the next step to reach this customer is to create, within your website or externally, content describing precisely what he wants to know and how to solve this problem.

Please note that we are here talking about real and valuable content, not about aggressive advertising: no one wants to read about how great your product is. People want to understand the problem, to see solutions and, at the very end, to be redirected to products that might actually help them.

 

Concretely, what should I do?

There are mainly two possible strategies for creating content: internal or external. Both have their own advantages and drawbacks.

 

Internal means that you create, on your website, sections in which you will present content related to your topic in a non-advertising way; this is actually the essential part: do not advertise. You can mention your product, link to it, but that’s all.

External usually means that you will create an external blog. Whether this blog is obviously wearing your brand or if it carries a separate name is your decision to make. This blog has to follow blogs’ rules of frequency. Same idea applies here: this isn’t an advertising blog. You will talk about serious topics related to your industry and bring real value and information to readers. It does not need to be directly related to your products: you can aim to a larger spot and talk about any topic related to your industry. The idea here is to reach as many people interested in your theme as you can.

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The importance of keywords

I have told you that you must create content related to your topic, but I haven’t precised an important point yet: this content must contain specific keywords.

If you want your content to be efficient, you must integrate in each article you write a series of specific keywords chosen by you.

How to define those keywords? That’s simple! Once again, you will need to make use of empathy.

Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes and find out what someone potentially interested in your products would type on Google to find you.

If you did not read it yet, I encourage you to read my article “The long tail theory” giving you a strategy for keywords definition.

Once you defined your keywords, try to use them in your texts. You must pay special attention to the way you integrate those words: they are not to be left as a list of words but carefully integrated in logical sentences within the text.

 

The benefits

The strategy of content is essential and has two main benefits.

First, your SEO will be much more efficient. Think about it: what is SEO really about? It is about improving your website so that search engines index you always better. By giving them more content, more keywords, more pages, you increase exponentially your online influence.

The second benefit to get from using a content strategy is the reward of customers trust.

Once customers have read your articles they will consider you as an expert in your area (admitting that your articles content are clear, valuable and useful) and give you their trust. They will know that you definitely know what you are talking about and will be keener to trust you with their money.

 

 

Next time you want to sell a product, think about it: would you buy it yourself if you arrived on the page with no other background information?

 

Julien Rio.

 

 

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