Content for conversion: Blogs and social media as the keystone of a sales strategy

There is no escaping the fact that a strong web presence is now an essential cornerstone of any contemporary sales strategy.

Even if your business doesn’t sell services or products that can be delivered over the internet, the original point of contact for a significant proportion of most new customers and clients will now often be an online connection of one type or another. This offers up a multitude of possibilities that simply didn’t exist in the past but it takes a certain amount of knowledge to know how to exploit it to your best advantage.

Conversion rates

A buzz phrase used by online marketers is ‘conversion rates’ and this basically boils down to the ratio of how many people look at your online presence against how many actually go on to make a purchase. It is only half the battle to actually get people to visit your website because the trick that really counts is getting an actual transaction as the end result. This is where content marketing comes into play. It can be defined as how you provide information of value to potential customers and is essentially a subtle form of advertising that uses information and entertainment to get a message across with the ultimate aim of making a sale.

Types of content

An individual when browsing needs to be hooked into a deeper level of attention and if you use a creative approach to content this can be achieved in many different ways. Blogs are an effective way of keeping a site updated while also offering helpful tips and tricks that happen to include your product or service as part of the solution. Product descriptions, step-by-step guides and reviews are all good subjects for a blog that can be seen as informative and will get your own core brand message across.

Social media is another aspect of engaging with both existing and potential customers and clients that can be put to great use because of its immediacy and clear direct lines of communication. Increasing upgrades from major networks such as Facebook and Twitter means there are always new ways to use different kinds of content to engage with people. Live video and 360-degree photography are just two of the most recent enhancements that show how the world of social media is continually moving forward.

Creating content

In most cases, the person who knows the most about your business and its customers is you. This is where taking an active role in creating your online content can be beneficial and helps to make a direct personal connection with customers. The downside of this approach is that it can be extremely time consuming, and it also means that more innovative content methodologies may be outside your scope of expertise.

Using a team of professionals to help you build a content marketing strategy makes good business sense for exactly these reasons, but more than that it also means you can make use of the more esoteric aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques. Although you may be able to create content of your own that reflects your business ethos and aims, professional writers will know how to make use of keywords and phrases to help maximise traffic direction and ultimately increase conversion rates.

There are experienced and knowledgeable writers that have first-hand experience of subjects you might want to cover in your content who can come up with authoritative and engaging material that will also resonate deeply with your own client base. What’s more, they know how to craft content so it is more likely to be shared on a social level, an aspect that is key to any successful digital sales strategy.

Ad averse

The way that content market is evolving is a reaction to the way in which people are increasingly becoming ad averse. In fact recent research revealed that 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company through content marketing as opposed to adverts, even though brands continue to spend more on advertising than on content.

One thing is for sure; the ever-evolving online world will see content continue to adapt to changing customer behaviours and that’s something that can be hard to keep track of unless you tap into the knowledge and experience of professional content creators.