The Internet has made it cheaper and easier than ever to start and promote your own business. Unfortunately, this has also made it harder than ever to attract and retain loyal customers.

 

Potential customers are exposed to so much media ­—emails, ads, social posts, photos, videos, text messages— that it’s harder and harder to hold their attention and try to build a relationship with them.

 

Even if you provide the most helpful and practical information through your blog or have a great product or service to offer, you won’t accomplish much unless your website and other online content attract a reasonable number of visitors, and persuades them to take some form of action.

 

 

Conversion Rate Optimization is The Key

Conversion rate optimization is a process that helps you find the weak spots in your marketing funnel (sequence) that are keeping more prospects from turning into customers or clients.

While this methodology can become complex and require the help of technical consultants, it’s possible for a small business to implement a simpler form of conversion rate optimization.

Applying a few digital marketing optimization best practices will have an immediate impact on your website’s performance.

There is a variety of affordable cloud-based software that makes it easy to test different headlines, colors, images, etc.

 

 

Here are a few tips to help you improve your response and conversion rates:

• Look at your website through the eyes of a potential customer
• Pay attention to how professional and user-friendly your site feels
• Include call-to-action links within your educational content (blogs, articles) that promote a free book or course to email subscribers
• Always ask people to take the next step in the buying process: Watch videos, sign up for a free consultation
• Include customer reviews in your marketing materials to increase trust
• Add case studies of customers who have benefited from using your product
• Place the same offer in 2 – 3 different places within lengthy blog posts or sales pages
• Frequently update old blog posts, articles, and ads to attract new visitors

 

 

Use Digital Marketing Tools

Digital marketing technology can also help you increase response and conversion rates:

• Use marketing funnel tools to add pop-up forms that appear when a visitor attempts to leave a landing page or email form
• Test different versions of your landing page by changing headlines, images, and colors
• Use retargeting technology to track previous website visitors. You will then be able to make promotional offers as they visit other websites or open their emails.

 

Conversion Optimization Leads to Higher Sales and Lower Costs

Implementing a few conversion rate optimization techniques in your marketing efforts will pay off in the long run:

• Reuse existing marketing content, instead of constantly creating new ones
• Generate higher response rates from existing campaigns
• Make more sales from current customers
• Stop spending money on techniques that aren’t working
• Maintain a decent Google ranking by keeping your website active and updated

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

If you would like to improve the response rates of your marketing campaigns, please click below to get started:

Copywriting Review (critique)

 

Your website provides interesting, valuable information and offers highly useful downloadable materials like e-books.

Your customers love your customer service.

You sell quality products and services that can help a lot more people if only they would buy from you.

 

Despite all of this, your blog posts, ads, and sales pages don’t generate the results you expect:

• Increased email subscriptions
• Higher sales
• Referrals

 

If you’re confident about the quality of what you offer and know that your written materials contain useful and practical information, the solution to your low response rates may be to rewrite your website content and your sales materials.

 

How Does a Rewrite Improve Your Marketing Results?

A content rewrite turns poorly structured materials into persuasive marketing content that gets results.

Educational content, such as articles, need to accomplish certain goals, in order to build trust with potential customers:

⦁ Convince potential customers that you are an expert in your field

⦁ Follow a specific sequence that provides readers with strong arguments that support your main ideas

⦁ Provide information that has practical value to your potential customers

⦁ Give readers a glimpse of your personality and approach to doing business

 

Promotional materials and content, on the other hand, should follow proven sales and persuasion best practices:

• Apply sales persuasion structures and sequences
• Ask people to take action
• Balance the use of logical arguments with emotional appeals
• Focus on the needs, desires and problems of its target audience
• Reflect your brand’s style

 

Applying these recommendations to your marketing materials may be all that is needed to boost your website’s performance and attain higher returns on your marketing investment.

 

Conclusion

A trained copywriter or digital marketing consultant can take a disorganized, ineffective piece of content, and transform it into a successful sales letter, email campaign, etc.

On the other hand, a webpage might be so poorly written and messy that you’re better off throwing it out and starting from scratch, rather than wasting time trying to fix it.

Either way, it’s important to remember that your website content is part of the sales process, and just like a good salesperson, it needs to be trustworthy and persuasive in order to generate the results you seek.

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

 

Improve Your Website Response Rates Today!

 

 

Your email marketing campaign is possibly the most important part of your marketing funnel, since it’s where you build a relationship with potential customers, and gradually persuade them to buy your products and services.

 

At the same time, it’s important to know much “nurturing” to do before you start promoting yourself, otherwise a large portion of your email list may decide to unsubscribe if they believe you are only interested in making a quick sale.

 

Especially in today’s overhyped world, a soft-sell approach works better than traditional aggressive advertising methods.

 

This is what email lead nurturing is all about.

 

Lead Nurturing Basics

The lead nurturing process takes into consideration the fact that most people either aren’t ready to buy, or don’t know your business well enough to place an order just yet.

Just like with a personal relationship, it takes a few weeks of  social interactions before people begin to trust you and provide more information about themselves.

Since the goal behind an email nurturing campaign is to build long-term relationships, it has to balance educational content with promotional content.

This helps to satisfy the needs of subscribers in different stages of the buying process.

Your email messages should include both links to your blog, as well as to your product sales pages. Doing this allows email recipients to either get more information about you, or to place an order if they are ready to do business with you.

 

 

Lead Nurturing Tips

Your email lead nurturing campaign consists of a series of emails

(autoresponders) sent over a few weeks to people who gave you

their contact information and downloaded your free materials.

 

During this period, you will send messages that assure potential customers you are an expert who can be trusted, and who provides quality products and services

 

Convert the right prospects into loyal customers:

• Design a sequence that becomes more direct and promotional once potential customers have been exposed to your informational content and have learned more about you

• Offer practical tips to help customers find the right provider for your type of product or service

• Include customer success stories and reviews to build your credibility

• Offer prospects free consultations, or inexpensive products to encourage them to take a chance on you

• Repeat your email campaign (re-engagement) targeting people who didn’t open your messages, or failed to respond

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

 

Create Your Own Lead Nurturing Plan!

An email marketing campaign is one of the most important parts of your marketing funnel, since it gives you the opportunity to build a relationship of trust with potential customers before you ask them to buy your products and services.

Please contact me if you would like to create an effective  email marketing  plan for your small business.

I can also help you create an email marketing campaign to  convert more potential customers and clients.

 

Content editing is much more than checking grammar!

A good marketing content editor could be the difference between average-performing promotions and digital marketing campaigns that get attention and results.

Some businesses may be tempted to rely on grammar checking software and cheap proofreaders to avoid hiring freelance content editors / consultants.

Doing this might end up costing you more in the form of lost sales and business opportunities.

If your marketing content and materials don’t follow best practices, such as proven sales structures and sequences, it will inform and entertain readers but won’t get them to take action:

• Subscribe to newsletters
• Download free reports
• Sign up for free trials
• Order your products and services

 

Search engines like Google and Bing also penalize sites with poorly structured or vague content. This keeps them from appearing in the top 2-3 pages on search results.

As you can see, it pays to invest in a good content editor, especially for critical marketing content such as whitepapers, sales pages and email lead nurturing messages.

Content Editing Addresses a Variety of Marketing Issues

A content editor will evaluate your marketing and sales content and materials to make sure they are structured to maximize results from a marketing standpoint.

 

A typical content edit will check for:

Structure and Flow

Sales pages, email sequences, and other promotional content need to follow specific sequences and structures to ensure they build up interest in your offerings and get people to take action.

For example, a sales letter needs to balance emotional appeals with logical arguments (features) in order to persuade a large number of people to do what you would like them to do.

   

Even your educational content, like blog posts, needs to balance information with promotion.

Your claims need to subtly position you as an expert that can be trusted, otherwise readers will see that you are merely promoting yourself, instead of trying to help them.

 

SEO (search engine optimization)

Quality content alone won’t help you if your articles and blog posts don’t show up on internet search results.  

During a content edit, your content will be checked for the proper use of keywords that potential customers use during web searches.

Meta content, such as behind-the-scenes webpage descriptions and keyword lists, also help Google and other search engines learn what your site is all about, and ensure that your webpages are indexed and categorized properly.

SEO is important in order for your website to be recognized as an authority within your industry.

Brand Copywriting Tone and Style

 Your articles, emails, sales pages, and ads need to use images and words that your target audience can relate to.

Younger customers won’t respond to slang or phrases that are used by older generations.  Older people won’t relate to imagery that appeals to millennials.

 

Alignment of Content with its Purpose

The objective behind a blog post is completely different than the objective of a promotional sales page.

The first is meant to build trust in your expertise, while the second seeks to get people to make a purchase or sign up for a free trial.

 

Adequate Balance Between Education and Promotion

While inbound / content marketing tends to focus more on educating and building trust with potential customers, you also have to position your product or service as the right solution for them.

 

This means that you have to promote your email newsletters, free guides, and other incentives to encourage people to enter your marketing funnel    by providing their email addresses.

 

A simple way to include promotional elements within your blog posts and articles is to add CTA (call-to-action) links that ask readers to sign up for a free newsletter or e-book.

 

 

Marketing Weak Points

Some content editors may provide additional suggestions to help optimize your marketing / sales funnel for better results.

For example, you may be alerted about missing marketing funnel segments or conflicting tones and writing styles.

Sometimes, an incomplete marketing sequence may be the reason why your online content isn’t generating the results you desire.

 

Content Editing Generates Huge Returns on Investment

If your email marketing, sales pages, and other promotional materials aren’t attracting more website visitors, email clicks, or sign-ups, consider getting a content edit.

Doing this will be cheaper than creating new marketing content from scratch, especially if you are not sure whether your copywriter is using the most effective sales techniques.

Many freelance editors and inbound marketing consultants provide this service at affordable rates, while also offering useful tips on improving your overall marketing.

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

 

Generate Better Returns on Your Marketing Content!

If you would like to optimize your landing pages, product descriptions, home page, and other marketing content to generate more website traffic and sales, please contact me

 

Get a Copy Critique: Discover Why Your Marketing Content Isn’t Generating Sales

You have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars creating, editing, and revising landing pages, emails, sales pages, ads, and other promotional materials for your products and services.

 Unfortunately, nothing seems to increase your website traffic, email sign-ups, or sales results.

 

 

Have your thought about getting a copy critique (review)?

Sometimes, changing the words or word sequence in your headlines, subject lines, or lead paragraph is enough to achieve massive increases in website traffic, downloads, and email subscriptions.

A marketing copywriter professional will analyze your marketing and sales content from the perspective of a potential customer, and give you objective feedback on what is working and what isn’t.

You will learn what could be changed in your webpages, email messages, and other funnel content to make it more effective. It might be your sales approach, wording, sequence of copywriting elements, balance of features and benefits, or offers.

 

 

What’s Included in a Copy Critique?

 A copy critique (audit / review) evaluates whether your marketing content follows best practices such as:

 

• • • Use of sales psychology copywriting techniques
    • Proper use of headlines and subheadings
    • Content that follows a persuasive sequence
    •  Copywriting flow and structure that gets people to take   action
    •  Logical arguments that support your claims
    • Proper emphasis on benefits that matter to potential customers
    • Smooth transitions between sections
    • Presence of testimonials and social proof
    • Appeal to readers’ emotions

 

 

 

Copy Critiques Provide an Affordable way to Optimize Your Marketing

A copy critique offers a fast, inexpensive way to discover what is keeping your marketing content and materials from attracting more potential customers, and persuading them to buy your products and services.

Critiques are also cheaper than creating new sales content from scratch without being sure you have the right approach for getting the results you seek.

 

 

 

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

 

Discover if Your Marketing Copy is Following Best Practices!

 

 

Image via Pexels

By Katie Conroy —  AdviceMine.com

Are you a small business owner trying to figure out how to stay ahead in a digital world? If you haven’t found the answers yet, it’s time to keep looking. When you fail to keep up with technology, your business will suffer, and you may find yourself standing in the dust of the competition. Fortunately, updating your technical capabilities isn’t that difficult.

 

There are a few things you can implement now that will not only save you money but can also make you money. Here are four examples, presented by WritingConversions.

 

Cloud computing.

You’ve no doubt heard the term “the cloud” tossed around more times than you care to count. This unfortunately ambiguous term simply refers to any software or service that utilizes the power of the internet instead of a local server or computer. Cloud adoption implemented by FyrSoft can help your business be more productive while keeping your professional assets safe and secure. This ensures that you’ll always have access to your important client data when you need it. Rapid migration and a fully-customized cloud environment put you in a position to pounce when success knocks on your door.

 

Cybersecurity Training.

Cybersecurity is an insanely important element to all businesses. Sadly, the average business owner simply does not understand their digital environment and does not understand how to keep it safe around the clock. The good news here is that there is an almost never-ending selection of free cybersecurity information and training that can help you implement smart security protocols. Make sure that your employees are up to date on common attacks aimed at small businesses.

Pay special attention to social engineering, which includes phishing, vishing, and malware. TerraNova security points out that the common thread of these is a weak link in your human chain. In other words, unprepared employees are your greatest hazard.

 

Upgraded Tech.

Twenty years ago, the idea of changing your hardware and software felt like a task that required a huge investment in a ridiculous amount of time. Fortunately, things are different today. And, if you’ve already moved your operations to the cloud, switching your hardware and software is a smooth transition.

Upgrading your physical systems, such as computers, printers, and other office equipment and continually updating your operating systems is one of the best ways to keep your business running smoothly. And if your website uses WordPress as a backbone, considering contracting a freelance WordPress expert or developer to make sure this aspect of your business is safe, secure, and up to date. All of this will result in greater productivity, which means more money padding your bottom line.

 

Accounting Software

Your business’s accounting methods not only help you keep up with your incoming and outgoing cash, but also ensure that you are compliant with the IRS and other regulating bodies. There are many accounting mistakes that can be easily rectified simply by using accounting software. Lack of organization, failure to back up data, and losing receipts for even small transactions can all cost you a huge sum in the long term, especially if you find yourself on the wrong end of an IRS audit. Good accounting software will rectify these problems, speed up your operations, reduce overall costs, and help you get the most out of your money.

 

These are just a few examples of the ways technology can improve your business. There are countless others, and if you fail to ignore the continual advancements of the Internet Age, you will find yourself standing stationary while the competition rides the information superhighway straight toward the success that you’ve worked so hard for.

 

WritingConversions can help business owners, both big and small, with professional writing, rewriting, and editing services — all at incredibly affordable rates. To learn more about what we offer, visit our website.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Pixabay

If you’ve been downsized or laid off, or you’re just looking to earn some cash on the side, the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics indicates that today’s gig economy offers a number of opportunities for flexible jobs and freelance work. You might choose to look for employment in your area of expertise or pursue money-making opportunities through a hobby or special interest. If you don’t have a preference for what you do and are just looking to make some extra dough, scope out the market to identify the best paying opportunities that work with your schedule. Writing Conversions hopes the following tips can help you get started.

 

Assessing Your Skills

Looking for a side hustle isn’t typically the same as looking for a full-time job. While your education, training and previous experience can certainly be a benefit, you also have the opportunity to consider your overall skill sets and how you might best utilize them. Start by making a list of things you’re good at, as well as things you enjoy doing. For example, do you like working with people, or do you prefer solo pursuits? Would you like to work from home, or would you rather be out in the community? Understanding your own strengths, likes and dislikes can help you narrow down the type of side jobs you want to explore.

 

Extending Your Profession

If you work in a specialized area, you might be able to parlay your existing skillset into an income-generating side gig. For example, if you’re a business manager, offering business coaching on the side is one way to go. If you’re a chef, advertising private cooking lessons or catering could be an option. If you’re a preschool teacher, private child care, nanny and tutoring services might be a good path to take. If you decide to look for work in your area of professional expertise, you can search for job leads and referrals through your professional network or industry associations, and by reaching out to current and past colleagues.

 

Monetizing Your Hobby

Many people earn extra money by turning their hobbies into small businesses. For example, if you enjoy making jewelry, you might attend arts and crafts fairs to sell your wares, or put together a small website to sell online. If you have a knack for automotive repair, offering your services as a mechanic might be a viable option. If you enjoy singing, you might find gigs working with wedding or cover bands, or even performing as a soloist in different local venues. This approach allows you to earn money while also doing something you find appealing or personally rewarding.

 

Finding Steady Work

Online job boards often have a search section related to gig, work-from-home, remote and part-time or seasonal jobs. You can create a profile detailing your services, and browse and apply for roles that are of interest. You can also hang flyers in places where people who might utilize your services congregate. For instance, if you’re an avid gardener or landscaper, putting your cards on home improvement store bulletin boards can attract business. Social media is also a good place to seek side work, as is asking family and friends to spread the word about the type of gigs you’re in the market for.

 

Whatever way you earn your side-work income, keep in mind the U.S. Internal Revenue Service requires you to pay taxes on what you make. In some cases, it can be beneficial to establish your small business as a limited liability corporation or sole proprietorship. Every state has slightly different regulations, so check your state requirements before getting started. This formalizes your business and protects you in different ways. You can also save money by filing necessary paperwork yourself, or by utilizing a formation services company. Don’t forget to keep good records, including those related to expenses, travel and business-related purchases, as these can be deducted when you file your taxes.

 

Cherie Mclaughlin —   www.couchbasedbiz.com/category/blog

Cherie Mclaughlin has been creating and growing couchbasedbiz.com since her couch was in a dorm room. Through both success and failure, she knows that all it takes to be successful is a willingness to go into it with the understanding that it’s a learn as you go process, and the boldness to step out of your comfort zone and give it a shot.

 

 

 

By Mark Bellini

As more and more businesses offer free educational content in order to attract more website visitors, it becomes necessary for you to take a more proactive approach when trying to convince potential customers to do business with you.

One way to get better results from your inbound / content marketing materials is to apply direct marketing techniques and try to build a relationship with those who’ve downloaded your content and have shown an interest in your products and services.

Direct marketing has been around for a long time and works very well for smaller businesses without large marketing budgets.

 

Here are 8 direct marketing techniques you can apply to your business:
1. Always ask people to take action
All of your website content, including blog posts and articles, should include a call-to-action.

This can be an offer to try your product, or to fill out a form and download a free e-book.

This helps to guide potential customers along your funnel, gain trust in you, and eventually purchase from you.

 

2. Offer incentives for immediate response
Potential customers need incentives to continue moving further along in their journey from prospects to paying customers.

 

Offering bonus gifts or discounts overcomes people’s tendency to procrastinate. The longer prospects interact with your content and marketing materials, the more likely they’ll be to respond to your promotional offers.

 

3. Always follow up
A potential client who responds to your ad, fills out a webform, or calls you should get immediate attention. He / she is obviously interested in your products or services.

 

Three ways to follow up include:
1- Create an email marketing campaign (autoresponder) that is triggered when someone enters their contact information in your webform.

 

2- Offer a free downloadable e-book or report to site visitors who fill out your opt-in form. This PDF file should cover a major issue that is related to products and services.

 

3- Send an information kit to people who contact you directly asking for more information.

 

4. Persuasive copywriting sets you apart from the competition.
As potential customers move further down your marketing funnel (sequence), they need to be persuaded to eventually try your product or service. That’s where copywriting becomes important.

 

Your promotional emails, sales pages, and offers need to appeal to people’ s emotions, and convince them that you have a solution to their problem. You also have to overcome their objections and procrastination.

 

This is an area of marketing where you need to be direct and really tell potential customers why they should do business with you.

A good copywriter will be able to create a well-structured sales argument that will position your product or service as the right choice for customers’ specific needs.

 

5. Avoid fancy design and excessive creativity.
Successful direct marketing follows certain formulas and structures that are proven to work.
The focus should always be on your message.

 

6. Make decisions based on results.
Direct marketing methods allow you to use data from different campaigns to see which ads, emails, and promotions perform better.

Having detailed data makes it easier to decide which marketing methods are working, and which methods should be abandoned.

 

7. Track every dollar spent on marketing.
It’s important to only use marketing tools and services that allow you to analyze the results of your ads, email campaigns, and other direct marketing efforts.

 

Digital marketing platforms offer metrics that allow you to measure practically anything you want. This can save you a lot of time and money trying to figure out the most effective ways to promote your business.

 

8. Direct marketing requires discipline.
Once your business becomes successful, it’s tempting to start getting creative with your marketing and ads. Unfortunately, this is where many small businesses run into problems.

 

Direct marketing methods work when they are used consistently. Changing your messages, logos, or trying to invest in marketing fads will dilute your unique advantage.

 

You will then have to compete with hundreds of other businesses using the same copycat strategies.
It’s much easier to stick with a small set of direct marketing techniques that give you a unique advantage and can be used over and over.

 

Direct Response Marketing Just Works
Direct marketing has been around for hundreds of years. The internet has made it even more powerful by allowing businesses to get detailed information on the performance of all their marketing campaigns.

 

While inbound / content marketing gets all the attention these days, it usually needs to be combined with direct marketing in order to be effective.

 

Smaller brands don’t have the luxury of waiting for customers to find them through SEO (search engine optimization) and search engine results.

Direct marketing helps you to directly target potential customers and get immediate results.

 

Mark Bellini – Freelance Copywriter and Marketing Editor

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

Photo: Quinn Dombrowski

Inbound marketing (content marketing) is a highly effective way for small business owners to attract more website visitors.

Writing informative, helpful articles, blog posts, and reports helps you to become a trusted authority to potential customers as they learn more about you and the products and services you offer.

Unfortunately, many businesses take shortcuts in order to produce content quickly and cheaply.

These tactics are harmful in the long run, for two reasons:
1. Search engines like Google penalize sites with poorly written or plagiarized content. This prevents them from appearing in the top pages of search results.
2. Weak content won’t help you to be seen as an expert in your field. This will make it more difficult to convince prospects to do business with you.

 

Google Recognizes Good Content
In the early days of the internet, it was easy to get good rankings on Google by generating dozens of poorly written articles and blog posts filled with the right keywords.

Many businesses simply copied and pasted content from other sites, changing only a few words to deceive the search engines.
Today, Google has the technology to catch such tricks, and penalizes websites that use these tactics.

 

Websites can run into trouble for the following reasons:
⦁ Creating irrelevant, low quality content
⦁ Reusing content from other sites
⦁ Posting poorly structured content

 

Well-Written Content Prevents These Problems
The only way to get results from content marketing is to create informative content that discusses the challenges and questions your potential customers have about your industry, your products and services.

You need to see yourself as a publisher, and create a plan that lists the topics you plan to write about, the formats you intend to use. You also need a calendar that tells you when to upload each piece of content to your website.

 

Best Practices for Creating Effective Marketing Content
These guidelines will help you to produce quality website content that gets results:

⦁ Use keywords related to the questions and problems your potential customers routinely deal with
⦁ Write about topics that are relevant to your typical clients / customers
⦁ Make sure your articles and blog posts are easy to read and scan. Use subheadings, wide margins, and bullet points to make the text flow
⦁ Ask readers to take action. Whether it’s downloading a booklet, or scheduling a free appointment, always include a call-to-action at the end of every piece of content you create
⦁ Reuse your content in social media posts and email messages in order to spread your messages to the widest possible audience.

 

How to Consistently Create Quality Content
Creating articles, blog posts, and other forms of online content takes a lot of planning, research, and revisions.

It is possible to do some of the work by yourself. You may decide to write a draft of the blog posts you need, and then have an editor or writer revise and polish them.

You may also decide to outsource your content marketing efforts to one or more freelancers.

This is the best option if you simply don’t have the time or desire for researching and writing.

There are many competent freelance content writers / copywriters who can manage your inbound marketing needs for affordable monthly fees.

 

 

Content Marketing Works When Done Right
Getting the best results from inbound marketing requires well-planned, informative written materials.

Creating an inventory of informative content that helps your prospects and customers solve common problems will eventually get the attention of Google and other search engines.

This will help you to separate yourself from competitors who create low-quality, unfocused website content.

As we’ve discussed, taking shortcuts, such as copying others’ content or buying articles from cheap content agencies, actually hurts your website rankings.

This also hurts your business in the long-run, if website visitors get a poor impression of your credibility and skills.

Investing in a good freelance writer, or a competent marketing editor, will lead to more website traffic, email subscribers, and paying customers.

Good writing still matters!

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

 

 

Do you need help fixing poorly structured  or ineffective content or copywriting?

 

You post a bunch of articles, blog posts, and social media posts.

Your website starts showing up on internet search results as you become a respected guru in your industry. Your website starts attracting thousands of visitors. Most of them become loyal customers and give you great referrals.

Your business becomes highly successful.

According to many digital marketing experts, content marketing will do all this for you, without the need for traditional advertising and aggressive marketing techniques.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true for most small businesses.

While a large, established company might attract a lot of sales leads through a passive, inbound / content marketing strategy, smaller businesses need to find more proactive ways of attracting customers.

 

This means that businesses still need to implement traditional marketing techniques to get the best results from their content marketing. Small businesses need to go after clients and customers – not simply offer free educational content. That’s the only way to stand out from your competition.

 

 

Your Content Needs to Solve Relevant Problems

The whole point of content marketing is to gain the trust of potential customers by providing them with useful information that helps them solve common problems in their industry.

Creating relevant articles, blogs, and e-books also attracts the attention of search engines by showing them that you are in expert in your field.

That’s why it’s a waste of time producing a bunch of unfocused, poorly researched content, hoping that it’s going to improve your ranking on Google.

Irrelevant content also attracts less website visitors who are willing to give you their contact information in exchange for free downloads.

The only way to make content marketing work is by producing content that provides answers to the questions your potential customers ask.

Answering the right questions consists of creating articles, blog posts, or videos around the keywords used by prospects during their online searches.

 

 

Content Marketing Needs to Supported by Traditional Marketing

Just because you’ve created a bunch a free content doesn’t mean thousands of people are suddenly going to visit your website and interact with you.

Unless your business is widely known in your industry, you will have to make use of traditional direct marketing techniques to separate yourself from hundreds of other competitors who are also offering free educational content.

Small businesses need to work with professional copywriters to create promotional content, such as landing pages, email messages, and online ads, that generates more website traffic and email signups.

The only difference between this form of direct marketing and traditional direct response methods is that the ads you place will promote your free content and downloadable reports, instead of directly promoting your products and services.

Combining inbound content marketing with outbound direct marketing techniques makes the best use of both digital and traditional marketing techniques.

You won’t just passively upload content to your site and hope that people notice it. At the same time, your direct marketing promotions won’t seem overly aggressive or pushy.

 

 

Conclusion

Potential customers expect to get free information when they visit your website. They can visit your site, download your booklet, and leave your site in a matter of minutes, without even noticing your name or what services you offer.

That’s a major problem with content marketing.

It’s up to you to pursue those who show some interest in your content, and use direct marketing efforts to build a relationship and eventually persuade them to buy from you.

The best way to do this is to offer a free report or booklet that helps potential customers solve a major problem. This downloadable content becomes available once people enter their contact information on your web form.

Today the use of marketing automation software makes it easy to plan and create complete funnels that manage your educational content and   direct marketing campaigns.

These tools ensure that you get something out of your content marketing. Otherwise, you are simply giving away your knowledge for free.

 

 Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes!

Please visit WritingConversions.com and get your free report, 26 Marketing Mistakes & Simple Ways to Avoid Them: How to Attract Loyal Clients on a Small Budget.

Discover 26 of the most serious mistakes that entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and other self-employed individuals routinely make when trying to promote their products and services.

You will also receive:

1. Weekly emails that will help you build a profitable marketing funnel
2. Tips to help you find competent and reliable freelance copywriters and consultants
3. Learn how to use direct marketing methods within your inbound funnel for more effective results
4. Bonus downloads that discuss best practices for building your own marketing funnel

 

Get Better Returns on Your Content Marketing: Get a  Digital Marketing Plan!