Creating customer-centric content is not only a good practice for engaging your audience, but also a key factor for ranking high on Google and driving conversions. But how do you craft content that meets both the needs of your customers and the requirements of the search engines? Here are some tips to help you achieve this balance.
Before you start writing, you need to know who your customers are, what they want, and how they search for it. This means mapping out their journey from awareness to purchase, and identifying the pain points, questions, and keywords they use at each stage. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and keyword research tools to gather this data and create customer personas and scenarios.
Here are three key tips I've learned: 1. Content Personalization: In content marketing, one size doesn't fit all. To boost conversion rates, personalize your content. Utilize segmentation for customer personas or interests. 2. Create High-Quality Content: Content is king, but quality is its crown jewel. Enhance content quality; don't compromise and optimize using keywords your customers will search. Also, high-quality content is the secret to SEO success and customer conversion. 3. Invest in User experience (UX): Online, seamless and enjoyable UX is vital. Easy navigation, quick loading, and relevant, engaging content not only improve conversions but also elevate Google rankings. Google favors sites offering a positive user experience.
This is very important for a performance led campaign Step 1: identify your TG Step 2: understand buying journey using tools line GWI, etc Step 3: ease of access for buying journey, how easy is the buying process Step 4: strategically plan multiple touch points and frequency modulation Step 4: use right content and creatives which creates inquisitiveness Step 5: implement and execute as per plan and understand learnings Step 6: optimize the campaign effectiveness.
Write solutions to problems people have. Especially if lots of people have that problem. Be as detailed as possible in explaining your solution. They don't have to be really complex problems too. I have an article on how to add a WhatsApp button to your Instagram bio. It was simply a question I answered in my little community then I decided to make it a post on my blog. It's currently the 2nd most viewed post on my blog.
Agree. In my experience keyword search is crucial to understand the customer journey. 3 inputs though … 1) Don’t forget upper funnel search queries in order to identify content that has the potential to catch potential customers early on their journey. 2) Add qualitative and quantitative research to your customer journey mapping process to fully understand your customer. And 3) people don’t know what they don’t know, so be an expert on subjects important to make the right buying decision that people don’t know about.
Clearly the customer is the heart; the center of your content, therefore you must approach the content strategy, keeping in mind you are building a relationship with persons, with individuals, hence the conversations has to be compelling for every one of them. In Spanish we have a saying, which applies for content marketing "coffee for all" is not valid; you need to know who wants, drip coffee, who cappuccino, who espresso, and so forth, and make your best to deliver them all.
Once you have a clear picture of your customer journey, you need to align your content with your marketing goals. What action do you want your customers to take after reading your content? How does your content support your value proposition and your unique selling points? How does your content fit into your overall marketing campaign and strategy? You need to define these aspects and create a content plan that outlines the topics, formats, channels, and metrics for each piece of content.
Content strategy plays a pivotal role within the Marketing Plan. It is essential to ensure that your content aligns with your overarching business objectives. Your content serves as the primary tool for establishing a bond with your target audience, breaking the ice, initiating and sustaining conversations. To achieve this effectively, your content must consistently reflect your customers' needs and interests, as well as your brand's Unique Value Proposition in addressing and solving these needs and interests. Of course, metrics then let you know what better resonates with your audience, and what better converts.
In our experience, we've found that genuine connection with customers occurs when brands speak their language and address their needs directly. It's about tapping into their desires, fears, and interests, and offering tailored solutions that resonate on a personal level. Great content isn't about showcasing your brand; it's about understanding your clients' wants and needs and demonstrating how you can fulfill them. By shifting the focus away from ourselves and prioritizing the customer experience, we create content that truly resonates and fosters meaningful connections.
One thing I've found helpful is that content should customer engaging. Customer engagement content enable clients to make an informed decision to make further inquires, purchase or share with the next person. Overall, content displayed should guide customers towards a desired outcome.
Content should always have an objective and a hook, otherwise, it's mute. It should also align with the brand personality and respond to the wants and needs of the customer or audience.
To rank high on Google, you need to optimize your content for SEO. This means following the best practices for on-page and off-page SEO, such as using relevant keywords, writing catchy headlines and meta descriptions, using headings and subheadings, adding images and videos, linking to internal and external sources, and ensuring fast loading speed and mobile-friendliness. You also need to monitor your performance and make adjustments based on the feedback from Google and your customers.
SEO optimization is key to getting ranked on Google, however, how do you optimize without knowing the relevant keywords to use? This is where keyword research comes into play. Think about how your customers use search engines; what keywords and phrases are they searching for on Google? what's their search intent? is the content informational or transactional? This will better guide you on how to optimize your content for SEO.
Use keywords strategically: Conduct keyword research and analysis to find out what words and phrases your audience uses to search for your product or service on Google. Use these keywords in your content to match their search intent and optimize your content for SEO. However, avoid keyword stuffing or using irrelevant keywords that can harm your content quality and ranking. Create original and valuable content: Provide unique, informative, and helpful content that answers your audience’s questions, addresses their pain points, and offers solutions. Avoid duplicating. Add value to your content by using data, facts, examples, case studies, testimonials, or other forms of evidence to support your claims.
A fun way to research for keywords and make targeted content is an empathy exercise. What would the customer search for in google and look into the hits, then open up the other questions people asked shown by google, and you've got a pretty good idea of what type of content people are searching. From there we can pair it up with a keyword analysis and apply this to content, pages, descriptions, etc. It is also relevant to add alt text to the images uploaded to the content and website since it becomes a source of traffic. The monitor of performance is vital and there're tools to optimize SEO and the website depending on where is it hosted and built up.
The most important aspect of customer-centric content is writing with empathy and clarity. You need to understand your customers' emotions, motivations, and challenges, and write in a way that resonates with them and solves their problems. You need to use a conversational tone, avoid jargon and fluff, and use examples and stories to illustrate your points. You also need to use clear calls to action and provide value and incentives for your customers to take the next step.
The very first thing is to ask if you would read what you are writing. More often than not, you know it when you are stuffing keywords or putting headlines just for the sake of it or are simply writing because you have to. Writing is an art, it's not about filling in the words, it is about speaking and I have personally felt the communicating is the way to go about if you want an article that would read well.
Use clear and engaging headlines: Write catchy and descriptive headlines that summarize the main idea of your content. Use keywords, numbers, questions, or emotional triggers to make your headlines more appealing and clickable. Avoid misleading or sensational headlines that can disappoint or annoy your audience. Format your content for readability: Make your content easy to read and scan by using short paragraphs, bullet points, lists, headings, subheadings, images, videos, charts, graphs, or other visual elements. Use white space, contrast, colors, fonts, or other design elements to enhance your content appearance and readability. Use responsive design to ensure that your content adapts to different devices and screen sizes.
Don't "trick" your potential clients or customers. Well-chosen words and SEO key term density are important, but if your reader chooses your search result for their click, respect their choice and their time by giving them what they clicked on. In other words, if the title is "Great Ideas For Your Kid's Next Birthday," the topic of your article should deliver this; it shouldn't just be "hey, now that we have your attention, here's one great product: ours!" Having CTAs to your product is just smart business, but build trust, show your expertise, and reduce your bounce rate by actually contributing usefully to the conversation, too.
Finally, you need to test and improve your content based on the results and feedback you get. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Optimize, and heatmaps to measure and improve your content's performance, such as bounce rate, dwell time, conversions, and revenue. You can also use surveys, polls, reviews, and social media to collect and analyze your customers' opinions, preferences, and suggestions. You can then use this data to refine your content and make it more customer-centric.
With the advancements in generative AI, producing quality content has become way easier. Of course, you cannot expect ChatGPT to write it for you but you can definitely look out for the ideas. It saves the time that would have gone into brainstorming and researching and can provide you with the much-needed brief. Lastly, tools like SEMRush and even Google Analytics help you identify trending keywords which really helps in a well-rounded optimisation
Test, track, and optimize your content: Measure the performance of your content using tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or other testing, tracking, and optimization tools. Analyze the data and feedback from your audience to see how they interact with your content. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your content and make changes or improvements accordingly.
Speaking to customers about their pain points is the best way to write customer-centric content. The second best option is to dig through your CRM data, read sales notes, watch demos to understand why they came to you in the first place and how you can solve those challenges.
The highest-ranking search engine content is user-generated (e.g., social media posts), news (e.g., articles), and rich media (e.g., images and videos). If you want to be a discoverable brand, you've got to become the diffused brand — abandon the losing strategy of organically winning first-page search spot #3 for websites and instead dial-up content marketing that benefits from assets across the Web (e.g., empowering customers to create brand assets, getting news to create multimedia about the brand, and making sure file meta data feeds the algorithms, including alt text and transcripts) ??