7 Ways to Create Website Content Focused on the Customer Experience

Your website content is one of the most valuable tools that your company has in its arsenal. Considering that 81% of shoppers conduct online research before marking big purchases (Retailing Today, 2014) and 89% of B2B researchers use the Internet before engaging with a brand (Google, 2015), a robust online presence is a must. But how do you make that happen? It’s all about your content.

Content is king when it comes to your website. It’s how you rank on search engines and thus how potential customers find you—71% of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search (Google, 2015). It’s why improving SEO and generating new traffic and leads is the top inbound marketing priority for 63% of marketers (HubSpot, 2017).

Bar graph provided by 2017 State of Inbound report.

The struggle occurs when you get down to actually creating your content. There are billions of websites, and you have thousands of competitors within your industry, so how do you stand out? If you want to show up in one of the 12 searches that the average B2B researcher conducts before engaging with a specific brand (Google, 2014), you need to create website content that isn’t just focused on SEO but on the customer experience.

To do this, it’s essential that you don’t shortcut the content review and writing process when it comes to building your website—new or old. Instead, you need to take your content seriously and follow these seven tips for creating customer-focused content.

1.     Create a Content Strategy

Marketing is a long-term game. The content you create for your website today won’t immediately bring new customers. However, if done correctly, it will help you reach your target audience and develop customer loyalty over time.

The problem is that only 30% of B2B companies see their content marketing as effective, and that’s because only 46% have a documented content strategy (Content Marketing Institute, 2015). Without a documented content strategy, you don’t know if you have the marketing tools, plans, and research necessary to get the job done.

Graphic provided by 2016 B2B Content Marketing Trends report.

A content strategy doesn’t have to be complicated or take months to develop. It can be a simple document that outlines how your marketing content can help you. It should contain information such as:

• Your company goals and the KPIs that will be used to measure performance.
• Your target audience, including your buyer-persona—who, what, where, why, how.
• Your content marketing platforms—where you’ll post and how often.
• The topics most important to your customers and business, including a list of SEO keywords and phrases.
• How you’ll create, repurpose, and promote content.
• Who are your competitors and what are they doing well, poorly?

2.     Talk to Your Customer

The key to a great website is to focus on your customers instead of selling. For many businesses, this means re-thinking your entire marketing premise. Too often you’ll see brands that create an entire website and marketing content strategy that is all about them. They talk about how amazing they are, what they can do, and why you should choose them over their competitor. Unfortunately, this leaves out the customer.

Instead, you want to create a content strategy that is focused on adding value throughout every stage of the customer journey. This means that you need to understand who your customer is, what they want, and what value you can provide to them. To do this, take a look at customer reviews, email surveys, testimonials, customer service chat logs, and any other customer feedback you might have. Then, gain as much valuable insight as you can from this information and create content that matches what your customers told you they wanted.

And remember, your customers are people, not robots. 50 percent of search queries are four words or longer (WordStream, 2015), so make sure your website content is written for how a customer would actually search. Use key phrases on your website instead of just keywords. You want to communicate in the same way that your customers communicate.

Image source

3.     Develop Thought Leadership

76 percent of CEOs believe that providing insight and intelligence to customers is the most important dimension to realizing company goals (IBM, 2010). Thought leadership is the idea that you are a trustworthy, go-to authority on your topic or industry. This is vital because customers are more likely to purchase from companies they trust and to gain this trust, you have to prove your value and have other people corroborate your authority.

To write content that demonstrates your thought leadership, you’ll want to focus on your experiences and then have a conversation with your consumers. It’s about providing meaningful content on your website that sparks a dialogue. To do this, you’ll want to:

• Share solid industry thought leadership
• Demonstrate awareness of current events and trends
• Create content focused on customer pain points
• Provide real solutions to real problems
• Use statistics and to corroborate your content

When you’re a thought leader, a significant side benefit is the fact that you’ll gain more consumer testimonials about your trustworthiness. This leads to increased conversions and says, particularly since 85% of consumers read up to 10 reviews before they feel they can trust a business (BrightLocal, 2017).

4.     Be Authentic

Customers are looking to connect with brands; they can only do this if they feel like they can relate to you. This is where authenticity is key. The reality is that bad content can turn customers away, leaving them feeling disconnected. Instead, you want to tell your company story in such a way that you don’t give the idea that you’re trying to trick anyone or pull the wool over their eyes.

There are a few ways that you can demonstrate authenticity on your website.

• Tell a Story: Find a moment, case study, or situation where you can tell a story about your brand, what matters to you, what you offer, and why it’s important. This is a great way to build a connection between your brand and your audience.
• Use a Real Voice: When writing your website content, you don’t want to come across as the commercial overview voice. Instead, write in a voice that is friendly, interested, and helpful.
• Be Transparent: Don’t try to trick your customers. Instead, give them the unvarnished truth about who you are and what you offer. Take an uncompromising look at your brand to see how you can naturally provide help.

As part of being authentic, you also want to demonstrate how you participate in the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is your chance to demonstrate how your content and any personal data you collect is protected and only used as an individual sees fit or as you transparently tell your customers. Make sure you understand how GDPR can affect your company, particularly your content, and demonstrate your authentic solution to your customers to help build trust.

5.     Answer Needs & Wants

72 percent of marketers say that relevant content creation is the most effective SEO tactic (Ascend2, 2015). That’s because customers choose to purchase from brands that offer a solution to their problems and those solutions are what they’re looking for when they search online.

When a visitor comes to your website, they should be able to quickly find the answers not only to their burning questions but to their wants—even if they’re not able to voice them. The best way to create this type of website is to develop content that you would want to consume. Consider what type of content you enjoy and how you consume it. Then, develop your website using the same formats and content styles that get you engaged.

To find out what your customers want and need, do your research.

• Go to forums such as Quora and Yahoo! Answers to determine what customers in your industry have questions about.
• See which blogs get the most visitors and the longest reads to see what customers enjoy reading about. You should also check the comment section for questions.
• Search on social media to see what posts get the most engagement and to find comments about your industry.
• Use a tool such as Ubersuggest to complete keyword research and get more ideas about what potential customers are searching for.
• Use Google Trends to help you quickly explore the most talked about topics of the day.

6.     Focus on Customer Personas

How well do you know your customers? Understanding who they are and what they want is key. In fact, research shows that 91% of people are more likely to do business with companies who appreciate their customers (AYTM, 2015), this means understanding your customers’ interests, beliefs, and attitudes. To do this, you need to create detailed customer personas and create content based on those personas.

To create a buyer persona, you need to answer several questions that will help you break down your buyer into a single individual, perhaps associated with multiple profiles that you can target and create content for. Often it helps to engage with an external agency or individual that can walk you through that process to identify your personas. Below is a simplified sample of a profile:

Image via HubSpot blog

Depending on the type of business BtoC, BtoB, BtoBtoC, etc... there are many more questions that you could ask and answer to come up with a complete buyer persona. The key is getting a good idea of who they are, what they want and how they buy. Start by researching your existing customer base. You can also review your prospects, referrals, and third-party networks.

7.     Keep Mobile in Mind

There are more Google searches are done on mobile devices than computers, and by 2019, experts expect that mobile advertising will represent 72% of all U.S. digital ad spending (Marketing Land, 2015). If your website isn’t mobile friendly, it won’t exist in the future. As of February 2017, mobile devices accounted for 49.7% of web page views worldwide (Statista).

So, how do you make your website content ready for mobile viewing?

• Keep It Short. If a mobile website takes longer than three seconds to load (Google, 2018), your customer will leave the page. So, keep your content short and to the point.
• Make It Responsive. Be 100% sure that your website can be read on mobile devices. To check the responsiveness of your website, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Focus on Key Information. The most important information on your website should be easy to access for mobile users. This means placing information such as your phone number, directions to your location, pricing information, and product/service offers obvious and bold.
• Tab Your Content. When using small screens, it’s important that content is easy to navigate and find. That means using tabs within the menu.
• Write for Mobile. To write for a mobile device, you should keep a few things in mind:

o  Keep paragraphs short

o  Use bullet points

o  Use white space

o  Add images

o  Use subheaders

Conclusion

Creating customer-focused content on your website is the best way to reach new and existing customers. The reality is that your website is ultimately where your potential customers will make the decision on whether to purchase from you or not, so how it looks and how the content reads is vital to your success.

By developing a solid content strategy that talks to your customers, demonstrates thought leadership, is authentic, answers your customers’ needs and wants, puts focus on customer personas, is updated regularly and easy to consume on any device, you can find success.

If you need help with creating some stand-out marketing content for your company I recommend checking out https://www.ndash.co, or just send me a message.