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3 Traits of Effective Content That Will Drive Sales in 2020

As you turn the page to a new year, it’s time to look back at your 2019 content and discover what worked. You’re bound to discover patterns you should double down on next year and find less effective content strategies you’re wasting time on. Here’s a list of what’s making online and mobile content effective in driving sales right now. Comparing this list to your 2019 strategy may give you even more insight you can apply to your 2020 content marketing strategy.

  1. Personalised for a Tailored Buyer’s Experience

Personalised content helps drive sales by customising the sales funnel based on a customer’s demographic or the content they previously interacted with. Along the buyer’s journey, content provides knowledge about your products and services and establishes your business as a credible and helpful authority. But when your leads are bombarded with too much content thrown their way and more than half of it isn’t even specific to their needs, they are much more likely to part ways with your brand.

On the other hand, imagine they are given exactly what they come for every time they engage with your brand. You already see big companies like Amazon using customer data to provide a tailored experience. The most cutting-edge trend in content marketing right now is tailoring content to segments of your list.

In this strategy, each lead is tracked by powerful CRM or marketing automation software, such as SharpSpring, HubSpot or Active Campaign, which collect data points on each engagement the lead has with your brand and your content. The technology then uses the data to draw insights about sales-readiness and the type of product or service they would be interested in.

  • Does your business attract different types of buyers?
  • Are your products gender-specific, age-specific or specialised in other ways?

Figure out how you can segment your customer base around the different products or services you offer. Leverage a good tool that helps you funnel leads through customised channels. While it’s a financial investment, a sales funnel tool can have a huge ROI because it boosts conversions from your content marketing.

  1. Search Engine Optimised

To drive organic traffic to your business through content marketing, your content needs to be optimised for search engines. That means including keywords shown to attract the most relevant target buyers. It means doing some research and keeping up with Google’s infamous algorithm changes (unless you would prefer to hire an SEO consultant 😉) and making your own changes according to the laws that govern Google search rankings.

By doing regular research, you can keep old blog posts updated for SEO by adding the latest keywords that are attracting traffic to your website today. Use a tool like UberSuggest and Google Keyword Planner and find out what keywords are bringing the most traffic to your website. Go through your old posts or posts that aren’t ranking as high and try to add the keyword in there.

Beyond keywords, another way to optimise your content for getting found on Google is to do more internal linking. Within each blog post, find at least 2 places to link to other posts on your blog. Find out which blog posts are performing the best and find places to link to them in blog posts that aren’t performing as well. This will improve their performance while helping to build more links for your high-performing post, too.

  1. Interactive & Effective Content

Don’t stick to one or two forms of content. Mix up your media as much as possible using different formats and even combining multiple media types in one content piece. This is shown to boost engagement, resulting in more shares and comments. Users tend to return back to the posts again and again, such as to see updated poll results or to replay embedded audio.

How can you create more interactive content? Here are some ideas

  • Use a tool that lets you include a poll in your blog post.
  • Create a quiz that helps your audience gain insight into their strengths or weaknesses.
  • Embed helpful videos in your blog posts that show viewers how to do things, in a way that supports the post.
  • Build a case study you can exhibit in a mixed-media format, such as by embedding videos of an interview with the client or customer into a blog post where more information is laid out.
  • Make a video where you answer your audience’s questions and encourage viewers to leave their questions in the comments so you can answer them in the next Q&A.
  • Embed images of social media posts (not your own) into your blog posts, where you can either “react” to them and present opposing opinions, or you can use them to help illustrate your point or teach concepts.

The possibilities for interactive content are actually endless, so hopefully, you can think of more ideas beyond the ones on this list. The key to making content interactive is to ask yourself, “how can I get my audience more actively involved when consuming the content?”

Creating Effective Content in 2020

The days when consumers passively watched videos or read articles are soon to go. More and more people are inundated with digital information and are experiencing “too many tabs syndrome.” That means, to capture their undivided attention, you must get them to engage directly with your content.

That means giving them polls, quizzes or Q&A sessions. It means taking them through a personalised buyer’s journey where they see content specific to their interests.

When you incorporate these trends into your 2020 content marketing strategy, it’s bound to better support your sales goals and increase your bottom line.

Download Our Essential Guide To Creating Personalised Customer Journey’s