Quality copywriting, which works and gets your conversion rate up, is the result of both a savvy approach to content marketing and a lot of sweat. If it seems you can’t make ends meet with your Web copy, you might want to watch for these five red flags: limited audience, no connection, unreliability, stale content and shabby online presence. If this is the case, here’s what you should do to bring about change in your copywriting.
5 Red Flags
1. Expand Your Horizons
Yes, you need to define your audience precisely to better know them, but after you get comfortable in your niche, it’s worth trying to broaden your view a little. This is not to say that you should steer away from your target group. But remember that people know people, and your customers will probably mention you to family, friends or colleagues. For instance, if you’re a financial advisor, you can reach more people if you remember that the people you’re advising are more than the content of their bank account. They are people, just like you, with particular interests and passions. By showing people you care, and that you’re not interested exclusively in selling them what you have, they will get to trust you.
2. Connections Are Everything
Social media will help you promote your content marketing, but to achieve that you need to be active by getting involved and staying involved. Consistency is key in social media. By promoting and sharing what others do, you are more likely to have that service returned. With social media you don’t wait for people to show you they need you, you connect. And when connections are authentic and successful, you are more likely to develop relationships. People will answer your emails and posts, respond to comments, and retweet you.
3. Promise Less and Do More
To become credible with the help of Web content, you need to work hard and be patient. Gaining credibility follows a sequence. You can’t have missing links if you want your credibility to last and turn into loyalty.
The sequence goes like this: inform/help/entertain; engage; maintain interest; make a promise to fulfill a need/solve a problem; build credibility; provide evidence; deliver on your promise; earn trust; build loyalty.
This is as close as you can get to a successful copywriting formula. Formulas are relative and contextual, and there is always a variable that can make it work or undermine it. However, if you follow all these steps in your content, you can say that your copy has what it takes to be successful.
4. Quest for Novelty
New is a word which doesn’t wear off. Just like free and now. In content marketing “newness” is like gas for cars. You need to keep your readers/prospects engaged by bringing something new into the game. If you don’t, someone else will. The thing with new is two-fold: customers always want new products because they become obsolete very quickly. That’s partly consumerism, partly human nature. The consumer/user has an insatiable curiosity and thirst for what’s new. If you don’t manage to come with a smarter gadget, some better software, a health care product that promises, and does more than the previous one, you’ll probably be swallowed up by competitors, eventually.
The same goes for your copywriting. To increase readership, and conversion rate, you need active involvement. Renew, refresh and enrich, your content. Make it friendlier, more helpful, more engaging, and more effective day by day. Show people you are there for them. After you do that, promote your content consistently. Use social media to share and link. That’s the first aspect of the chase for new stuff. The second aspect has to do with the fact that material stuff or goods, age more quickly than experience-based products/services.
5. Watch Your Online Appearance
Your Web site/blog is all your customers can see of you, so make sure you wear your Sunday best. Every day of the week. Because first impressions do matter. In other words, pay attention to the looks of your web pages or blog posts. Format, layout, design, they all say something about you. See to it that what they convey is what you want them to. These are vital elements because they are the form which renders your content.
Your Web site or blog is the vessel where you pour your copy. If the vessel is cracked, your content will slip through, and readers will rush to soothe their thirst somewhere else. Your purpose is to inform people, to help them. In some cases you may want to entertain them. Or combine informing with entertainment. Whatever your goal, to do that, you need to create engaging copywriting. What matters ultimately is to create value for people through your content.
