One of the most powerful tools in your business toolbox is your website. But with only seconds to capture your customers’ attention, your content must deliver a stellar performance every time and writing effective content is the key to improving customer engagement.

As one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence and driving sales, content marketing is a mission-critical growth method for most businesses.

_{“An important idea not communicated persuasively is like having no idea at all.” ~William Bernbach, Advertising Hall of Fame}

Here are 10 examples to help with writing effective content and when to use each.

1. Know Your Customer or Audience

Perhaps the most important first step in building a new business from the ground up is considering who you’ll be selling to. Great content is an important asset and can help funnel prospects into customers — but only if it’s relevant and interesting to a specific audience. In other words, your written content should offer tips and information that your customers need or want to know.

2. Add Testimonials

If your products or services have received positive reviews, add a handful of testimonials (with the customers’ permission, of course) to your front landing page. Indeed, online shoppers tend to be influenced by product and/or service reviews and will typically pay for something that’s worthy of investment, in both time and money.

3. Create Impact

Whenever possible, use colorful language and descriptions on your website and on social media, particularly to explain why your products or services outshine the competition. You might even want to add images and videos that support the written content and keep your paragraphs or sentences short and sharp-witted.

4. Develop a Keyword Strategy

To stand amongst the crowd in your industry, it’s imperative that your website appears near the top of all search engine results. Business websites with high traffic have effectively harnessed good SEO strategies. Consider using headlines — but make sure they are relevant to the content — and use equally strong words for which individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and persuasions tend to search.

5. Invoke Reaction

If your aim is to get your customers to buy your product — and it should be — your website content will be most effective if it triggers an emotional response or creates a need. When building your content, consider how your customer will respond to it.

6. Do Your Homework

Writing effective content often involves further research. To that end, strengthening your message through additional plug-ins might be all that’s needed to gain a customer’s trust. As an insurance broker with more than 20 years of experience, I’ve heard all sorts of excuses for not purchasing life insurance. Without going into all of them, let’s just say that a website with effective content likely has links to other supporting publications.

7. Create a Compelling Call to Action

We all know what to do when we see that oversized button on the counter at the local dry cleaners. Hitting the button usually sounds an alarm to let employees know we are waiting. But how do you get your customers to reach the point of sale? You make it easy for them. You place “the big red button” with examples of content writing that convey the benefits of doing business with you. Whether it’s the product’s ability to enrich your life or a service that can bring transformation, make sure you’ve communicated that as a result of clicking the “call-to-action” button.

8. Mix It Up

You want your customers to stay on your website long enough to get hooked by your content, but that won’t happen if they begin yawning during the first 10 seconds of landing there. Keep your website sharp and lively with a mixed bag of well-organized media and posts.

9. Update Your Content

You can’t simply create a website with a few pieces of content and hope it stands the test of time. Tastes and opinions change constantly, and it’s your job to ensure your website conveys useful and interesting information to create new sales opportunities. As such, be prepared to update your content with fresh media and content constantly, especially as your business thrives.

10. Formatting and Organizing

Last but certainly not least is preparing your content and organizing it before it goes live online. Formatting might mean selecting certain fonts for visual effect. Meantime, creating headers that keep your content in an organized and well-designed flow allows visitors to browse your content with ease.

Utilize These and Other Strategies to Convert Prospects into Sales Leads

Remember, writing effective content on your website will generate longer visits to your page, which will translate to more engagement. And that means you’ll see more sales. Cheers!