Inbound Marketing Insights

With 60% of marketers creating at least one piece of content each day, it is clear that content is an important key to successful marketing. The problem is, creating content that isn't very engaging or boring can actually work against you.

High-quality content can have many benefits, including building a brand’s image, increasing customer trust, and reaching new audiences. Most importantly, great content can influence buying decisions, convert website visitors into leads, and turn customers into brand ambassadors. So, how do you optimize your content to drive profitable customer behavior? Here are 8 ways to influence your consumer's behavior with engaging and effective content:

1. Use Effective CTAs

A call-to-action directly influences customer behavior because it tells the reader what exactly to do. You may want visitors to sign up for emails, download an eBook, buy a product, or follow your social media channels.

The best CTAs are personalized for a visitor’s interests, preferences, and behavior. In fact, customized CTAs perform 202% better than basic CTAs. For instance, a customer interested in a product or service will be more likely to click on a CTA that offers them a discount.

2. Tailor Your Content to Each Buyer Persona

Buyers have different needs and priorities, and a one-size fits all approach does little to influence customer behavior. Instead, group potential customers according to their channels, lifestyles, age, gender, types of content they prefer, and other factors. Then, create different kinds of content that appeal to each category of buyers. This strategy will give you better results with every buyer’s persona.

3. Embrace Storytelling

Storytelling is important in any marketer’s arsenal because it taps into a customer’s feelings and emotions. Traditionally, marketers sold the features of a product to influence purchases.

Today, customers consider many factors when making purchasing decisions, including brand image, reputation, and values. Storytelling is a great way to make customers connect with your brand and make them relate to the products and services you are promoting.

4. Make Your Content Shareable

When you create shareable content, you encourage audiences to share it with others, building social proof and credibility. Shareable content features killer headlines, lists, statistics, and high-quality visuals.

Additionally, include trending topics because they are more likely to be shared for their relevance. Lastly, include social sharing buttons in your content.

5. Create Content Based on the Buyer's Journey

The buyer’s journey involves awareness, consideration, and decision-making, which are essential to inbound sales success. The trick is creating and delivering the right content at the right moment in the customer’s journey to influence buyer behavior.

In the consideration stage, the buyer needs informative content that builds credibility and addresses pain points. At the consideration stage, the buyer evaluates different options, and your content should demonstrate how your product or service outperforms the competition. Content that works well for decision-making includes free trials, live demos, consultation offers, and third-party reviews.

6. Align Your Content with Your Customers' Expectations

When your content aligns with customer expectations, they are more likely to complete the desired action. In addition to helping solve customer problems, your content must confirm that the consumer has made the right decision by picking your product or service. Moreover, each piece of content must have a clear purpose to make it easier for visitors to act.

7. Leverage the Scarcity Principle

Naturally, people love obtaining something exclusive and fear missing out on great deals. With 60% of shoppers saying fear of missing out (FOMO) has affected their purchasing decisions, content marketers must embrace scarcity marketing to drive sales.

This strategy emphasizes limited availability, highlighting limited editions, creating time limits, and showing testimonials.

8. Build Authority

People gravitate toward experts and authoritative sources when making buying decisions, so building brand authority is important. Your content should feature credible reports, case studies, statistics, facts, reviews, and testimonials that make consumers confident in buying your products or services. Moreover, links to other authoritative brands establish customer trust and brand reputation.

Savvy marketers have a deep understanding of customers’ needs and can influence their behavior to achieve a specific goal. If you want to learn more about how content drives consumer actions, schedule an inbound marketing consultation today.

Content marketing is constantly changing so what is effective today might not be as effective even in a few months. So doing your research and staying ahead of the curve to make sure you are consistently creating engaging content that speaks to the right audience is key to the success of your content and inbound marketing campaigns.