Between the time someone encounters your brand and when they become a customer, there are usually a few milestones they pass along their customer journey. These “micro-conversions” serve as steps that lead them to a deeper relationship with your brand. Micro-conversions from content marketing are usually the way they learn to trust your company.
Micro-Conversions from Content Are the Steppingstones to Sales
Micro-conversions are those actions that build interest in your brand and its products. At the beginning of their customer journey, for instance, audience members might read a blog post that helps them identify a problem they’re experiencing.
After they read the post, they might respond to a call to action by subscribing to your email list. If the content they read in your emails helps them solve that problem and others, they’ll grow to trust your brand. And, they might even share your content with their friends and colleagues, expanding your audience even more.
As they progress in their customer journey, your calls to action invite them to take a step further down the road. For example, they might respond to the call to action in a helpful article by downloading an ebook or white paper that takes a deeper dive into the article’s topic.
Then, they might explore some of the links in your long-form content. Linking to videos that show how your product works or customer testimonials can give them the confidence to take the next step.
At this point, they’re considering a purchase, so sending them a side-by-side comparison with some of your competitors might be helpful.
As they get even closer to buying your product, use calls to action that encourage them to sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo or consultation. During this time, you might consider sending your major prospects personalized content that shows them how your product can meet their specific needs.
So, how do you encourage more micro-conversions and move more of your prospects further along on their customer journeys? Let’s take a look at some of our most effective strategies.
1. Use a Customer Journey Map to Organize Your Content
During your content planning sessions, take some time to list all the roads that prospective customers can take as they move toward becoming paying customers. Then, create a visual representation of those roads, like this one:
Image via User Testing
We like this map because, unlike most customer journey maps that you’ll find online, it shows multiple ways that random users become customers and, eventually, brand ambassadors. Using a single visual helps your content teams create content that reaches people regardless of which road they take to become your biggest fans.
Divide Your Map by Channels and Stages of the Customer Journey
Across the top, you’ll enter each stage of the customer journey. On the right-hand side, list the various channels your target customers frequent. Assign a symbol and road color for each of your customer personas.
Next, Map Customer Personas to Each Road
If you haven’t reviewed your customer personas lately, make sure that they’re up to date. Make sure that you have accurately addressed all the pain points that drive them to seek a solution and their unique interests and needs.
Trace out the paths that each persona usually takes to become a customer. We would strongly advise your content teams to add the descriptions of each customer persona underneath the map so that your teams can have everything they need to create specific content for each of your target segments – wherever they are on their customer journeys.
Journey-specific content will be more likely to lead to micro-conversions because it will provide each of your target segments with exactly what they need at each stage of the journey.
2. Create Custom Content for Each Customer Path
Start with your articles’ headlines. Today’s busy audiences don’t have time to read your first few paragraphs before they decide if your article is the one that has the answer to their problem.
So, you need to grab your prospects’ attention from the start. Headlines that are catchy and contain a promise that you’ll solve their problem or answer their question will do just that.
Make Good on Your Promise
If you want to encourage your audience to move along to the next step of the customer journey, answer their question or solve their problem. Use concise, jargon-free language that mirrors that of your prospects.
Follow Content Marketing Best Practices
Use active voice verbs and avoid wordiness. Reduce the number of adjectives and adverbs you use. Instead, use vivid nouns and verbs to make your point.
Break up your text with headings, subheadings, and imagery. No matter what stage of the customer journey your prospects are in, long blocks of text lose your audience’s attention without some visual breaks along the way.
For video presentations, use captions so that people who prefer to read and those with hearing issues can see what you’re saying. Podcasts need to provide enough verbal imagery to ignite listeners’ imagination.
Finally, use a call to action specific to that segment’s place along the customer journey. For example, if you use a “Buy Now” on content for people at the beginning of their journey, they’re not likely to convert.
However, if you use “Learn More” at the end of the article, you can send them to a related article – a micro-conversion that will serve as the first stepping stone to building trust.
Or, you could ask, “Want more information on [Insert their pain point or topic]? Sign up for our email list.” So long as you divide your email list by market segments and send them interest-specific content, they’ll see you as a valuable source of information – and maybe even share some of your content with colleagues and friends.
3. Focus on the Prospect
It’s not all about you. It’s about what you can do for your prospects that will speed them along their customer journey at each step.
So, avoid the brag sheet. Show your prospects what you can do for them.
Stories that show how others have solved problems like theirs can help build trust. So can content that addresses the nuts and bolts of a solution to their problems.
Laser-focus on each segment’s specific needs at each stage in the customer journey. Take the time to look at your social media and content analytics to research their needs. It’s well worth the time you spend.
Organize Everything Under One Umbrella
For larger content teams, creating content to drive micro-conversions for each segment and each step in the customer journey could be a gargantuan task. But if you have a central hub where you can organize and map your journey-specific content, that task can be more than manageable.
With the slew of micro-conversions this kind of organized approach can bring in, you’ll boost your content ROI as you reach each segment with timely content. You can have that capability with DivvyHQ.
It’s a comprehensive content marketing platform that gives your teams instant access to everything you need to plan, collaborate on, create, automate, and analyze the results of your content. And you can try it free for 14 days without any obligation.
Don’t miss your chance to capitalize on the power of micro-conversions. Start your free DivvyHQ trial today!