James SpillaneContent can help you create more relationships and continually strengthen the relationships you have.
In the world of online content marketing, action is important. Your content should spark action among your readers. The call to action can spark readers to take an action that leads to some sort of targeted conversion. However, not every call to action in your online marketing collateral should say “Buy now!” If all you do with your online content is push for a sale, you probably won’t get very far.
Yes, some content should contain a ‘buy now’ link, but there’s an art to courtship with customers and prospective customers. If you pay attention to this in your online marketing efforts just like you do in person, it can pay off.
Don’t be a Pushy Salesperson in Your Online Content
Being pushy isn’t marketing — that’s just pressure sales. Marketing involves building a relationship. Your content should contain enough value to help you connect with the reader and should also contain some sort of call to action that will help your reader connect deeper with your company.
When crafting content, you could have varied call to actions in mind. Provided that you offer useful content, you’ve got a good chance of people being open to following your desired call to action.
Click Here to Learn More
A call to action should lead to a thoughtfully placed location within your website or blog. A suggestion to ‘click here for more info’ or a click through to a relevant piece of content should ultimately lead people down the road closer to a sale.
Subscribe
Asking for a subscription is a good call to action, too.
You could say something like “If you like this content, please consider subscribing to receive more information like this!”
The act of subscribing opens the doors to future communications. Each subsequent time you connect, you have the potential for the reader to share your content and build your following. You could also collect opinions or comments that benefit your company as well as other readers. As that subscription list grows, so too does the potential for sales when you are ready to send out something with a direct ‘buy now’ type call to action.
Freebie
Another good call to action could be a freebie opt-in. Creating content with useful information and a link to more useful info, such as a report or e-book, could help you get interested readers to opt-in to future communications from you as well. You’ll have permission to send the freebie via email and after that’s been sent and your content has been read (hopefully you’ve put a calls to action in that content, too), you could reach out with more information or an offer to do a consultation (if applicable) or quote.
Direct Traffic to Your Website
Online marketing content should always direct people back to a place where you can work on converting them from a reader into a prospect. You can create online marketing content in a number of different places that works to help people understand who you are and what you can do for them. Articles, blogs, videos, and so on…
Social Proof
Another useful call to action request could be to ask for a vote, a Like, a Facebook posting, a re-tweet on Twitter, a product review, or comment with an opinion. This type of action can help you convert future readers into prospects.
Every bit of content you publish online has the potential to add value to your marketing efforts. Don’t forget to measure your traffic by looking at reports so you can see which types of call to action and content marketing strategies work best for your business.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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Re: However, not every call to action in your online marketing collateral should say “Buy now!”
To put forward another point of view, I would have to advise against doing this full stop Diana.
Content marketing is not content marketing at all if it includes a direct call to action saying, “Buy now.” This isn’t content marketing, this is copywriting pure, plain and simple. Salesmanship-in-print.
Content marketing should NEVER include a direct invitation to buy now. This defeats the entire purpose of what content marketing represents. Content marketing in this respect should be a mechanism by which one informs your target market in order to create and forge a strong relationship with your future customers. It’s designed to build up trust before asking for the sale directly within the website elsewhere.
Allow me to put this very simply…
Copywriting as mentioned is salesmanship-in-print (outbound marketing).
Content marketing is the provision of content which informs and educates in advance of any direct sale taking place to help move the reader of said content to trust you the company owner or brand first.
Inbound marketing is the marketing of this content online through various channels as part of a digital marketing strategy. It’s purpose is to help spread the word about the great content you produce to bring said traffic, targeted visitors back to your website and the sales funnel in question.
They are all three completely distinct and different one from the other although admittedly there are some overlaps with the last two – content marketing and inbound marketing.
I hope this clears up any confusion.
Warmest regards,
Mark Andrews
http://Whooshhh.com