The internet is flooded with content from businesses trying to reach customers. Just because you have a website overflowing with content, it doesn’t mean that it’s one that customers will flock to for information. The key to great content that people will read, is to make it customer-focused.
This is particularly important in the current climate, where businesses are vying for attention when people are consuming COVID-19 news. How can you remain relevant and find your niche, while being thoughtful and mindful of what your customers, clients or patients might be dealing with right now?
Remember, most people don’t read content straight away
Scan reading is a tactic many use to see if anything jumps out at them before committing to reading a full article. Headings and key terms can be the cues that engage a customer to read your content, particularly as a lot of content is not written with the target audience (the customer) in mind. It’s written to get information out there, but not always in the right frame.
Put yourself in the place of your audience – what might they be thinking, or feeling? This will help you write customer-focused content.
4 tips for writing quality content
You can turn your content into something powerful and engaging for your target audience.
1. Know your audience
A firm understanding of what your customers are looking for can help you to perfect your content. What information could your customers be searching for and what’s driving them to your website? What motivates them? Also consider how they might be feeling, particularly right now. Answering these questions in the content itself can make your website invaluable to your target audience.
2. Be information driven
Lots of content is written purely to promote a business or medical practice, without providing useful information for the audience. You can fix this by ensuring that your content is 80-90% informative and saving promotion for a few key places within the copy. Also, undertaking customer reviews can help to add more information to your copy but in a subtly promotional way. In the current climate, you might consider how your business can make a positive contribution to your community, why your product or service remains relevant, or carve your niche in response to news.
3. Be informative vs easy to read
Determining the length of copy required depends on the type of content you’re writing. For example, something substantial or technical like medical research needs to be thorough and refrain from leaving out valuable details. Whereas a time poor audience would not likely engage with a long essay to gather a few key points – break your content down to something short and sweet using:
- bullet points,
- bold headings, and
- stand out keywords or phrases.
Remember, most readers scan an article or webpage first, so make it easy for customers that lack time to find the key points they need.
4. Be clear and relevant
Businesses can sometimes pitch content at the wrong level for their target audience. An example of this is with medical websites, which when written by a medic don’t take into account that the audience doesn’t have the same level of medical understanding. The same could apply to legal, finance or anything that has depth. With this in mind, share your knowledge in layman terms so anyone would be able to easily absorb the information. Focus on your customer needs and your area of expertise.
Bonus tip: Remember to write as if you are talking to your audience face-to-face. Are you telling them what they want to hear or need to know? Will they understand what you tell them? Content needs to be relevant to both customers and your business.
Professionals can add an extra element to your copywriting, using their extensive experience in communications.
Marketing Square outlines the target audience as part of our Brief, to make sure the right content goes out at the right time and to the right people. We then continually analyse results to see which webpages and blogs get good levels of engagement, so we can refine the content strategy and push customer engagement further. Call us to see how we can help you refine your written communications.
