A conversion marketing strategy does just that; it implements campaigns both on and off your eCommerce website to increase conversions and reduce cart abandonment. In this article, we share some great ways to boost your conversion marketing strategy.

3 Strands of conversion marketing

Conversion marketing can be split into three main areas of focus;

• Onsite conversion tactics that happen on your eCommerce store
• Offsite conversion tactics that happen elsewhere online
• Post-visit tactics that happen following conversion or abandonment.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these and the tactics you can employ at each stage.

1. Onsite conversion tactics

A common misconception in eCommerce is to think that marketing stops once a customer lands on your website.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. You’ve invested time and money getting your customer to your webstore; now is the perfect moment to ramp up your marketing efforts to get them over the conversion line.

You might already be using popups and discount banners, but to really boost your onsite marketing effort, consider highlighting your service instead of price.

Guarantee fast delivery

Offering fast shipping is a great tactic to reach time-poor buyers, last-minute shoppers, and today’s impatient consumer. Marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart all offer fast shipping, because it shifts focus away from price and onto service, helping listings to stand out in the crowd.

On your own website, fast shipping is necessary to compete with big marketplaces. Use it to appeal to your customers’ need for risk aversion and immediate gratification by guaranteeing 2-day delivery. Even better, include a countdown timer to show exactly how much longer a shopper has in order to receive their item in two days, creating a sense of urgency that drives shoppers to the checkout.

Make product information accessible and clear

Did you know that around 20% of ecommerce failures are due to lack of clear or available product information?  Take the time to write great product descriptions but also utilize a product question and answer solution like Answerbase.   Answerbase has case studies where up to 75% of the product questions asked convert to a new sale.  Don’t let the customer leave your site to find the information elsewhere, engage them and convert the sale on your site!

2. Offsite conversion tactics

Customer interest, buying decisions, and even the purchases can happen long before someone lands on your checkout page, making offsite conversions tactics just as powerful as onsite. Consider these offsite conversion-boosting tactics for your marketing strategy.

Social media engagement

97% of shoppers say their decision to buy a product is based on reviews. If you’re using Facebook and Instagram solely to promote your website, then you’re using them wrong. Social media is a perfect tool for advertising existing customer reviews, to get new customers buying your products before they’ve even clicked onto your website.

Share reviews in your Instagram Stories, re-post Facebook photographs of customers using your products and create highlights of user-generated photos and videos.

(Source: Instagram)

Multi-channel selling

Multi-channel selling expands your business’ reach to online marketplace customers. By using the right sales tactics, such as fast shipping programs and marketplace ads, you can convert these customers on their chosen sales channel.

Following that, you can encourage repeat purchases from your eCommerce website by:

• Directing these customers to your webstore by asking them to complete a product review or sending them product recommendations based on their marketplace purchase.
• Sending these customers a discount code to use on their first direct purchase or sending details about your loyalty program.
• Replicating marketplace fast shipping programs by offering 2-day delivery and implementing fast shipping tags on your Shopify store.

3. Post-visit tactics

And finally, your conversion marketing strategy should include post-visit tactics that bring customers back to your checkout page – whether that’s for the first time following abandonment or the second time following a purchase.

Cart abandonment emails

For customers that didn’t make it through the checkout on their first visit to your website, a cart abandonment email can bring them back and, if done right, can even increase their original basket size.

Top tips for an effective cart abandoned email include:

• Highlighting the benefits of buying from you, including fast shipping, free returns, and product guarantees.
• Offering an incentive for completing a purchase such as money off or free delivery.
• Adding details of the products left in the customer’s basket, along with customer reviews, to make picking it back up easy.
• Signing off with a clear call to action, such as “Complete Your Purchase” or “Get the Goods.”

Post-purchase emails

For customers that did make it through the checkout, a post-purchase email can bring them back for a repeat purchase and, if executed correctly, can lead to a lifetime of repeat purchases.

Top tips for increasing customer lifetime value using email include:

• Thanking customers for their purchase and providing them with their tracking number and contact details should they run into any problems.
• Reinforcing the benefits of buying from you, including 24/7 customer care, next day deliveries, or loyalty programs.
• Recommending other products relevant to their first purchase, such as complementary items or what other customers usually buy next.

Conversion marketing final thoughts

A conversion marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated to succeed – you just need to think outside of the box for simple ways to attract attention, entice decisions, and get those customers through your check out.

About the Author

This is a guest post from Rachel Go, who handles content and partnerships at Deliverr. Deliverr provides fast and affordable fulfillment for Shopify, Walmart, Amazon, and eBay stores, helping to boost sales through programs like 2-day delivery for Shopify, Walmart 2-day delivery, Seller Fulfilled Prime, and eBay Fast n’ Free.  Deliverr’s FBA-like multi-channel fulfillment comes with clear pricing, easy on-boarding and a hassle free experience to grow eCommerce businesses.

The post How to Boost Your Conversion Marketing Strategy appeared first on Answerbase.

The Puzzle

If you’re selling products that are made by a manufacturer that other ecommerce merchants are selling as well, then you may just be using the product description that the manufacturer provided on your product page. The great thing about that is its an accurate description of the product that you didn’t have to spend time and money to write up. The problem with that is that most of the other ecommerce merchants who are selling that same product started with the same exact product description…and more than would like to admit have probably just kept that. This is where you run into the “Duplicate Content” issue with ecommerce SEO.

See, Google reads all of that content and when it sees that many different sites have the same exact product description on their pages for the same exact product….it’s not going to list all of those pages in the results since they’re really not adding anything unique. So, what Google does, is it tries to find out which one is the original and which one it should show in the results. Now, maybe your site was the first one that indexed that product description, maybe your site has a very high page ranking which will work into your favor, but for all of those other sites that weren’t the first in line there….you have an SEO problem in order to ensure your listing shows up. This is the problem we’ll focus on fixing in this post so you can show up in the results and have those customers buy from your ecommerce store.

How to Help Solve It

Let’s get the obvious out of the way

Well, the first step would be to consider rewriting the product descriptions so the content is original to your site and from an SEO perspective, Google no longer looks at it as duplicate content.  All of us know, this task is daunting, and sometimes not practical.   Unless you have pocket full of discretionary cash sitting there, where it makes sense to just dive in and do that for all of the products you have listed (and continuously do that for new product listings), then let’s focus our efforts here on how to get the most bang for your buck.  Start small and focused…and then go from there.

Get answers to these three questions:

• What are your top selling products?
• What are your highest value products?
• What products are most likely going to stay on your site the longest?

Make a list or products which answer these three questions.   Where those three lists have products that overlap…that is your answer on where you should focus your time to help solve your duplicate product description SEO issue.   List those products out and have your team come up with knowledgeable and original product descriptions for those.   Start with 10, 20, 50….whatever makes sense with your bandwidth and budget…and do those well.   As you have more resources to spend, expand that effort.  This will ensure that you’re energy is focused on making sure you’re in the results for the products you can sell the most of for the longest period of time.

Now that we’ve covered the “duh” fix….what are some other fixes to bring the SEO value you’re looking for?

Product Page Q&A

There is an easy way to create original content specifically related to the products you’re selling created where you can fix this problem in a reactive way, by just naturally engaging your current customers.   The customers that are currently visiting your site are reading the product descriptions you already have in place…and they’re recognizing gaps in information that they want fulfilled before their purchase.   Given them an easy way to ask those questions by adding Ecommerce Q&A Software to your site, and let those Q&A pairs be on your product page in order to bolster the original content for that product.   These questions will match similar product questions that customers are asking through search, and you’ll be the one with the original answer.  This does two things, naturally grows search traffic to your store and also highlights information that customers want to see….which you can use as a guide to optimize your current product descriptions for SEO.

Product Reviews

Similar to product page Q&A, user reviews on products is a great way to generate original content that is specific to your site and from your customers, and having that boost the SEO value for your product pages.   This is also to help with your duplicate product descriptios SEO issue. The beauty of user generated content (UGC) is that similar customers think….well, similarly.  So, when one customer jots their thoughts down as a review….its common for other potential customers to be searching using those same terms and thoughts.   When Google sees that your site has original content that’s a match, boom…you get the desired result and those customers are introduced to your store in the results.

The above solutions is the place to start if you’re looking to solve your problem with manufacturer descriptions and duplicate content.   Use them as part of your overall SEO strategy, and as you continue to post new original content on your site and Google starts gobbling that up….you’ll see that it doesn’t take an unreasonable amount of work to get great results.

Are you an ecommerce merchant? Get more information about Answerbase Ecommerce Q&A Software.

The post How to Fix the Duplicate Product Descriptions SEO Issue appeared first on Answerbase.

So, given that email marketing is the best place to spend your marketing dollars to maximize your ROI, we’re interested in maximizing the number of quality emails that we have on those subscribe lists.

Most ecommerce stores have the traditional subscription options in place.  In the header and footer of ecommerce sites, you ask users for their email address if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletter or receive discounts. Then, if they hang around for a few seconds on your site….they’ll see a popup which introduces that same offering (if you don’t, put those in place as a priority).  For those who already have those methods established on your store….what else can you do to better grow those lists?

There are some user activities where you’re also collecting email addresses which can help grow those email marketing lists even more, simply by making the option to subscribe available within the process of common visitor engagements.  Let’s explore a few of those for you to consider supporting for your ecommerce store.

Wish Lists

Wish lists are a great way to engage your visitors so that if they’re not ready to purchase right now (or you don’t have the product currently in stock), they can add the product they’re viewing to their wish list and be sent notifications when the item is back in stock or if there is a deal available.

This is a great time to see if they would also like to be subscribed to your discount notifications or newsletter.  They’re already choosing to engage with your business by giving their email to add the product to their wish list, just ensure your wish list functionality gives you the ability for them to easily opt into your other email marketing lists as a natural part of that process.

Asking Product Questions

Many of your visitors have questions about the products you’re selling and you should be enabling them to ask those questions through product page Q&A. See an example of where that typically sits under the product description below, where you can fill information gaps that may be there after they read your product description.

In the process of visitors asking their questions, you need to get their email address so they’re notified when you give an answer.  This is another great opportunity for you to add the ability for them to opt in during that natural customer engagement, so you can continue growing those email marketing lists.

Quick Side Note: We interrupt this regular blog reading experience to inform you that if you’re not currently providing Q&A as an option on your product page, Answerbase can help with that…you can Start a Free Trial to see how your users engage with that on your product pages.  You will now be reconnected with the main point of this post…

Your Contact Form

Your traditional “contact us” form a very natural part of people engaging with your business and is a very easy place to ask that visitor if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletter or discount notifications.

They’re already providing their email in that process, so just give them the easy decision to make to take advantage of your awesome content and deals.  Take the opportunity to have a checkbox they can click on to choose to subscribe in the process of submitting their inquiry. You don’t have to make it annoying, and you likely want to have that unchecked by default…but give them the option nonetheless. If you’re providing a support email they can send to, setup an auto-reply to let them know that your team will respond soon…and of course, add a link in that auto-reply as well with another opportunity to subscribe.  After all, every email subscription counts:)

It’s all about taking advantage of the areas where your visitors are already engaging with your business, and just giving them an easy decision to make in a process that they’re going through already to provide them more value.  By implementing the above tips, you can optimize your email subscription growth, and over time you can see a notable increase in both subscribers and sales.  Happy selling:)

Are you an ecommerce merchant? Get more information about Answerbase Ecommerce Q&A Software.

The post 3 Ways to Further Grow Your Ecommerce Email Marketing List appeared first on Answerbase.

Add a Wishlist Option

Some customers are browsing products that they wouldn’t put in the “I absolutely need this” category, and therefor there’s a decent percentage of customers who wont purchase the product immediately.  They still may have the mindset of “I absolutely want this”, but they’re just not ready to dish out the cash yet to purchase.  Let’s meet them where they’re at, make sure that you have a “Add to Wishlist” option, where they provide you with their email address and ideally their phone number.

This allows allows you to collect their information and then you have the opportunity to add them to your social audiences for advertising as well as notify them when deals are available for that product.  This is a great way of connecting with your visitors, giving you the opportunity to seal the deal down the road.

Add Product Q&A

We would all love to live in a world where product descriptions answered every pre-sales question that visitors have in a way where they’ll purchase immediately.  Unfortunately, we live in the real world:)  Your customers are going to have specific details that they’re looking for to solve their specific desires for the product, and they’re expecting to find that information before they say “Yup, that’s what I’m looking for….here’s my money”.   There many ecommerce stores who are using default manufacturer descriptions or have drawn up very long product descriptions that visitors simply don’t have the patience to read through.  Enter product page Q&A.   Typically you’d just add this as either the next tab after your product description, or an option directly under the product description…and that allows users to ask the specific question that they need satisfied before they hit that “Add to Cart” button.

Answerbase’s Product Page Q&A will show the most frequently asked questions for the product the user is looking at, and if they start typing in their own question it will find the available answer if that question has already been asked before.  This is a great way of engaging your audience and lead to a conversion.

Of course, new questions that are asked comes with an email address….and if you configure your Q&A correctly you can have those users “opt in” in the process in order to grow your email marketing lists as well as social audience advertising reach.  Answerbase also creates new landing pages for each Q&A thread, so that people asking those questions on search engines find that content and are lead back to your store.  One of the most basic forms of communication is Q&A, ensure you’re taking advantage of that for your products….and make sure the software that you’re using is taking full advantage of the engagement and content.

Add a Valuable Newsletter Subscription Option

This is an oldie but goodie if you’re knowledgeable about the products that you sell and are creating interesting content.  The most important word in our title here is “Valuable”, make them WANT to subscribe to what you’re offering.  Most sites have a generic “subscribe” option on the header or footer of their site leading users.  If you’re really focused on growing your list you’ll probably have some point in the user experience which will will have most of the page hidden behind a popup that shows up and asks the users to subscribe.

If you manage this prompt appropriately you can make this engagement a highly desired part of your shopper experience as opposed to an annoying popup that distracts them from their real goal.  Make sure that when you prompt the user, ensure that you have a GREAT reason for them to hand over their email or phone number.  Of course this can include receiving a percentage off of their purchase….but if you have the knowledge and expertise to create a valuable content experience, do that and do it well. We can learn a lesson from more traditional content businesses here…take a look at how the New York Times offers their newsletter option in the image below.

They actually show teasers of the latest email newsletters, and even allow users to see a sample.  If you’re a clothing company, and have monthly fashion tips that people will find interesting to read, make sure they get enough of a teaser (above and beyond “we’ll send you fashion tips”) which allows them to appreciate the content you’re creating and want to see more.  As we say often, “Content is King”….so allow them to see some of the actual content as a teaser and make them want to see more of it.  As a result, they’ll be throwing their contact information at you and you’ll have the opportunity to sell them more product down the road.

We hope you can execute on at least a couple of the above features, to ensure that your visitors don’t stay just visitors….but become engaged shoppers and customers.  Happy selling

Are you an ecommerce merchant? Get more information about Answerbase Ecommerce Q&A Software.

The post How to Engage Visitors on Your Ecommerce Product Pages appeared first on Answerbase.

“Whatever their questions, let your content be their expert source of information.”

This is a pretty common response when it comes to discussing quality content creation, you find out what questions your customers are already asking you and let that guide your content creation.  Over time, you should be the recognized expert to handle all the pre-sales questions customers have around the products that you’re selling.  Sounds simple, right?

Unfortunately, concrete steps to take to achieve that efficiently in a process that can actually increase your ecommerce sales with a positive ROI has not been so clearly laid out.  This article should be able to help make these steps clearer.

At Answerbase, when we talk to perspective ecommerce customers about their current marketing and ecommerce SEO efforts….many of them communicate that blogging is not a big part of their activities or most times not part of their marketing strategy at all when we first start the relationship with them.  They’ve either not tried it because they can’t make the common-sense connection on how its going to attract new business to their store over a reasonable time period…..or they’ve tried it and didn’t see any measurable results, so they stopped.    The good news that we provide them with is that this process shouldn’t feel like you’re throwing money out the window, there are ways of KNOWING that the content that you’re posting is demanded by your customers and going to convert.

The first step is to get Q&A content that you’re already creating working for you.  There is golden content that is typically hidden within chat communication or emails, take that and get it out into the open.  Of course, this is what we do for a living…but regardless of whether you use Answerbase to power Q&A for your ecommerce store or use another service….make it happen.  While making this happen, ensure that content is creating its own landing pages for each Q&A thread.   Every question you answer for your customer can not only support that one customer that one time, but it can actually effectively service every customer who is asking that same question about products you sell through search engines.  That’s the foundation, make that happen as a first step and make sure its content posted in a way that search engines can get to.  See this example of a search, and see how product Q&A content hits the mark….

After you’ve established that, this becomes much easier to focus your efforts on what to have your team spend time on or what you should pay a quality blogger to write posts about.  Track that activity from those naturally growing Q&A pages….and you use that to figure out what is worth doing a deeper dive into….its that easy.  Some of our customers will find that a few of their Q&A combinations will rise to the top and start receiving 10K+ organic visits a month on their own.   Bingo, you’ve just found a content gap in the market.  Then, make sure that you have the conversion tracking lined up so you can see which of your popular Q&A posts are actually converting to new sales…and “voila”….there you have it, focus on those content gaps.

In Answerbase we make this easy on you because we track all of this activity for you (organic traffic, in-site searches, incoming questions from other customers, etc.), and then just wrap it into one “Demand Score” to spit out the content gaps.  That allows you to focus your efforts either for specific posts or general topics….and then recommend next actions based on that.

Regardless of whether you use Answerbase’s Content Insights or put together your own custom analytics reports….make sure that you can have a well-rounded understanding of the actual demand for that content and ensuring it gives you real conversion results…and let that drive everything else.   Natural next steps are to do a deep dive with an article, video, or whatever content format is the best way of managing that pain point.   Boom, you’re no longer guessing, you’re focusing your time and resources on solving real problems that a critical mass of your customers have which will optimize your marketing reach and sales conversions.

Stop the guessing game and focus your content creation efforts on topics that actually convert.  Happy selling.

“We fired up Answerbase Q&A on our product pages and it’s been amazing for increasing sales.” – Bill Rowell, Owner of Rvupgrades

 Start a free trial of Answerbase today to support Ecommerce Product Q&A on your store, or view more details about the benefits of Q&A on your product page.

The post How to Identify Great Blog Content for Marketing your Ecommerce Store appeared first on Answerbase.

The fact is, every time you answer a potential customers question, you’ve just created a valuable piece of content that not only helps that first customer who asked it….but it can (and should) help every customer in the future who has that same question.  The gold is, that this doesn’t only impact support customers who are already on your website….but also people who are asking questions about products through search engines.

How does this play out in reality?  Well, if you’ve read any tips on what to focus on when considering a content marketing piece…one of the first things that they say is “look at what questions your customers are asking”.  This is the key, those same questions that one visitor had about your product….many potential customers are asking through Google (and yeah sure, Bing and Yahoo as well;).  This is your golden opportunity, your support content is naturally marketing content as well….you just need to make sure you’ve recognized that and ensure it’s formatted this way.

Let’s show you an example, one of Answerbase’s customers.   Let’s say somebody does a Google search for “truck fridge that can run on batteries for many days”.  What do you think comes up?  Take a look….

The top organic (free) result for that search is a landing page for a Q&A thread specifically about, guess what?  Yup, a truck refrigerator that Raney’s is selling which somebody had asked a question about.  Bingo, Raney’s just created a valuable piece of content that hits the nail on the head for something potential customers are searching for.   They didn’t have to rack their brains to figure out what their customers were interested in reading, and then playing Russian roulette with a new blog post (at $200-$400 a pop).  Nope, they created brand new valuable content simply by serving their existing customers well.  Magic?  Hardly, just a smart way of processing and using interaction and content that they’re already creating.

So what does that look like over time?  Well, its exactly what you’re wanting from any content marketing effort….growing organic traffic year over year.  See an example of another SMB ecommerce customer of Answerbase’s….and note that this is ONLY traffic going to Q&A landing pages over a 3 year period.

Again, that chart is only organic search traffic that is coming to those Q&A landing pages….visitors that wouldn’t have come to the store otherwise.   As said before, gold.

Think about it, that is without spending any mental energy on “what do I write about?”, “what are users going to search for and find valuable?”….all of those questions are answered naturally because your current visitors are just a fraction of the world’s population that have similar questions about the products you sell.  So just answer them, literally….once and for all.

So, you don’t have to be a marketing genius to create great content that hits the nail on the head for your potential customers…you just have to take advantage of that knowledge that’s already upstairs and serve your customers well.   The content does the rest.  Of course, Answerbase facilitates this automatically….so feel free to get in touch if you’d like us to manage the Q&A interaction ( You can start a 30 day free trial here)….and you can do what you do best, support your customers.

“We fired up Answerbase Q&A on our product pages and it’s been amazing for increasing sales.”  – Bill Rowell, Owner of Rvupgrades

The post Ecommerce Support Can Increase Sales in More Ways Than You Think appeared first on Answerbase.

Administration Capabilities

Enabling the rewards program for your site

In your administration site under “System Settings”, you’ll notice a new option called “Rewards Program” where you can manage your settings, prizes, and see a redemption history.  Click into this area to get started and manage your settings, so you can start given your users added incentive for creating content.

Program Settings

You’ll notice a “Program Settings” tab when you first enter the rewards program page, which will allow you to enable the program as well as customize your message around the program.  This will allow you to communicate your message about your program rules, what prizes they’ll have available, and how many points they must earn in order to order those prizes.

Manage Rewards

When visiting your “Manage Rewards” tab, you can add all of the prizes that you’re going to support for your program, identifying the reward title, how many you have in inventory, as well as how many points the user will need to order that prize.  You have easy capabilities to add, edit and remove items as you’d like.

Rewards History

Admins will be able to see a history of what awards have been redeemed, and have different filters around that list so they’re able to see the exact items they’d like to and keep track of the award redemption activity.    You’re able to see a unique transaction ID for each order, what item was ordered, who ordered it, any special delivery instructions (if provided), and what the order status is.  Every new order for an item will display as “Pending”.  Once you’ve completed and sent the order, you can mark an order as “Fulfilled” which will allow you to keep track of all items you’ve taken care of and what there is left to do.

Member Account

From a member’s perspective, when you have the rewards program enabled, for every point they’ve earned on the system the platform will keep a “Rewards points” total (this won’t impact their reputation) where they can choose to put any points they’ve earned towards redeeming prizes.  This allows them exchange points they’ve earned through their contributions and participation, and get real world prizes for their efforts.

Redeeming Prizes

Under their account the member will be able to see a “Redeem prizes” option, which will allow them to see the total of rewards points they’ve earned as well as the prizes that are currently in stock and available to redeem.  The user can choose the item they’d like to order, and then submit their order with any delivery instructions so that site administrators can fulfill it.  Please note that users will only be presented with items where there is inventory available, taking into account how much inventory you have in stock as well as any orders that have already been submitted but still pending fulfillment.

Rewards History

Members will be able to view a full history of all of their orders, so they can keep track of order status and when the order is fulfilled.  This ensures that members know exactly what they’ve ordered and see details of what is going on with it.

Answerbase encourages site owners to use the rewards program in order to create an appealing incentive to members to continue contributing valuable content.  That content and engagement will benefit both your brand and your business, as you’re able to efficiently create incentive for your membership.

The post Offer Rewards to Your Members for Creating Valuable Content appeared first on Answerbase.

You now have the tools to identify other content that is related to each question posted on your website, giving you the ability to link to that content which builds links for search engines to crawl as well as presents your users with all the relevant information they need to resolve their issues.

In your administration interface, when you view a question, look for the “Related Content” area where you can identify the URL of your related content and also create a Link Title that will most effectively lead visitors to these pages on your site and increase the SEO value of those terms for your pages.  Answerbase tracks the CTR of each content link you make available, prioritizing the content that most effectively fills the needs of your visitors and making sure they’re presented with the most relevant information.

Answerbase’s “Question Tab” and “Full Featured” widgets have also been enhanced so that when you put an Answerbase widget on your your existing content pages (articles, tutorials, videos, etc.), any questions that are asked from those pages can be automatically associated with that page and immediately create a new relevant link to your content.  This allows you to accomplish link building to your content through natural user interaction, establishing a spiderweb of links that are each connected with mutually relevant information.  This also achieves the ability to show “Page Specific Q&A” where you can show the most popular questions on a specific article, tutorial, etc….giving your users the information they need surrounding your content and also giving you insights into how you may want to improve your content through answering questions that are of common interest.

Finally, Answerbase customers also can utilize our APIs to relate content to different questions and make sure that connection is established there as well.  This new set of features makes sure that you can give your users the best available information to satisfytheir inquiries, which increases your brand recognition, saves you time, and is an automated way of optimizing your website for more search engine traffic.

The post Supercharge Your Link Building through Answerbase’s “Related Content” Features appeared first on Answerbase.

• Answering Questions: When you have questions that have been posted that we recognize as being in high-demand but do not have a quality answer in place to satisfy your visitors we make that clear to you so that you can either create or source a quality answer.  This ensures that all of your visitor’s pain points or interests are effectively managed, giving them a better content experience and improving the usefulness of your online presence.
• Associating Existing Content: We make sure you’re aware of topics that are very popular and have a high demand, and encourage you to associate other blog posts, videos, white papers, etc. that will be of interest to users visiting those popular posts.  This ensures that you can further engage your audience and make sure they have access to all the helpful content you have available.
• Creating New Content: Finally, Answerbase notifies you when content topics are popular enough to consider creating new content in order to fill the content demands of your audience.  If you don’t have existing posts that satisfy the informational needs of your audience, we can give you insights of what those topics are and you can build brand new content around the topics you know are engaging your customers and visitors.

Consider what Answerbase’s Content Insights can do for your business and start taking advantage of using user generated content and activity to help chart out your content strategy, creating high-quality content based on the real demand of your audience.  For a visual on how Answerbase can be used to improve your content strategy and content marketing processes, see our Content Strategy Automation Funnel.

The post Create Content based on Real Demand with Answerbase Content Insights appeared first on Answerbase.

Below we’ve laid out a six-step content marketing strategy that has proven to effectively bring consistent results both in customer engagement and the ability to draw relevant organic traffic back to your site, products and services. While this should of course be tailored to your specific audience, it is an excellent foundation to begin seeing results through content marketing. We also give you a use-case as well, so you can see how the process has worked in the real world…and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

Let’s get started…

Step 1: Systematically recognize quality content

Remove the guessing game and get results by tracking what content your website visitors find valuable. Hone in on the searchable, shareable, valuable content by listening to your visitors. Contact your customer or sales support team and get a report on the common questions they receive. Better yet, add a public-facing Q&A tool (like Answerbase Q&A Software or you can find a more complete list here) or traditional forum software (like Vbulletin or phpBB) to your site which not only gives you insights to popular topics but also creates high-value user generated content. Publicly posted questions can result in tens of thousands of page views per month.

Don’t believe us?  Take a look at the graph below shows an individual question page from one of our clients that receives over 11,000 pageviews on its own, with over 9,000 ORGANIC visits from Google per month and growing from just one question asked!

That is extremely valuable user generated content driving both page views and engagement, and a powerful way to identify in-demand content. Use Analytics tools to track your content’s performance to identify popular questions and determine the most valuable topics and let that demand determine what subjects you should be posting about.  Through this identification, you can post about topics that solve problems where there is a proven demand!  Check out our Tips for Identifying the Best Content Marketing Topics for more on this topic.

Step 2: Choose a content format suited to the subject matter.

After you determine the subject matter of your next post, determine the format that will best communicate to your audience. The content that is most helpful and is in the best format (most readable, scanable, etc.) will be seen and shared most.  It’s important that you identify which format most effectively communicates your message. Content options include:

• Traditional text blog posts
• Video tutorials
• Infographics
• Slide Shows
• Combination of text, images and video

Best practices here vary. For example, if you’re showing someone how to use a hammer don’t write a blog post with diagrams. Its simply not the best way of communicating the message, make a short helpful video that demonstrates how to use a hammer and the most useful content based on the user’s needs.  If you’re interested in reading more on this topic, check out our Guidelines for Choosing the Best Content Marketing Format.

Step 3: Put clear calls to action on your content pages.

According to Hubspot, B2C companies that blog receive 88% more leads than those who don’t but in order to see those results you must give your visitors appropriate calls to action to become a lead. Content marketing is no longer optional, and when it’s executed right it can turn into new business.

First, determine what your goal is for your content marketing efforts. What are you selling? What response do you want? This is the most important component of your content marketing strategy. Each piece needs to have a clear call to action which accomplishes your goals. There are ways you can accomplish this so you can still keep the content front-and-center but have clear calls to action…hovering divs can be great for this which stay on the page as you read through the content….see this example below.

Make no mistake–you don’t want it to be spammy. People want useful content. If your content is relevant to your market then you should be able to expose them to your products and services in a natural way through content marketing. If your goal is to sell products on your website, lead them to content-related product(s) or to your online store.  If your goal is to get people to submit a contact form to contact your sales staff, consider having an inquiry form on the page where they can ask questions about how your product or service can help them achieve their goals.

Finally, make sure your calls to action stay in front of visitors through remarketing (aka retargeting).  Using services like Google Adwords and Adroll, you can make ensure that visitors will continue to see your calls to action after they leave your site as they’re browsing around the internet.  This gives you the opportunity to continue advertising to your target audience, and gives your visitors the opportunity to engage your call to action well after their initial visit.

We can’t stress enough that there must be purpose behind each post, don’t post content for the sake of having new posts.  The most effective posts will give your target audience useful information and then the opportunity to respond to a relevant call to action which helps accomplish your business goals.  If you’re interested in more information on this topic, we encourage you to read our post about how to get real business results from content marketing with a strong call to action.

Step 4: Effectively distribute your content marketing material.

Now that you’re created a piece of valuable content, you need to get people to know that it is out there. Through the internet, high quality content can travel fast. To begin the process of getting content out to your audience, you must begin with a presence on social media. Here are a few “must do” action items for effective distribution:

4.1 ) Make sure your content is optimized for Search, to get maximum SEO results.

Get someone on your team who can make sure your site is optimized for search and knows the in and outs of ecommerce SEO. This will increase the impact of your content marketing efforts exponentially.

4.2) Distribute your content on your own social media accounts.

Post your new content with engaging headlines to each social network including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin. The more value your post gives its readers, the more it will get shared. Valuable content gets others to market for you, and with tools like HootSuite (check it out) available it’s never been easier to share!

While viral activity is great, you should also ensure the ongoing exposure and sharing of your content through advertising.  Each of the social networks have advertising services which allows you to promote your posts and consistently present them to your target audience.  This allows your content to stay alive and active well beyond the initial post, and can consistently attract relevant people to your site and services.

4.3) Make sure you have social sharing widgets on your content

Don’t let the initial exposure simply be a short term boost. As people discover your post and find it valuable make sure you have easy share tools on the post so they are able to share it with their friends, followers, and colleagues.

If you’re interested in seeing more content distribution tips, we encourage you to read our post detailing 6 Ways to Distribute Content Marketing More Effectively.

Step 5: Effectively measure your content marketing results

After you achieve the above steps, you should be (1) consistently creating great content that is valuable to your target audience, (2) consistently drawing new relevant eyes to your content, and (3) have the appropriate calls to action in place in order to have that audience engage and accomplish your business goals.  Now, its time to make sure you’re able to effectively measure results.

Make sure you are concentrating your efforts on areas that are most effective. What types of posts get the most traffic? Track this through analytic tools like Google Analytics. Monitor how many times a post has been shared. Tools like AddThis make this easy. A good analytics tool will give you detailed reports that allow you to effectively track your content’s response and growth.

What posts are getting the most attention? Is it customer service questions? Sales related? Focus your content on the questions that are drawing the most traffic and desired conversions. The market tells you what it wants. You can fill the demand. This is achieved by studying metrics. Learn from your activity and make sure every minute you spend is used to maximize your efforts. ROI is the bottom line.

Step 6: Learn from your results, repeat, and refine.

After going through Steps 1-5 several times, you should be able to navigate which posts work well, what you may need to improve, and where you should focus your resources. Take the information you’ve gleaned and refine the process. Focus your efforts on subjects that have the best chance of repeating earlier successes. Results are the bottom line. So give yourself the best chance of achieving success by streamlining your process and creating a fine-tuned machine of quality content marketing pieces that give consistent and measurable results.

There you are, a six step content strategy to achieve great content marketing results.

…So, about that pudding!

We wouldn’t just leave you hanging with a bunch of claims without any real world examples, so let’s dive into the pudding. Let us introduce you to Angie’s List, who provides user reviews on local businesses and services. Here’s an example of how Angie’s List followed this strategy to get clear results.

Angie’s List supports public Q&A (Powered by Answerbase) and discovered a high-demand topic by identifying one of their most popular questions: “How much should water heater installation cost?”.  In response, they created a more detailed article using the same title but covering the topic in more depth.  Just do a quick Google search for “How much should a water heater installation cost?” and see what pops up….surprised?  Also recognize how they’ve put all the appropriate calls to action in place in order to get the desired response from all their new visitors (as we showed in an earlier screenshot in Step 3).

Angie’s List followed each of the steps we covered:

• They identified high content demand by using user generated content through public Q&A. They responded to the demand.
• They created an informative, professional blog post with a consistent style that effectively communicates the topic.
• The call to action is clear. It includes a summary of what Angie’s List is, how to join Angie’s List, how to ask a question specific to the visitors’ need on the Q&A site and gives users the opportunity to subscribe to the newsletter. Each of these items engages the visitor based on his or her needs and accomplishes the goals of Angie’s List.
• After the post went live you can see that they distributed the post on their social media profiles like Twitter.
• The share options are easy to find. Located at the top of the page, visitors are able to easily share the informative post with their followers.

Take a look at some of our more detailed posts that unpack the above steps. We encourage you to take advantage of this strategy to create an effective content marketing strategy and get consistent results for your website and business.

For those who are interested, here is a link to the Hubspot Report that we reference earlier in the post.

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