9 Easy Ways To Turn Visitors Into Fans With Engaging Content

You may feel like a success as you watch how many visitors come to your site and the metrics just continue to climb and climb. Unfortunately, these numbers mean nothing if those visitors don’t actually transform into buyers. Think of it in terms of a retail or department store. The store wouldn’t last long if it had thousands of visitors every day that never actually bought anything.

In reference to an online site, your goal is to turn those who come to your “store” or site into active, engaged buyers and fans of your brand. Your content is a huge part of catching the attention of your target market, and we have nine ways you can turn casual visitors into loyal buyers of your brand.

1. Tell Engaging Stories

Storytelling is a common method of catching the interest of your visitors, but if the stories aren’t interesting and engaging, then they aren’t doing their job. Effective storytelling takes emotion and connects it to ideas. This guarantees that your customers have an emotional connection to your brand or product when they find they have something in common with you.

Research suggests that the emotional, subconscious brain is responsible for 95% of cognition. This highlights the fact that stories engage and activate the brain in places that give us an experience. Make that experience one your customers will remember, and the emotion will carry over to when it’s time to actually buy something.

2. Use Email Content to Engage

You can use a variety of ways to connect and engage your customers. Organic traffic, social media and email opt-ins are just a few ways to engage. It’s important to remember that your site isn’t the only place that you can convert visitors into buyers. Research suggests that email is one of the most effective ways to engage buyers with a 66% conversion rate.

Email allows you to build and recapture interests with high value content and occasional promotions. These emails are welcome because most visitors have chosen to receive them, and they boost your credibility to keep you at the front of the mind of the buyer.

3. Give Away High Value Items

If your goal is to increase sales, it may not make much sense to give stuff away for free, but there are times this is exactly what you should do. You may offer a promotional item or a sample of your product. Some companies choose to give away content intended to help solve a problem.

You may give away a report, e-book or trial subscription for a service you offer to keep visitors engaged. A free offer can knock down barriers, demonstrate your confidence and experience, build trust, and answer questions your visitors may not even know they have. Keep your offer bold and simple so it doesn’t get lost in the graphics and additional content.

4. Use Herd Mentality

Random visitors are more likely to buy if they have some sort of social proof that your brand is credible and your product is good. Most consumers like to buy what is popular and others are buying. They believe that a product or service is worth their time if others believe it is good. In this way, testimonials and reviews can be used to inspire visitors to purchase your services.

Also, use videos and images within your content to engage and encourage visitors to take action. Consumers are more likely to respond to quick, easy to understand content in video or infographic form than they are a lengthy, drawn out blog posts or articles.

5. Help Them Compare

With the emergence of online shopping and e-commerce, most industries became much more competitive. No longer must consumers rely only on what is close to them geographically. They can choose to shop the entire world to find just what they want. As they determine which products are best, they want to know exactly why your product is better than the other. Rather than having them make their own comparisons and leaving your site, present the comparison for them.

Compare your products to competitors right on your website. Use an infographic, a blog post that compares you to another company, or a buyer’s guide for your product. Keep in mind that charts and infographics are not indexed on search engines, so you’ll want to add some engaging content around your comparison chart to ensure it’s easy for users to find organically.

6. All About Us

When your customers come to your “About Us” page, they want to know what makes your company different than the rest. With entertaining, engaging content, you build their trust and convince them that they want to build a sort of relationship with you. Add a compelling story to your “About Us” page and get creative. Add text, images and a timeline to make your page fun and insightful.

Keep your basic information on the page, but find a way to really connect with your visitors emotionally. Add your most important testimonials or social proof that your product and service is the best. Include a solid call to action that pushes visitors to make active decisions about what they want.

7. Quality Landing Pages

You may get visitors from referrals, organic search, paid ads and several other channels. If a visitor comes to your site and the first thing they see is a poorly-written landing page, you lose their credibility and trust almost immediately. Produce high quality, engaging content to show that you are professionals and can be trusted.

Always link your call to action back to a custom landing page to encourage visitors to buy. This way, your visitor’s intent matches your crafted message. You promote a specific offer or product while resolving an issue the visitor may have.

8. Use Case Studies to Show Success

Customers want real-life examples of how your products have made customers lives better. More than they want to hear you tell them why your product is the best, they want their peers to tell them why your product is the best. Case studies are highly effective for any company as long as the information is gathered correctly.

Good case studies show the activity that brought results and what the results looked like. For those who are wavering between buying your product and another, a solid case study can be the push they need to jump to your side of the fence. Link a case study from a great review of your company to build credibility for your brand.

9. Don’t Get Lazy on Calls to Action

Every content piece you place on your site should have a specific goal. It should either answer a question, address a problem or provide some value to your advertising strategy. Rather than going with a generic call to action at the end of every post, design your CTAs to match the intent of your visitors. Direct the audience to where you want them to be by encouraging them to share a post, comment below or buy now. Your call to action is your chance to catch visitors in the emotional stage of browsing and get them to buy.

No matter how you go about bringing visitors to your site, your traffic means nothing if you can’t convert them into sales. These tried and true engaging content strategies can ensure that visitors are buying your products and becoming loyal followers of your brand.