WordCamp Austin 2013: Content That Sells by Hannah Hill

Next up in my WordCamp 2013 Notes Series is for Hannah Hill’s presentation “Content That Sells”. So without further adieu, here you go:

Four Steps to a Website That Sells

BE REMARKABLE! Remember that good marketing will only help bad ideas fail faster.

1. Understand Who the Clients Are. If you don’t know who your customers are it’s really hard to offer services that fit their needs.
2. Build Your Audience. Know who you are aiming for so that you can get relevant feedback from your demographic. Be sure to thrill the audience, don’t just satisfy them. “You can’t offer a solution until your understand the problem from their perspective.” There are two approaches to designing a site: (a) to decorate it like you would your home according to personal taste or (b) to decorate it like your store according to what the clients want. Always design according to the second method. Ask yourself: Who are they? What are their felt needs? How can I thrill them?
3. Target Your Audience. Good things to blog about are: (a) Customer Questions: title the blog with their question. It’s OK to use shock value & cover negativity. Hit the problem head on or someone else with. It’s good for your clients to hear about the problems from you, this establishes trust through honesty. (b) Product Comparisons: Talk about your competitors pros & cons, this adds another layer of trust. (c ) Blog About Content That Will Help Clients. Don’t blog about how to change brakes but, how to know when brakes need to be changed & how to get longer life from brakes. This establishes a relationship with the customer & will increase the likelihood of them contracting work to you.
4. Measure Your Progress. Your website is an experiment – don’t be afraid to launch it. Use Google Analytics, the Service Lion and/or Hubspot.

Additional Tips

• Figure out what is the story/ experience of your product.
• Check out the book on websites entitled “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug.
• Acquire product reviews as this increases trust.
• Blog to prove your expertise.
• Make sure your pricing is visible. If it is not on the site at least write an article about what factors attribute to varying rates.
• Put your pricing on the site to filter clients. This saves everybody’s time.
• Identify a goal for each blog post. (i.e if it’s to get the reader to comment then start the conversation, “comment below to let us know what you think about…”)
• Call to action logistics. When you have a call to action button make sure there is plenty of white space around it, that the text on the button is action oriented (i.e. “Buy Now”, “Add to Cart”, “Sign Up”, etc. ) & consider using warm colors as they are proven to be more effective.
• The key to blogging is to do so at regular intervals. Respect your subscribers inbox by them having a rough idea how much mail they should expect.
• Google “Demographic Studies of Social Media Outlets” & utilize your findings to tailor your social media marketing efforts to your demographic.
• Woo Themes has a bunch of good options for “Call to Action” websites.

That’s it for my notes. Please be sure to check out Hannah’s slides.