Attention-grabbing headlines may get people to click through to your website, but if the actual meat of the article is all hyperbole, is thin and does not live up to your headline’s promise, readers will not stay on your site.
Advertising legend David Ogilvy famously said that ‘the consumer is not a moron, she is your wife’. Made in 1955, this statement appears more relevant than ever. In a nutshell, poor content that does not respect the reader does not work.
What Is Quality Content?
Good quality content is any content that aligns your marketing goals with your prospects’ needs. It conveys value and soothes specific pain points keeping people awake at night. Good quality content is targeted and crafted with the goals and aspirations of a clearly defined persona in mind.
An effective content marketing strategy draws a picture of who your ideal customer is. It then maps this persona’s journey as a buyer. The goal is to establish the types of content to serve your prospects at specific stages of their journey towards becoming customers.
Importantly, there is a time to send how-to articles, free ebooks, case studies, webinars or product demo invitations to your prospects. It can’t be at random times. How ever attention-grabbing your headline is, you aren’t going to achieve much with your content if it’s not relevant to the reader.
After mapping your persona’s buyer’s journey against their content needs, go ahead and craft the sort of epic content they can’t resist. Spend enough time making sure the content is well researched, written well and that it is actionable.
Why Click-Bait Content Does Not Work
Sensational headlines that stop people in their tracks worked in 1995 when all it took to make a buck was to just get people on your website.
Guess What?
In 2019, people can now block ads and defend their inboxes against spammy tactics. So a content marketing strategy that prioritises traffic while ignoring ROI will fail each time. Click-bait headlines may work for BuzzFeed. But, try them for your carpet cleaning website, and you may annoy and tune people off your brand for good.
More than that, thin, outdated, and redundant content will not rank for any keywords that matter. Search engines have gotten very smart at recognising good content (and making sure that pointless listicles and other junk content stay on page 11 of the SERPs).
Google is now very picky about what content it shows its users. The search giant now ranks content on topical relevance and how well it meets searcher intent.
So, feverishly building links isn’t going to help your SEO efforts as long as your content quality is poor. To optimise your digital marketing strategy, train your energies on your prospects’ needs, not clicks.
Now and then, click-bait headlines may lead to a few clicks to your website. But, will that traffic convert into email subscription signups, ebook downloads, webinar registrations, video views or sales? The answer is it hardly ever does.
Need help to craft quality content that meets your prospects at their point of need? WSI OMS can help. Contact us today to discuss your needs.