How to Create Website Content That Converts Leads Into Customers

Do you feel frustrated that your traffic isn’t converting like you think it should? You are doing everything you know to grow your brand through content, but despite your best efforts, nothing’s working. Maybe it’s time you learned how to create content that converts because, honestly, your content marketing wheels are spinning. I’ve got some news for you: The problem isn’t your traffic. It’s the fact that you are creating unfocused content without a value proposition driving it. Ideally, you need a unique selling proposition (USP). As a result, your content sounds like everyone else’s content, just more noise. Worse, you’re likely targeting people in the wrong part of the funnel too. In this post, I’ll show you how to create USP-driven content that converts and grows your business. If you read to the end, there’s a bonus to learn more principles about product marketing. You’ll learn how my agency, Growth Ramp, doubled a startup’s annualized revenue by 127% in six months using 14 different principles. Let’s dive in.

Make Content Creation Easy With This Template Bundle

Download three simple templates that will make planning and creating high-converting content easier.

• Content calendar template to plan each piece of content you’ll publish in advance.
• Creative brief template to ensure each piece is created according to specifications.
• Website content template to make sure writers create content that’s ready to enter your CMS the first time, every time.

The Cliff’s Notes Summary For Creating Content That Converts

What’s the secret to creating web content that converts? It’s simple:

1. Start by creating a strong value proposition and turn it into a USP.
2. Spread your value prop or USP with your content.
3. Prioritize your content by helping your potential customers who are further down the funnel first.

That’s it. The rest of this post will unpack these three steps, so you know exactly what to do to achieve success with your content marketing.

Why Creating a Value Prop and USP is an Important First Step to High Converting Content

Before we explore reasons why creating a value prop is important, what is a value proposition? In simple terms, value proposition is the value you promise to deliver to your customers. A USP is a specific, beneficial promise to the customer which your competitors cannot or is almost impossible to replicate. Maybe you are wondering why this obsession with creating a USP? Why is it vital in content marketing? Here’s the thing. A powerful USP becomes a focal point for all your marketing efforts, including (and especially) your content:

1. It shapes all your messaging. Your marketing becomes more focused and aligned with your goals. It fuels all your copy. Congruent messaging increases your chances of success exponentially.
2. It makes your content more engaging. You appeal to prospects and customers because a clear message is disruptive. It alienates those it’s not meant for but captures the hearts and minds of those who identify with it.
3. It makes your brand distinctive. If you sound exactly like your challengers, prospects will ignore you. They have no reason to choose you. Once you prove your difference, you instantly become attractive to prospects.
4. It increases brand awareness. Good USPs catch on with their target audience and spread widely, thus ensuring more people become familiar with your brand.

A strong value prop will increase sales because your message resonates through your whole funnel. Competitors can steal most value props because they make general claims. 50% of SaaS organizations, up to this date, still rely on user-based pricing and the most common free trial period is 1 month. 25% of companies steal their competitors' prices. It’s even easier to swipe your value prop if it’s just a couple words on the page. Let’s take a look at Domino’s USP to get a feel for turning a value prop into a USP.

Domino’s: An Example of a Powerful Unique Sales Proposition

If you want to see a powerful, real-world illustration of an effective USP, look no further than popular pizza brand Domino’s. Here’s their value proposition: Value prop = Fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door. All pizza delivery stores offer this. Their USP goes a step further. It adds hyper specificity to the promise in a way that becomes difficult for customers to copy. USP = Fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less or it's free. As you can see, a good USP puts a specific claim to the value you provide. Note that Domino’s USP means they take on the risk, not the customer. Yes, using a specific claim could influence a competitor to steal it. A USP often requires a change to the product or the company’s operations to fulfill the promise. Domino’s had to change their cooking methods and improve transport efficiency to make sure their pizza arrived steaming hot. Here are other USP Examples worth noting:

• GEICO: 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on your car insurance.
• Decibite: Get 15% or faster web hosting by switching to Decibite, guaranteed.

A value prop + USP will give you and your customers a clear understanding of why your business exists. Importantly, your value prop also shows prospects why they must choose you over competitors.

5 Elements of a Compelling Value Proposition That Anchors Good Website Content

These examples show a strong value proposition is:

1. Specific about the benefits of doing business with you. Your offer must show the tangible results customers will get if they choose your product.
2. Clear about how your product will make customers' lives better. Use simple jargon-free language.
3. Brief about the value you provide. Use as few words as possible, so people read and understand your value prop in five seconds or fewer.
4. Relevant to the needs, pains, and struggles of your customers. If you scratch their pain, you will easily reach their pockets.
5. Unique and markedly different from your competitors’ offers. It’s your difference that draws customers towards you.

Our team at Growth Ramp has been creating Lancer Review, a website that helps entrepreneurs hire freelancers. We do so by reviewing freelance platforms and tools. Our CEO, Jason, was feeling stuck how best to move forward. He reached out to Jared Macdonald, a fellow product marketer with an emphasis on UX. His response: Before we had our value prop, the focus was to build an affiliate site to make a side income and use it as a case study for clients. Jason thought, why does it matter what problem the site solves? We knew how to rank content and how to create content that converts. Jared’s question helped me see that a value prop gives the team purpose to know what they’re doing. Let’s say you have a value prop and USP. You now need to decide how to promote your USP in your marketing channels: Here’s the thing. While promoting a USP in your content channels will make it stand out, it may not drive more conversions. Likely, this is because you are also targeting customers in the wrong part of the funnel.

The Amazing Power of Customer Funnel-aligned Web Content

Conversion-friendly content meets the consumer exactly where they are at in the customer journey. It then moves them further along the path until they buy. Jason Quey, the CEO of Growth Ramp, wrote an article for CoSchedule on the five stages of the customer funnel: Most blog content fits problem-aware customers, so I’ll start there.

Problem-aware Stage Content

Consider these articles on CoSchedule:

• Content Distribution Plan: How to Conquer Declining Organic Reach
• 3 Easy Ways to Find Social Media Topics To Boost Engagement and Shares
• Marketing Implementation: How to Put Your Strategy Into Practice With a Template

These articles are all addressing problems a customer has, with CoSchedule as a potential solution. However, because they have a long way to go to become a customer, it’s often best to get them to become an email lead. Common Thread Collective took this approach with their e-commerce content marketing. “We narrowed our focus to direct-to-consumer brands between $5M and $50M in annual revenue. We then created content with those examples and turned a long-form article into a single PDF. This allowed us to create a natural entrypoint into our funnel,” explains Aaron Orendorff, VP of Marketing. Image Source: CommonThread.co While building an email list is good for problem-aware customers, there is an alternative that can get sales faster. Instead of focusing only on the top of the funnel, consider moving further down. Why? Because it’s crowded at the top of the funnel. There is fierce competition for high traffic keywords with everyone jostling for a piece of the pie. Let’s look at solution-aware content next.

Solution-aware Stage Content

Solution-aware customers know what solution they need. Unfortunately, they don’t know that your solution will solve their problem. Your job, if you choose to accept, is to educate these potential customers about your product and how it solves a customer’s problems. This is why you need to target product keywords. A solution-aware prospect might say to herself, "I want to create an online course." As she goes to Google, she looks up "online course builder." As a result, she comes across this product keyword page from Podia: Podia’s feature page helps this solution-aware customer how their tool solves her problem. Solution-aware customers will read product reviews. If you have an affiliate program, you can have bloggers in your community target the keyword phrase {your company} review. Some affiliate sites dedicate their entire content strategy to reviewing platforms and tools. Here’s an example of a review for Fiverr: Naturally, if you want more leads, you should keep moving down the funnel. Next up, product-aware customers. Although tool list posts may not be your favorite, they work. That’s why you see them plastered all over the internet. Amazon repricing software company Goaura uses a "best of {category}" list post well to ram home their dominance over the competition. They wrote a piece comparing themselves to two competing brands in their space. Two things stand out in the article.

• They focus on their strong areas.
• They put themselves first — a psychological trick for customers to prefer them.

Another example is the mattress brand Eachnight. In a post titled “12 Best Mattresses Of 2020”, Eachnight listed the best mattresses out there with theirs included. This type of content is perfectly suited for product-aware customers who are comparing the best market options and are ready to buy.

Product-aware Stage Content

However, the bottom of the funnel content shortens the customer journey. You get customers faster. Yes, the potential organic traffic for your keyword may be lower, but the higher conversions will make up for it. Some product-aware content can convert as high as 10% of traffic to new trials. Most-aware customers just need the right information to buy. Typically an offer, a value prop, and a bit of social proof are all you need. And bingo, you have a customer! Product-aware customers are learning about your product and comparing it to the competition. How best can you hook them? Write comparison content where you put your product/service against competing products/services. The goal? To show your product/service superiority over the competition in an authentic, objective way. Comparison keywords to get you started:

• {Competitor} Alternative. Example: Slack Alternative.
• {Competitor 1} vs {Competitor 2}. Example: Slack vs. Hipmunk.

Here are four examples. Podia compares themselves with ClickFunnels and zeroes in on their advantages:

• Modern
• More affordable
• Unlimited video hosting, products, and visitors

For alternative pages, you can curate either your review pages. Here’s an example from Lancer Review for alternative sites, like Fiverr: Login Lockdown’s piece ‘LastPass vs. 1Password’ is targeting the two tools as their keywords. Each section has a winner and loser, with the winner announced at the end of the post. It can also help to provide guidance to where your customer is in their journey. In Ryan Robinson’s comparison of three top email marketing tools for bloggers, ConvertKit vs AWeber vs Mailchimp, he presents the pros and cons of each tool. He then explains which is best for the various stages of growth in your blog or company. What makes this comparison particularly useful is that it provides a clear recommendation framework for which tool you should start with. He then shares how to decide when you’re ready to upgrade into a more robust paid tool.

Most-aware Stage Content

Content for product-aware customers should help them know how your product relates to the solution they want. What type of content resonates with customers at the most-aware stage? Here, you want to make an immediate offer. Swagbucks’ guide on how to make money online through online surveys focuses on readers who are looking for similar ideas and want to get started right away. They’ve even placed a form on this guide so that these readers sign up immediately:

Is Your Content on the Mark? Time For an Audit

It’s important to realize prospects don’t follow the neat path you have mapped out for them on their journey to becoming buying customers. They arrive on your site randomly and at different stages of awareness. Some have no clue who you are and what you do. So they need extensive content that introduces your brand to them. Others already know you (and your competitors) and only need a little nudge to buy. Sadly, (as we mentioned earlier), most brands focus on the top of the funnel content. At the top, there are thousands of companies battling for the attention of unaware prospects. Such people have a long way to go before they become buying customers. They are the hardest to convert. You are better off targeting people who are lower down where there is lower competition but higher conversions. Here’s a quick overview of all the stages of the customer journey and the content suited to each stage.

1. Unaware Stage, for potential customers unaware of the pain. How-to articles, Ebook, infographics, and podcasts
2. Problem Aware Stage, for potential customers experiencing pain. How-to posts, how-to videos, webinars, quizzes, and surveys and newsletters
3. Solution Aware Stage, for potential customers reviewing solutions. Review posts, tool list posts, and White Papers
4. Product Aware Stage, for potential customers learning about your product. In-depth reviews, product demos, webinars, customer stories, and White Papers
5. Most Aware Stage, for potential customers ready to buy your product. Product descriptions, comparison content, FAQs, customer stories, and quick-start guides

In a word: To increase conversions and sales, write content for all stages of the customer journey. Especially, take advantage of eager-to-buy people at the product-aware and most-aware stages. That’s low-hanging fruit few brands are leveraging. Do an audit of your content today to see if you are catering for all stages of the customer journey. Plug the gaps with relevant, optimized website content that converts. Don’t forget to anchor the content on a memorable, unique value proposition.

It’s Time to Create Content That Converts

In summary,  to create content that converts on your website, first establish your unique selling proposition. With a compelling USP in hand, design all your content around it. To maximize conversions, produce content that targets all stages of the customer journey. In the end, you will create conversion-friendly content that’ll bring high returns for your business. If you’d like more product marketing advice like this, check out this free 14-day email series on product marketing. It will teach you the principles of how Growth Ramp grew a startup’s annualized revenue by +127% in six months.