Content marketing is nothing new, but content marketing that works well is something everyone still struggles with. There are two parts to a great content marketing strategy: distribution (spreading around the content) and return on investment, or ROI (producing results through the content after people read it).
Today, we’re focusing on how to get the maximum ROI from your content.
Write awesome headlines
Want someone to click the link you posted on Facebook and actually read your content? It all starts with the headline. BuzzFeed built its entire business off great headlines, and it’s something the website tries to improve every day. Taking this same ruthless approach to your real estate content can be what separates your content from the rest of your competition.
Don’t build headlines for only search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. An optimal headline length is 60 to 100 characters, and headlines of 16 to 18 words have higher clickthrough rates.
Use internal links for more than SEO
By now most people with a basic understanding of SEO know that linking to your website inside your own content is beneficial for ranking reasons.
Another great reason that is often overlooked is that people actually click the links inside your content if they’re worthy! When you’re not just linking back for SEO juice and you actually put natural links into your content, people will visit those pages! This gives you another chance to capture a lead on another page.
Call your audience to action
If you’re not using some type of pop-up call to action on your real estate website, you’re losing about 10 percent of all leads right away. A lot of Realtors don’t like having any pop-ups on their websites, but the fact is that they work.
Three great pop-up managers that you can install include the free SumoMe or paid apps Exit Monitor and Optin Monster.
The nice thing about these pop-ups is that they are getting smarter. The three listed can each tell if a visitor is returning to your website and show them a new pop-up or nothing at all, depending on your settings. And there’s also functionality that will produce a pop-up only when a visitor is showing signs that they are about to leave your website.
Format your content
Taking the extra time to format your posts so they are easier to read makes a huge difference. Easy-to-read content means more people will finish reading it. And as more people finish reading the post, they are also more likely to share it.
Using bullet points and proper breaks in between paragraphs is important; you should also always include interactive content such as images, video and audio. Google likes this stuff, too. It’s a win-win.
Create specialized offers inside your content
This is another high-conversion technique you can use with your content to turn more of your visitors into leads. It’s a little bit more complicated, but if you have any newsletter skills, you should be able to set it up pretty easily.
The setup works like this:
- Create an offer for each post you write, such as a free e-book, to encourage readers to subscribe to your blog.
- Create an opt-in form where readers can get alerts about new content and include it in each blog post.
- All the top email newsletter providers should offer an auto-responder. Set it up to reply to any new subscribers with the reward of the offer you gave in the article.
- Enjoy your third way to convert visitors on your real estate website!
Once you get all of these tactics working for you, the next step is to figure out what verbiage to use to convert even more visitors into leads.
Andrew Gale is the founder of FlyerCo.