The Internet has been a great way for consumers to be empowered as they can research and educate themselves about the products and services they require. Even before they have reached your website, they could have visited several others looking for the answers to a particular question.
So my question to you is – can you answer that particular question?
You would think that question would revolve around price, but we are finding more and more searchers are looking for more detailed answers.
The recent Google algorithm changes have meant that searchers can ask more complicated questions and Google will be able to provide a better answer.
In response, savvy marketers are creating more in-depth educational content aimed at helping Google select their site as the “best” fit answer. Even outside of SEO, educating visitors is a great way to get them to buy from you, even if it isn’t on the first visit.
So how can educate your visitors?
There are a number of content ideas you can use on your site to help drive more visitors and then teach them about your products and services when they arrive.
Web Content – Articles, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), blog posts are all ways to help educate a potential customer.
You will find a huge number of FAQs in your support email – with customers asking the same questions over and over again. Over time you should build up a FAQ section on your site and pre-empt potential questions.
You can also look at Google at see what people are asking. If you type in some of your major keywords then scroll to the bottom of page one, you will see related searches and mainly these tend to be questions. Does your site answer these questions?
Downloadables – White papers, guides, email courses and presentations can be a great way to give a visitors a lot of information in one go they can then download and read at their leisure – this can all be branded.
These can be simple Word documents or even PowerPoint presentations converted in to PDFs and branded. You can simply add links to them on your site pages or you can promote them as lead generators, by asking for an email address in return for emailing it to them. This can be a great way to build a list of interested people in your products.
You don’t need expensive software to create PDFs from Word Documents – you can use OpenOffice, which allows you to “print” documents to PDFs.
https://www.openoffice.org/product/index.html
Audio and Video – With more detailed and complicated products, an audio podcast can be a great way to educate. Or, if you can, you could build a explainer video – which does what it says on the tin – it explains clearly a given product or service. This can be a great easy-to-educate tool.
Audio can simply recorded on most smartphones or iPads these days and uploaded to your website. Or you can use free software such as Audacity: http://www.wikihow.com/Record-a-Podcast-with-Audacity
Or, if you feel like a rock star you can create your own Internet Radio station…
http://www.live365.com/broadcast/
and then share that on your website. You could update it every week with more informative useful content and interviews.
In terms of video, there are a number of ways you can record a simple video using an iPhone and a tripod to keep the recording steady. The main thing is to make sure the lighting is good and you have a good mic. Or speak loudly enough for the phone to record – without coming across as shouting.
Most social media platforms now allow you to go live on a page or profile. Video really is huge and only getting bigger. You still have an opportunity to get in early doors.
Or you can use a combination of all of these ideas to get your message out there and teach your potential clients about your products and services.
We hope this gives you some food for thought and ideas to improve the ability of your website to attract and get action from your visitors.
