3 Jaw-dropping ways to write persuasive content that boosts conversion

Marketers that succeed with content marketing do two things very well:

First, they know how to create persuasive content that encourages readers to take action.

Second, they put 100% of their efforts in distributing and promoting the content.

But you’re probably wondering:

“How do I create persuasive content that actually converts?

What if I tell you that it is not as difficult as it looks?

You can actually use content marketing to build raving fans that will be glad to buy your product or subscribe to your service.

In a research carried out by Aberdeen, it was discovered that companies that use content marketing increased their website conversion rates by more than 5x.

In this post, you will learn how to create persuasive content that will actually boost your conversion.

3 Ways to create persuasive content that boosts conversion

1. Use storytelling

Storytelling in content writing is powerful. It helps your audience to read your content, connect the dots and take action.

Have you ever read a captivating story online? Or watch a captivating movie? You don’t want it to end.

Stories are like delicious cakes. You eat it bite after bite and feel the taste. It is so good that you would do anything to have more of it. That is how your content should be. Your audience should read it and crave for more.

Content that persuades tells a story. Your audience should see themselves in your stories. It should be felt.

Stories activate the brain cells. For instance, if the story is about food, the sensory cortex lights up.

That is not all, here is the most beautiful aspect:

A study from Princeton revealed that when you tell a story, your brain and your audience’s brains sync up. This means that you can easily input ideas into their minds through your stories.

You can get them to take actions easily. Because your story will evoke emotion and people make decisions based on emotions rather than logic (although they use logic to justify it later).

The most important point you should know in crafting stories is this:

Tell stories, don’t write stories.

Can you spot the difference?

When you tell a story, it evokes emotion. But when you write it, it is dry.

So, the question is:

How do you get stories to use in your content?.

It is easy:

a. Use your stories:

Everyone has a story. It can be about your wins, failures, past experiences in life or business, etc. Check out the examples below:

GrooveHQ wrote a content titled “How we got 1,000+ subscribers from a single blog post in 24 hours”.

The content received 268 comments and 2,249 shares.

It was about the story of the company’s journey to $100,000 dollars a month.

Another good one is from Neil Patel:

The title is “How spending $162,301.42 on clothes made me $692,500”.

The story generated more than 100 comments and 2,000+ shares.

These stories show the journey of the narrator to the desired point. It will generate a desire in their audience to want to achieve the same results, hence the number of shares and comments.

But wait:

The problem is, you are not Groovehq, neither are you Neil Patel, how do you get stories like this?

b. Use other people’s stories

If you think you don’t have a story good enough to share, no problem.

You can leverage on other people’s stories. You can create a high-quality content from other people’s success or failure stories.

There are thousand and one stories online. All you need is to read it and create a story based on it with a narrative to show what happened and the lessons learned.

For example, check out the content below:

Brian Dean of Backlink used one of his reader’s success as a case study on his blog. See it below:

You can use your customer’s success stories also as case studies.

Larry Kim also leveraged on Buzzsumo’s & Moz research of 1 million articles to create a compelling content.

You can use these methods until you start generating case studies from your customers/users/audience.

2. Use persuasive words your audience wants to read

The most important aspect of creating a persuasive content is to be specific. The more specific you are, the more credible your content will be.

There are some words that make it easy for customers to make decisions. These are the words you should be using to create content. Such words include:

i. You

It is important to directly speak to your audience when creating content that is intended for conversion. It tells your audience you care for them and it is all about them, not you or your product/service.

Your content should be geared towards solving your audience’s needs. That is why you need to personalize it to them by using the word “you”.

The word ‘you” make your content real. It makes your readers listen attentively. It makes them feel special because the content is personalized to them. It feels as if you are talking to them one on one. It makes your content conversational.

For example, check out the content below from Lincoln W Daniel of Mark growth.

Reading the content makes it feel as if he is talking to you directly.

Can you feel the connection?

ii. Because

The second word is “because”. This is a word that makes your content to be specific. It gives readers reasons why.

Dr. Robert Cialdini, the regents’ professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University told a story about the experiment of Ellen Langer. She wanted to use a copy machine, but there were people already in line for the same purpose.

So, she doesn’t want to join the queue, so she asked three different questions, thus:

Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine? 60% said OK.

Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush? 94% said OK.

Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? 93% said OK.

Because she gave a reason why she needed to make the copies, she received a greater response.

Dr. Robert Cialdini said “A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”

Use “because” when writing persuasive content that will convert. It will help your audience to see the reasons why you want them to take an action.

iii. New

Everyone loves new things. Your audience is tired of the old ways of doing things. They want to learn new things, new experiences.

You can use new in your headline to grab attention. You can teach your audience new things you discover or better ways of doing old things.

iv. Instantly

It is woven into the human brain to want things instantly. Nobody likes to wait for things they can get now.

A study carried out by MRI revealed that the mid-brain lit up when the mind envisions instant rewards. When you use words like instant, fast, quick, now, it triggers the mid brain activity.

You can add this to your content, especially when you are giving out a free e-book, checklist, cheats, etc. You can promise to give them instantly.

However, make sure you deliver on your word.

v. Free

Do you like free things? Yeah! I do.

Everyone wants something free for nothing. You can give away free e-books, email courses to get your audience attention and emails.

3. Create data-driven content

A data-driven content as defined by single grain is “articles that merge personal experience with scientific research and data to offer an authoritative solution.”

Groovehq did a research on two different headlines for one of their blog posts.

The first headline is plain “The simple test that increased our referrals”, the second headline is backed up by data: “The simple test that increase our referrals by 30%.”

Below are the results of the experiment:

As can be seen above, the data backed headline received more clicks than the plain text.

Data is like stories, they persuade your audience to believe you. They also make your content stand out among all others.

How to add data to your content

There are several ways you can find data and add them to your content. Below are few of them:

i. Cite research backed statistics

When you are trying to make a point that someone else has researched before, you can get the research to back up your argument. For instance, look at this example from Buffer:

The post cites a statistics to back up the claim.

Where can you get statistics and case studies for your content?

You can get statistics for different niche/industry on statista.com.

You can also get them by searching through Google.

Go to Google, type in your topic + statistics. For instance, I typed in content marketing + statistics and got the following result.

Other places you can search for data are Zanran a search engine for data and statistics, Guardian data, Google Scholar, etc.

ii. Use authoritative sources

Apart from using statistics in your content, you can also use quotes from an authoritative figure in your niche. It must be a person that is well trusted.

For instance, under the second point above, I quoted Dr. Robert Cialdini.

You can get authoritative quotes from influencers in your niche. Use Google to search for them.

For instance, I can search for “Brian Clark says” to get quotes from Brian Clark. You can also ask any influencer in your niche to give you a quote.

iii. Use your own data or someone else

You can carry out an experiment by yourself on your blog and document your strategies and steps.

Lot of influencers do this. Buzzsumo and Okdork analyzed 1 million articles to create data. It is a lot of work, but they did it.

Groovehq also took their audience on a journey on how they got to $100,000 in their revenue.

If you have the resources, you can document your growth journey backed with data.

You can also decide to leverage on other people’s data if you don’t have any of your own.

Conclusion:

There you have it! 3 jaw-dropping ways to create persuasive content that boosts conversion.

What are you waiting for?

Start creating content that converts today!