How To Tailor Your Content To User Intent

If your content drives leads that don’t convert, you could have a user intent problem.

Web users need to see that a search result page matches what they’re looking for before they click – and they need to see that the brand can solve an issue or meet a need that they have before they convert.

If they don’t, you’ll see a disproportionate difference between your site traffic and the number of people who are actually making a purchase or filling out your contact form.

Check out these helpful tips on how you can tailor your content to match user intent, so the people who land on your website are more likely to convert.

Write To Your Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a “pretend” profile of your ideal customer. You can – and should – have multiple buyer personas that represent each type of target customer your business has.

For example, you can divide your audience into segments based on age, gender, geographical location, hobbies, income, and other important criteria that affect how someone makes purchases.

When writing your website content, make sure you’re doing so with these personas in mind. Write to them, as though you were talking one-on-one with real people who are interested in your products or services.

Because at the end of the day, that’s exactly what your content should be doing – reaching people at a ground level and nurturing their way through the buyer’s journey.

Organize Content By Categories Of Intent

A good way to tailor your content to the intent of your company’s target users is to organize pages by categories or “buckets” of intent.

These should align with the buyer’s journey so potential customers are reading and engaging with the content that is most likely to connect with where they are at.

Here’s what this could look like:

• Awareness – blogs, white papers, and case studies that introduce your brand and the products or services you offer to the user
• Consideration – reviews and comparison guides that users can read to learn more about advantages and disadvantages
• Purchase – content that makes the hard sell and drives users to purchase something from you
• Retention – blogs, eBooks, and other content that build brand loyalty between your company and users that have made a purchase
• Advocacy – content that encourages users to tell others about your brand

For example, you could link related articles at the bottom of a page so users in a certain stage of the buyer’s journey can be easily connected with more content that they’re likely to be interested in reading.

Go For Quality, Not Quantity

Contrary to popular belief, the quality of your leads matters more than the quantity of them.

You could have thousands of leads for a marketing campaign and if very few of them convert, the campaign would be considered unsuccessful.

Make sure your content matches the intent of quality leads who are most likely to be interested in what your company offers. Avoid writing shallow content that sounds too salesy or doesn’t provide users with valuable, actionable information they can use.

The higher quality your content, the higher quality leads you’re more likely to attract.

Work With Your Sales Team

If you have a sales team that works with customers on a daily basis, it’s often a good idea to work directly with them to deliver the kind of content they need to make a successful sale.

Ask your sales team what questions potential customers ask or what problems they present and aim to write content that answers those questions or solves those problems. Then, give your sales team access to that content so they can send it to users who are potentially interested in making a purchase with your company.

How McDougall Interactive Can Help With Your Content Marketing Needs

Creating content that compels users to click is both an art and a science – and it’s easy to get intimidated by it.

But the content on your website is too important to let slide. You need to make sure it’s curated specifically to match the intent of users that arrive at your site and will drive the results you want.

Contact us today to learn more about how to write content that gets the click or to explore our content marketing services. Build a custom package that works for you with our a la carte menu of blogs, white pages, social media marketing, eBooks, podcasts, and more. Fill out our short contact form with your name and email address, or call us at 877-623-4291.