6 Steps to Create Long-Form Content With Less Time and Effort

After introducing its Panda algorithm update, Google encouraged webmasters to focus on its quality and value from a user’s perspective. Thus, long-form content came into the light. It is beneficial for both, users and website owners.

E-commerce websites can benefit from long-form content as much as a blog. If created wisely, longer sales pages drive huge traffic and attract customers.

Include Long-Form Content for Your New Product Launch Marketing Plan

Short pages work perfectly for sales, but they perform the best when users already know something about the brand or product. Those are low-risk products and users don’t need long pages to persuade them.

In case your product is new to the audience, you need more content to make people buy from you. Long-form sales pages will help:

• with costly and complicated offers. Users hardly read much about the average kettle characteristics. But they definitely need more reasons to buy pricey products;
• with high-commitment offers. Users want to know what’s next after they purchase from you. What it takes to use your product, what will be after-sales service, etc.;
• with entirely new products/brands. New brands need to gain users’ trust and persuade customers they offer a valuable product.

Anyway, long-form sales content should be structured well. If the page is poorly designed and boring, it will only frustrate the customers.

Enjoy the Benefits of Long-Form Content On Your New Product Launch Marketing Plan:

• Long-form content is more engaging, which means your readers will spend more time on your site.
• Long-form content has higher conversion rates than short posts.
•  Long-form content can be used to build trust with potential customers.
• The longer the post, the less likely it is that you’ll have typos or grammatical errors.
• Readers are often more forgiving of mistakes in long posts because they know how much work went into them and want to see what they missed.
• You can use a single long blog post as an entire marketing campaign for one product launch if you break up the information by topic instead of writing about everything at once

Create Long Form Content Effortlessly to Boost Your New Product Launch Marketing Plan

You should think through the content structure and information you wish to present. It affects the effectiveness of your offer directly. Let’s check out the essential steps for long-form content creation.

1Identify Your Target Audience

It’s the very first step of pretty any marketing activity. Who is your audience? What are their needs? Are you targeting new or returning customers? Identify your audience correctly and add the details that keep them reading your content.

Create highly-targeted content that solves just one issue of one category of your target audience.

E.g., if you sell party decorations, you can create a separate page for wedding or birthday party decorations alone. Don’t try to engage with all your customers on one page. Create a piece that shows all the benefits of your product/offer for a particular audience.

2Define Your Keywords

Usually, you use organic keywords for your articles and set PPC campaigns for your landing pages. In both cases, you need specific keywords to attract the right audience.

Create a list of keywords that describe your topic.

Long-tail keywords are perfect for long articles as well as for sales pages. They are highly specific and explain the topic precisely. Moreover, studies show that long-tail keywords allow you to rank for thousands of other keywords with one piece of content.

Learn more about how your potential customers are looking for your product.

Keep the ‘searcher’s intent in mind when choosing the target keywords for your content.

Another cool trick is using your competitors’ branded keywords for your benefit. Check your competitor’s keywords in your favorite keyword tool, including search words like ‘better,’ ‘faster,’ ‘cheaper,’ ‘compared to,’ ‘alternative to,’ etc.

Such combinations with your competitor’s brand help intercept the customers on their way to purchase. And show them your product as a better/cheaper alternative to the competitors’.

3Convince Customers to Buy

The only reason businesses create content is sales and traffic. The traffic should also convert into sales. Otherwise, you waste your investments. High prices or complicated offers often stop customers from buying a specific product. In this case, you should explain to your potential customers why they should buy from you in detail.

Your sales page is not the place for bragging about your product. I mean, users don’t care how much effort it costs to create your shiny smart toaster with WiFi connectivity. Tell your potential customers what’s in it for them! Tell how much more comfortable their lives will be when they have the toaster that cooks the toasts 2 minutes before they wake up in the morning. Describe the features that solve the user’s issues.

Source: Morningrecoverydrink.com

4Choose a Proper Format

With long-form content, you have many opportunities to get your message out to customers. Use different formats that attract your audience. Thus, you may use lots of photos or videos to show your product instead of telling people about it.

Source: Fiftythree.com

Adding an FAQ section is a good idea. Answer the most popular questions about your product there. You can get those questions by asking your beta-users or first/potential customers. Encourage your social media followers to leave their questions on your page. Keep an eye on the comments where users ask about new features they would like to have with your product.

5Choose Testimonials Wisely

Word of mouth outweighs other signals today. The surveys show that over 70% of buyers check out online reviews before making a purchase. Feedback from friends and relatives build more trust than direct promotion.

A section with testimonials is beneficial for long-form pages. Gather the feedback from your customers through social media or emails.

But post only those testimonials that prove the value of your product, describe its characteristics and tell how it helped users to solve their issues. Avoid shallow phrases like “Cool product,” “Nice thing,” “Wow!” etc. They bring no value and lower trust to your brand.

Source: Ritual.com

6Structure Your Content Properly

Organizing your content on a page the right way, increase chances that users will go through it to the end and convert it into customers.

The content structure should encourage users to scroll down and learn more about the product. So, you should use headings/subheadings, bullet lists, images and videos, call-to-action-buttons, and navigation elements across the page.

Use enough CTA throughout the long-form content to ‘catch’ users when they are ready to buy. Use traditional CTA statements like ‘Buy Now,’ ‘Watch Video,’ ‘Sign Up,’ etc. People recognize such wording better and are more likely to click those CTAs.

Conclusion

There’s no ‘perfect’ length of long-form sales content. That’s why you have to test the already built pages often and find new ways for improvement. A/B testing allows checking the soft spots in your content and removing them.

Long-form content requires more time and effort from your side just because of its size, but having a clear plan makes its creation easier.