10 Ways to Make Your Sales and Marketing Content More Powerful

In today world of content shock and disregard to direct advertising, the struggle for leads turns into bloody marketing warfare. And to win it, savvy strategists lead on three pillars in sales:

Creativity.

Relevancy.

Solutions.

Implementing these features to sales content, you build emotional connections with consumers. Appealing to their psychology and perception in texts, you influence their decision-making. Using the right words and content structures, you lead the audience and steal their scene without aggressive selling.

In this article, you’ll reveal ten writing tactics to consider for creating convertible and lead-generating content.

So here we go:

1 Master the Art of Headline Writing

Okay, a copybook maxim goes first:

You know that a headline is the most powerful hook for the audience to decide if they want to click and continue reading your sales content. And you know that headlines dedicate your search engine rankings.

But:
Do you know that you need to craft headlines, depending on a target audience and a platform you choose for seeding content?

The thing is, B2B and B2C headlines work in various manners. Consider different words and lexical chunks for heads and subheads when writing for different audience segments:

Also, write unlike headlines when re-purposing your content assets for different marketing channels. Thus, if you want to share the same news in your business blog, Facebook page, and press release in media, then craft three different headline options.

Like this:

Or this:

2 Write Short Sentences

A quick reminder:

• Reading online is 25% slower than from print.
• Visitors read only 20-28% of the words on your website.

So why make it difficult for them to scan and digest your sales content?

Structure it with typography principles and psychology of decision making in mind. Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Consider spacing and font size to make text fields easier to read. Use bullet points, bold and italic, and visuals.

And remember about information scent and surplus value of your sales content for better optimization.

Sure enough, the structure of your content asset will depend on the marketing channel you use. Writing for Facebook, business emails, guest post pitch, and lead magnets can’t be of the same template. But rules on personalization, value, and concision are what fit them all.

Like in this example, kindly shared by Stefan Debois, Founder and CEO at Survey Anyplace:

Citing him, “this is a good illustration of what I think of as great sales content: personalized, actionable advice that is valuable for me either way, also when I decide not to buy the product or service.”

3 Use Sensory Words

Now it’s time for another copybook maxim:

When it comes to effective marketing, visual content calls the shots.

Mike Hanski wrote about the psychology of visuals and their influence at the human brain back in 2016, saying that “90% of information go to the brain like images, not words.” It means that people visualize your content in mind even when it’s a text with no pictures at all.

So, help them picture the scene. Transmit your brand message via specific words and structures that would make the audience emotionally invested and therefore willing to respond.

Sensory words are your weapon here.

Henneke Duistermaat is a master of using them. She says that sensory words are “more powerful and memorable… because they make your reader see, hear, smell, taste, or feel your words.” You can use them everywhere: headlines, product descriptions, business emails, About Us pages, etc.

They are what Chuck Palahniuk calls “communicating on a physical level” with the audience. Perfect for triggering customer feedback.

4 Consider Bucket Brigades

With an 8-second attention span, it becomes more difficult for users to scan information. The act of reading has changed itself: now we read more from a screen, not print.

Given that, you need to make content look (and sound!) attractive: smooth, with each line flowing. Paragraph length/rhythm and bucket brigades are your best instruments here.

How to use them?

• Write short paragraphs, like here at LeadFuse, and consider spacing between them. It will make an impression for visitors that your content is easy to read.

• Switch between long and short paragraphs to create rhythm: one-sentence paragraphs help to highlight ideas and create a dramatic effect when needed.
• Add bucket brigades to your texts to connect ideas and make readers slide from one line to another. These are words that don’t convey meaning but catch the interest of consumers, motivating them to continue reading.

That’s how they work:

And I bet, you can find tons of bucket brigades in this article too.

5 Avoid Cliche Phrases

Do you know what drives consumers nuts?

Boring texts. Content full of marketing buzzwords and flabby words. The balderdash of same-looking About Us pages with the same promises. Wishy-washy blog posts.

Why the heck should they remember and trust you?

What makes you different?

Savvy content creators develop the vocabulary to sound classy. They think of language tricks to influence readers. They write with power words, USP, relevance, and content conversion in mind.

6 Remember About Keywords

As a digital marketer, you understand:

No one will find and read your sales content if you create it with no SEO in mind. The very first practice here: fill headlines, subheads, and text bodies with targeted keywords for both engines and users to find it.

Adam Enfroy does it first-rate:

“How to make money online” and its derivations are all around here. For better optimization, you can go further: consider hidden keywords such as long-tail phrases, location-specific words if applicable, user-generated, and vertical keywords.

And remember about keyword density to avoid stuffing.

7 Keep Your Brand’s Tone of Voice

Tone of voice is the way your brand speaks to the audience.

It expresses a brand’s values, philosophy, and attitude to the audience. Tone of voice determines the words, speech patterns, and sentence structures you’ll use in sales content and overall communication with consumers.

All king-size brands have copy/design guidelines to follow the principles of coherency and consistency in conveying their ideas:

Often, this even includes the number of words to use in headlines, font size, letter forms to start a sentence, punctuation rules, etc. But whatever your brand voice is, make sure to have it and craft sales content according to it. It’s about your brand identity, a persona and reputation you want to establish.

As Wholesome Commerce content strategist Qhubekani Nyathi noticed:

“Content without a unique brand voice is like pizza without the topping—bland dough nobody wants to touch. Everybody knows the basics that make up the content crust: keywords, structure, flow, the whole shebang. Ultimately, it’s the pepperoni, mushroom, pineapple and bacon, your unmistakable, inimitable and irresistible brand voice that rakes in the leads and sales.”

And yet, pay attention to one tiny detail to make your content sparkle:

8 Use Words Your Readers Speak

Make sure the audience will understand your brand message. Create punchy texts that will be easier to read than ignore.

How?

With an above-average customer profile on the table, you’ll get into ear of your ideal audience hands down.

• Stick to words they know, avoid niche jargon if your customers don’t speak it in everyday life. Learn the language of their life: slang they use, movies and music they love, books they read.

• Understand what (and how!) they think to know which matters to address to make them emotionally invested. Pay attention to their emotional triggers, speak the language of their values, their problems and principles, not yours.

• Turn to their basic instincts and fears, answer a “So what?” question in your every content asset. Remember: write about them, not you.

• Consider their cognitive biases, don’t allow them to destroy your marketing endeavors.

9 Say No to “Anything and Everything”

First, the question:

What exactly do these guys do?

Okay, they are creative, they have a cool office, they help clients with… Leading easier lives? Build furniture? Smiles? After all, should a reader keep guessing here?

Or, what do these guys want users to do?

Too many options to choose from, no? (Six, to be specific.)

Users have no time and desire to dig to the roots of content about anything and everything online. It’s confusing, vague, and boring to read. It gets them lost in the information. It makes them leave the page and forget about you.

Neil Patel put it best:

“When you take a kid to a candy store, what happens? They don’t know what to buy, right? The same goes for the web. Giving people too many options or asking them for too much information can quickly reduce your conversions.”

So, the golden rule to follow: one content asset = one thesis/idea/CTA.

No matter if it’s a landing page, a newsletter, or a blog article, keep one talking point per post.

10 Avoid Tired Ideas and Boilerplate

And finally, the last but not least:

You know that sales content needs to be unique yet relevant for users to remember.

But:

Don’t you feel like your niche is sinking in “unique and relevant” content, turning into boilerplate slowly but surely?

The same ideas, the same approaches to content creation, the same stereotypes and writings a la “it’s not a secret that…,” “all women dream of…,” and tons of stuff like that.

Why not dial in your creativity? Why not look at your brand from a different angle?

Compare:

Don’t be afraid of experimenting with sales content, within reasonable and relevant, of course, and consider even the tiniest details. They can help you while brainstorming the concept of your next memorable content asset.

Over to You

Marketing techniques are many, as well as persuasive psychology tactics and writing tricks to consider for creating sales content that will convert and generate leads.

Some key takeaways from this guide for your consideration:

• Say no to triviality.
• Don’t mix anything and everything in one place.
• Keep your brand’s tone of voice and speak the same language with your audience.
• Write stellar headlines.
• Craft your content like a boss: short sentences and paragraphs, rhythm for better readability, bucket brigades and sensory words for better flow, and no cliche phrases.
• Show, don’t tell. Solve users’ problems, turn to their needs and emotions.
• Keywords rule, but beware of stuffing.

And what tricks do you have for making your sales content more powerful and lead-generating?