Content marketers sell with content, salespeople are the one who use content as the weapon of choice. Their job is to create content that produces business results, converting audience into customers.

There could be a thousand reasons of failure to drive sales through marketing but definitely one of the most common is a delusion so understated that we accept it without a challenge. Somewhere along the way, many marketers have an awful thought deeply ingrained in the notion that content is supposed to be helpful but being helpful never truly means selling the products or services.

Content marketer’s job is to be helpful. However, being helpful is virtually juxtaposed to positioning the product or service.

If you are into content marketing and creating content to position your business offerings (product or service) then you are already helping. The role is to collaborate your company’s USP in bringing marketing solutions with your prospect’s solvable pain.

Content marketers love the idea of soft-selling to add value. However, its imperative that content marketers turn around the corner to position their product otherwise they are neither marketing anything nor truly being helpful as they falsely expect to be.

A way has to be figured out to generate value which brings back to the basics of clearly understanding that content marketing and real calls-to-action (CTAs) cohabit – both pieces need to be mutually supportive. CTAs are a bedrock of the entire content marketing formula.

Here are some strategies for customer research to formulate better CTAs.

Google

Best of CTAs will use the words that customers use while searching for relevant products and services. It begins with how to use Google for research and listening. Use keywords to your topic of interest, search for content that is currently ranking and autocomplete searches.

Those pages top-ranking will help a content marketer understand prospect’s pain areas and the keywords and phrases they use to explain their problems from their perspective. That is the content which will be helpful in discerning what’s called searcher intent, or the intention of someone’s search to begin with – what problem was the prospect trying to solve when he/she researched with those keywords.

Next, the autocomplete phrases are helpful by suggesting trending phrases, or related, re-phrasing for relevant search, which will also help find customer phrasing and language surrounding a search term. Those are the words and phrases people will use when searching for a solution and your content should focus on.

Blog Comments

While reviewing the top search results for keywords, you will come across a patron in your search – Comments, a treasure trove of audience insight. Blog post comments are a qualitative way of gathering freely available data. In the comments section, you get to know the language your audience implement and understand their specific questions too.

While discovering the actual words you comprehend the gaps that still exist after consuming a piece of content.

Within few hours through some search, a bit of scrolling, and a little bit of reading, you can have insight as valid as a survey. Remember to keep a track of key phrases and questions.

Once having gained an insight into customer pain, language, and intention, you can adapt that target audience language, leading them to click that CTA.

The key is pinpointing the pain, its source, and your solution.

One-On-One Interviews

 While those research methods let you look outside your niche crowd and customer base, do not miss on the opportunity of connecting with audience who already know, like and trust you.

Customer interviews are an influential mode to absorb completely how your customers express their requirements, pain area and associate your solutions, and finally what opinionates them about your products. In a nutshell have a fetching conversation to hear their language.

When you grab key phrases, your customers use in reality, you establish a connection with your customers directly and indirectly with similar intend people. Rather than making their eyes glaze over with bland advertising, your value will be communicated clearly.

When you can harness customers’ actual words, you can grab attention and infuse your CTAs with compelling copy.

Conclusion

Being able to clearly pronounce the benefits of your product or service by using language that your audience can relate with is enormously treasured and pleasing. It is also a brilliant way to tailor your messaging to your customers’ unique motivations.

However, the key is to master the craft of gaining comfort of the scale. The closer you are in your messaging and value with the way your audience’s expression, the more confidently you can convert your core content into qualitative CTAs.