Building a blog is the very first step to get an online presence. Creating content for your blog is the second step. And the third step is to get targeted traffic. However, this is not the end. If you start to receive targeted traffic but only a few of them read your content or stay in your blog, then this is not a success story.
Your goal is to receive as many targeted visitors as possible to your blog, as well as make them stay and engage with your content as much as possible. Otherwise, Google will rank you down for a high bounce rate & your website’s future is uncertain.
Why do you need to focus on click-through rate?
This is the main reason why you should focus on increasing CTR (Click-through rate) in content marketing. According to Moz’s research, 2 million blog posts, 864K hours of video & 294 billion emails are created & sent by millions of internet users every day.
And do you know that 80% of readers never actually pass the headline? More than 500% of traffic can be increased just by making a catchy headline. These are just the survey data I have collected from several authority sites. But, what do we learn from here?
This is an insane competitive era. To survive you must have to learn how to beat the competition by utilizing smart eye-catching & engaging content. You may have seen “clickbait” content all over the internet especially in the form of advertisements in many website sidebars or footer areas. Also in social media, you may have clicked so much short content.
Those are not necessarily well written, however, they used emotional, sweet, conversation, to the point, etc. method to attract the audience. This is a very intelligent way to increase your CTR. In this article, I will discuss how you can effectively do that to increase your click-through rate in content marketing.
Method 1: It is you who represent the audiences
Do not need to search for a holy-grail to find out what would work best. Do not have to follow an expert idea to learn the complex process. Because it is simple. You are the answer. You are the audience. There is no difference between you to them.
Ask yourself what you would like most when writing content for your blog. What you would seek to learn from that specific piece of article. When deciding a catchy headline, write 3-4 sample headlines and ask yourself, which one you would like most, and click.
There is another reason your audience would love to click on your content more than usual. If you simply address them in content. It has been found in the research that audiences like to acknowledge.
Therefore, if your content addresses them by using “you”, “your” words, and also focusing on immediate solutions to their problem rather than babbling about generic ideas. Then this will increase engagement & CTR.
Method 2: Trick the mind of your audiences
Like I said before, you may have clicked eye-catching content like “Shocking Truth about Trump” or “9 Truth about Trump”. There is a reason people simply click on those content to know what this is all about. It’s because people are generally curious to learn something they do not know.
Now, pay attention here. I said something that is “they do not know”. If you write generic content like “How to deal with your new job?” or “How to beat your competitors?” your CTR won’t increase from the usual rate. Maybe these types of content are great to learn something new. However, people already know about this even a little. This is not a completely new idea. Did you get my point?
There is another trick online marketer uses that is – “One last copy available for free” or “You have only 20 minutes to download our last copy”. Amazing trick right? However, there is a catch. You must have to create content, matching those headlines. Must have to be equally engaging, otherwise, your audience will click but won’t read. You may be able to increase your CTR but won’t be able to keep them long.
Method 3: Walk a different path to grab your audience attention
A recent study by the University of London states that the human mind always works on a specific known pattern. When something breaks that pattern, the mind becomes curious to learn about that. This happens because of curiosity.
In general, when we see something unusual we become interested in it, but not for usual things. And that’s why we call it common. In content marketing, you should target to write articles in a different way that people are not used to reading. Present your data, map your article structure differently. So your audience will become interested in it.
Method 4: Emotional marketing idea to increase audience engagement
Though emotional marketing is nothing new, still it is a perfect arsenal to draw audience attention. You can see it almost everywhere, especially on social media.
Some dishonest Facebook pages tried to get shares & likes by creating fake emotional content. For example, “for every share you do Facebook authority will pay $10 to the victim & $1 for every like”. This is fake, but you will see that people are liking & sharing like crazy. Though this trick is old now, no longer working.
But, this is just an example of emotional marketing. If you are not creating authentic content & trying to do emotional marketing like that, then soon you will get caught by the audiences & in the worst-case scenario, you may get banned from social media or search engines.
Giving away free products/services can be another way to invoke emotions in your audience’s mind. People always love free offers. Ask yourself how many times you have seen discounts or free offers but didn’t click to check that out? If you weren’t able to resist which means your audience won’t be able to resist either.
Method 5: Lack of knowledge will trigger the audience interest
Another form of marketing method to increase CTR, by creating a gap in audience knowledge. Make them curious to learn more about that topic. What is that information we do not know? For example, “5 mistakes that every organization does” or “5 dangerous mistakes even the most expert always do”.
When a business owner will read it, he/she will be curious to know more about those mistakes. Your CTR will increase drastically. However, if the content itself is not equally engaging then all your tricks will go in vain.
This usually happens in email marketing campaigns where they try to increase the email open rates by catching the attention of the audience using various tricks. Although, their content is not equally engaging to keep the audience reading. The result is – blocked or marked as spam by users.
Conclusion
In this competitive era of digital marketing, you must have to understand the mind of your audience. If you can give them value, try to solve their problem then in return you will gain their loyalty & trust. It’s far better to create high-value content with usual titles rather than eye-catching titles where content has little to no value.
Because high-quality content will always win over low quality no matter how many tricks you apply. Therefore, at the end of this article, I am suggesting you create high-quality engaging content just for your audience. This should be your primary objective and creating eye-catching headlines to attract an audience should be secondary.