If you blog as your main source of income, you rely on ad revenue and sales from promoted products. So you should always look to increase conversion rates. Here are some tips.
Showcase Products Properly
eCommerce relies on giving customers the best experience of a product online. Typically this is only possible with imagery. But sometimes with a video or an interactive experience using VR or similar technology. Depending on the product you are promoting, some things can help get your point across while showcasing products properly. For instance, hiring a model is highly beneficial for practical products like clothing, kitchen accessories and appliances. However, you might also want to show the products with images and 360 degree viewing interactivity.
Plan Your Timing to Increase Conversion Rates
Most bloggers use analytics tools, but some don’t. Of the half-a-billion out there, around 25 million bloggers source relevant information based on user data. One way you can learn about the habits of your audience is by looking at trends. Trends can help you decide what to write next and when. For example, say you’re a Star Wars blogger. Using Google Trends, you can see what Star Wars products are searched for on May 4th (Star Wars Day) and promote them that week. Likewise, you can maximize the sale potential of almost any product by checking when they sell best.
Don’t Oversell Products with Tons of Links
Writing high-quality content relies on numerous things. Many revolve around accuracy, style and adding value to a piece. Additionally, it’s best to limit your promotional content, so you don’t come off as needy. You can only add marketing or affiliate links in strategic places and only when necessary. Such as when mentioning a product by name, for example. Additionally, placing many product links in your blog pieces will have a significant negative impact on your SEO score. In turn, this will hurt your Google SERPs and lower your authority.
Ensure You Write Honest Reviews
Although you might get paid for blogging about products, you should be careful when writing reviews. The best advice is to be honest about a product, as this will help sales and the manufacturer. Staying objective and fair can be challenging, though. So, try these:
- Always write a review based on your experience.
- Don’t copy testimonials. These are often fake and provided by a manufacturer.
- You are not obliged to praise a product because you have been paid.
- Potential buyers are aware that almost no product gets 5 stars.
- Update your review to reflect positive or negative changes to a product.
Getting a review right can be tricky. But readers are aware of overmarketing and will react by not buying a product. So to increase conversions, just be honest. Write about your experience and satisfaction. And don’t just rate all your paid products highly, as this will look suspicious.
Generate Inbound Sources of Traffic
More traffic to a blog doesn’t always mean more sales, but the idea behind this is sound. However, you must also provide users with reliable methods of sourcing product information that also helps sales. You can do this by increasing sources of inbound traffic. If you write a blog, you are halfway there. You can use carefully placed links within blog pieces to link to product pages and other posts. But you can also generate inbound traffic using tried and tested web sales methods such as a call to action, sharing on social media, and media production.
Increase Conversion Rates with PPC Campaigns
Paying for traffic is crucial even if you’re trying to keep costs low. You can use pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to increase traffic to your site. Those are the marketing links you pay for when someone clicks on them. But you only get what you pay for. Many bloggers combine standard SEO strategies with PPC marketing as a reliable solution. While SEO can take a while to take root, PPC is better for more immediate results with quick turnover. In a short space of time, you can promote a product and expect a conversion rate of between 3% and 10%.
ALWAYS Stick to Products in Your Niche
You can sell products that either you or your readers don’t know about. But it’s a challenge. And the users on your blog are not likely to buy products unrelated to your niche. For example, it would be pretty challenging to sell cloud services for managing employee engagement with your Star Wars fansite. It has nothing to do with why your readers are already on your blog. But, conversely, they would quickly become very interested in a Hasbro Black Series Limited Edition Darth Vader helmet set for release sometime next year.
Summary
Conversion means more money from your site. But it can get really low if you don’t pay attention. It’s best to showcase products professionally, study trends for sales, and stay on topic.
Disclosure: collaborative post
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