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Fill Your Content Gaps and Stop Losing Customers

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Let me guess. You’re probably a lot more interested in not losing customers than filling content gaps. I get it.

In fact, you may not care at all about content gaps. Maybe you aren’t even aware they exist. But if you haven’t assessed content gaps, it’s likely they do exist and are hurting the success of your product.

So where to begin? First, ask yourself this simple question: Do my customers intuitively know how to use my product?

In other words, could a customer just pull your product out of the box without reading or watching anything and have success using it?

If yes, then I congratulate you on creating something so foolproof. But if you’re like most businesses, your customers will need a little help figuring things out.

Today, we’ll look at an example of a product I encountered with a cavernous content gap, why it’s detrimental to the business, and how the business could go about filling the gaps so they’d stop losing customers.

The (Apparently) Useful Product

My family knows I love to grill, and there are plenty of reasonably priced grilling accessories to gift me with at Christmas time. But after years of grilling gifts, it’s getting harder for family members to find me something I don’t already have.

So, this year I got a Himalayan salt cone. It’s quite reasonable for the gift giver to assume I didn’t have this, even in light of my monstrous cache of barbecue whatsits.

It was obvious from the box that the Himalayan salt cone (produced by the Charcoal Companion) roasts whole chickens. Aside from that, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

When I opened the box, there was the salt cone, by its lonesome, with no instructions. On the outside of the box, the concept was briefly explained, basically telling me that the cone reduces cooking time while imparting a subtle, salty flavor. In addition, there was a small paragraph of instructions, that simply told me to cook the cone to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and then left me with this gem:

When the cone has come to temperature, place your chicken on the cone. Cook your chicken according to your recipe.

According to my recipe? What recipe? Don’t they know I’ve never cooked anything on a salt cone before?

Don’t they get that I’d never heard of a salt cone until five minutes ago?

If the salt cone truly cooks my bird faster, how much should I change the cooking time of my recipe?

If it’s going to make my chicken salty, should I use a less salty rub with my recipe?

Lots of questions, no answers.

The Disastrous Content Gap

All of these questions that the packaging couldn’t answer prompted me to figure it out on the Internet. You know, that magical place where your company can post tons of helpful product content for a relatively low cost.

Well apparently the Charcoal Companion didn’t know, or didn’t care. When I searched for this product, the only results that returned were ratings and retail sites where the product was sold.

In fact, the Charcoal Companion didn’t create one measly landing page for this product. There were no “salt cone” recipes, no tips or times for cooking with the cone. I was holding a product I had no idea what to do with.

When a customer searches for content on how to use a product, and finds nothing, several negative feelings occur in a matter of seconds.

  • Frustration – Even if the sales transaction was smooth as silk, there is now friction between the brand and the customer. Though a lack of content may not cause the friction of something like a product not working, it’s still a blight on the customer’s experience.
  • Distrust – If a brand doesn’t offer helpful content to its customers, does it even care? At first glance, the Charcoal Companion seems to sell products they’re not particularly excited about their customers using. Even if the product was quality, the brand has missed an opportunity to connect and build loyalty.
  • Abandonment – If the customer doesn’t know what to do, and feels no connection with the brand, they are highly likely to give up and find something else to occupy their time.

Once I realized no one had ever published a single piece of helpful Internet content on how to use a salt cone, my customer experience was tarnished.

I was frustrated I had something I didn’t know how to use, I didn’t feel that the brand cared if I used it, and I no longer had a desire to figure it out.

Filling the Content Gap

Today, it’s typically not enough for brands to sell products and then just dust off their hands. Following a sale, customers should be nurtured so that they truly adopt the product.

Currently, the Charcoal Companion is simply a product line for The Companion Group, a family of brands offering a number of goods for the outdoorsman. So any Charcoal Companion product can be found on a product page with a brief description.

But that’s mostly it. In fact, when I go to the page and look for Himalayan salt products, here’s what I get:

Look closer and you’ll notice that my salt cone isn’t even listed among the products. Regardless, my point is that this is the extent of content a prospect or customer gets on Himalayan salt products from Charcoal Companion’s product page. Not good enough.

Fortunately for the Charcoal Companion, the rest of its site already has some pieces in place to offer helpful product content.

Here are three ways the Charcoal Companion can fill their content gaps by using existing content delivery methods on its site:

1. More Imbedded YouTube videos

When it comes how-to content, you can’t do much better than videos. It seems the Charcoal Companion is already thinking this way, featuring several videos on its product page, including ones for the Pitt Mitt and Meat Claws products.

Which is perfect, because I really have no idea what Pitt Mitts and Meat Claws are if they’re just listed out as product names. Even conceptualizing Meat Claws is pretty impossible without a visual. (Right now I’m picturing Freddy Krueger-esque finger blades ripping through hard hunks of ground beef.)

It seems as though the Charcoal Companion already has the resources in place to make a video for our beloved salt cone. So let’s take that same woman explaining Himalayan salt to us in another video, get her a chicken to stick on the cone, and have her give us good reasons why we would ever want to cook like this.

2. Articles on Recipes and Blog Page

The site features two other pages, Recipes and Blog, that would be perfect for some Himalayan salt cone content.

Cooking with Himalayan salt products seems to be rather novel, hence the various pieces of content on the site explaining why this stuff is useful.

Yet on my salt cone package, I’m told to cook the cone with my favorite recipe. Forget favorites, there are no recipes period for cooking a bird on a pink cylinder of sodium.

Instead of making its customers guess how to use the cone, create a simple recipe we can use the first time we try the product.

Then while you’re at it, add a blog post on the different ways we can cook with the salt cone. Tell us how to pre-heat it, how long it generally takes to cook something, and furnish a link back to the Recipes page where that lovely new article on the Himalayan salt cone awaits.

3. Connectivity from Product page to other pages

The product page should really be acting as a a hub for all kinds of helpful content to tickle my fancy. Each product listing should come with at least one link to a recipe, video, or blog post. This will help people get the information they need, while hopping around your site and staying engaged.

If you’re any sort of barbecue fan and want to see how internal site linking is seared to perfection, check out AmazingRibs.com.

Pitmaster Meathead Goldwyn has written seemingly hundreds of in-depth, well researched articles and connected them to each other in an impressive web of internal linking. This creates a slow-cooked session of reading that can leave you on the site much longer than you intended, yet much more informed about barbecue.

Wrapping It Up

When there’s a gap in your content, your customer will feel it. The friction caused by the disconnect will sour your customer’s experience and soil the perception of your brand.

But if you can spend some time recognizing content gaps on your website and beyond, you can begin filling those gaps with useful content. Then instead of losing customers, you’ll be gaining loyal brand followers who will be happy to rave about your products.

The Key to Creating Landing Page Copy that Converts: A Features-Benefits Chart

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Without question, your product or service has some remarkable features. Otherwise, why would you be in business?

There’s one small problem, though. It’s highly likely that no one cares about your features.

I know I didn’t when I went to buy a car last month. It had been almost ten years since I bought my last car, which meant there were a few thousand features on new models that I didn’t know existed.

Lane departure warning indicators. 

Rear bumper radar sensors. 

A driving position memory system. 

I’d been driving a car whose top feature was an expansive coin hole.

So when I went to the dealership, selling me on features wasn’t going to work. It would all sound like Tom-Brady-pre-snap gobbledygook to me.

But what I understood was benefits. 

I don’t care the least about lane departure warning indicators. I do care about not drifting head-on into a Mack truck. 

Who needs a smart key locking indicator? Well, this bozo does when he tries to lock his keys in his car.

And does anyone care about a push button keyless start? Yeah I do, now that I know I won’t get my keys stuck in the ignition like my repeat-offender ’03 Saturn Ion. 

Why Uncovering Benefits Matters

Just like me at the dealership, people won’t buy something because of its features. They’ll buy it because it benefits them in some way.

On your landing page, nearly every visitor is skimming your content asking, “What’s in it for me?” And a feature is not what they’re looking for, and won’t persuade them to accept your call to action.

Instead, as Brian Clark of Copyblogger mentions in his post Does Your Copy Pass the ‘Forehead Slap’ Test?, “Identify the underlying benefit that each feature of a product or service provides to the prospect, because that’s what will prompt the purchase.”

Or to put it another way, Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers instructs, “Explaining the benefit takes the feature and asks ‘so what?'”

Put simply, you won’t have an effective landing page if your copy focuses solely on the features and not their benefits.

The Key to Writing Effective Features/Benefits Descriptions

To write effective features/benefits descriptions for your product, it’s easiest to first lay them out in a chart format.

Copywriter extraordinaire Amy Harrison uses a simple tool called The Headline Shaker Maker to “shake out” all of the selling points of a product or service so you can see its benefits at-a-glance. While Amy uses the method to create great headlines, it’s a good practice for anyone who wants to link their product’s best features to its greatest benefits.

Of course, there’s much more to your landing page copy than just a headline. It’s paramount that you have a value proposition for every section of content on the page. A value proposition involves you taking a feature and translating it into a benefit statement that’s meaningful to the user. So if you sell a product with eight notable features, you should have eight compelling benefit statements that resonate with the user.

And to create compelling benefit statements, you need to lay out the major variables that will form them. To do this, I’m going to show you an effective method I use with clients to create compelling copy for their landing page. It’s called the Features-Benefits chart, and you can create one in just three steps.

3 Steps to Creating a Features-Benefits Chart

1. Set up the format

Open a blank Excel or Sheets file and set up the chart with four major columns:

  1. Feature
  2. Feature Explanation
  3. Pain Points w/out Feature
  4. Customer Benefit(s)

It should look like this:

 

A few things about each of these:

  • Feature – This is simply one offering of your product or service. A feature is something that makes the product or service attractive or useful.
  • Feature Explanation – This should describe the feature in detail regarding what it does.
  • Pain Points w/out Feature – What would life be like for your customer if they did not have this feature? You should having an understanding of your customer’s deepest frustrations and how your product or service will solve them.
  • Customer Benefit(s) – Here the main benefits should be listed, following an evaluation of the feature and pain points without it.

2. Build out chart with subject-matter experts (SMEs)

Unless you’re selling thumbtacks (a product everyone understands), your features/benefits content must be informed by an expert of the product or service. Content pros can only help as much as they know the business.

For small businesses and startups, it’s not difficult to find the subject-matter experts (SMEs). SMEs may be the owner, CEO, or salesperson. Whomever it is, those people must be consulted heavily to inform a value-rich features-benefits chart.

That’s because the SME knows the business like no one else. They built the business because there was a problem or gap in the market. Maybe they experienced the pain points firsthand, and came up with features on their own to solve the problem. Perhaps they magically made a safe tack after years of suffering puncture wounds.

The landing page must address features, pain points, and benefits in a compelling way in order to convert visitors. But landing page content will only resonate and convert if its benefit statements are precise to the visitor’s need. And the foundation of that is the thorough work you’ll do filling out the Features-Benefits chart with the SME.

And if you’re the SME, well there’s nothing stopping you from creating an amazing chart on your own. Just remember the spreadsheet can only take you so far. It may be a fantastic business decision to enlist a talented copywriter to make some content magic for a reasonable fee. *wink*

Here’s how a couple of rows on the chart might look once some good, lengthy conversations have been had to fill it out. We’ll stick to the features and benefits of a minivan, because that’s what I’m into these days. (Pay close attention to the pain points column; that’s where you’ll relate to your visitor.)

3. Use the Features-Benefits chart to write benefit statements

Now that you’ve developed a comprehensive Features-Benefits chart with the SMEs, it’s time to use it to inform the benefit statements you’ll write for your landing page.

But first, why does a benefit statement matter? It matters because there is no other way to answer your visitors’ number one question: “What’s in it for me?”

The design may be beautiful and the user experience spot on, but only the words can convey the benefit.

And on a landing page, visitors are processing words and images at a rapid pace to see what’s in it for them. Essentially, they are skimming for the meat but don’t have time to carve it into pieces. You must do it for them.

That’s what a benefit statement does. It gives your visitor something compelling and digestible to chew on.

So back to our Features-Benefits chart. As you can see from our last example, there are tons of words with way too many details to be useful for your visitor needing the quick hits.

The key to creating a benefit statement is taking the pain point (problem) and revealing the benefit (solution), in a concise, compelling blurb.

Feature 1 – Heated Seats:  Heated seats, in and of themselves, are not so great. In fact, I won’t even use them for 8 months of the year in my minivan. But for those four, cold, uncomfortable months, I’m expecting my butt to be hot fast.

Benefit Statement #1: Instant comfort from the cold with seats that fully heat in a minute.

Feature 2 – Rear Bumper Sensors: Rear bumper sensors aren’t special. So my car can sense stuff. I’m sure that’d be nice for those lonely road trips where my car and I discuss our feelings. Otherwise, not useful.

But when my car can sense that I’m about to back into a column of concrete, I’m grateful to be alerted.

Benefit Statement #2: No more “reverse anxiety.” Our sensors alert you to obstacles when backing up.

Build the Statements, and the Conversions Will Come

Crafting a landing page full of rich benefit statements won’t guarantee conversion success. But if you’ve done your research to deeply understand what bothers your customer, and your business actually solves it, then these statements have the guts to resonate.

But they must be conveyed clearly and seamlessly to be effective. When you combine the knowledge of a subject-matter expert, the organization of a Features-Benefits chart, and the skill of a digital copywriter, you will create powerful benefit statements capable of driving significant conversions on your landing page.

3 Quick Wins to Solidify Your Brand’s Messaging

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weld-4I want you to picture Thanksgiving dinner with your family this year. (Don’t worry, I won’t make you picture it long.)

Imagine your crazy uncle sitting there, spouting off inappropriate and cliched soundbites about our world, making everyone squirm in their seats. Then picture your other uncle, the one who often serves as the voice of reason, sitting there patiently.

When crazy uncle finally censors himself and goes for another spoonful of yams, normal uncle finally speaks up. And instead of saying what everyone else is thinking, he looks at crazy uncle and says, “I couldn’t agree more. That’s what I’ve been saying for years.”

Talk about uncomfortable. All this time you thought you had a normal uncle, but now you wonder if he’s just as crazy as the other uncle. You see, you didn’t recognize your normal uncle’s voice. You thought you knew what he was about, and then he spoke in a way that completely confused you.

Brands can be guilty of this. If your messaging doesn’t display a consistent voice, tone, and level of professionalism, you’ll alienate your audience and miss out on the wonderful things good content has to offer. 

Of course, no matter how solid your voice, tone and professionalism come through in your content, not every piece of content you publish will be a raging success. Your messaging will also change over time with your business and understanding of your customer.

But, is it at least possible to produce clear, consistent content that always represents your business like it should? The answer is yes.

And the best way to do this is to ensure you nail your voice, tone and professionalism. Let’s take a look at why each of these matter and what you can do to improve them today.

1. Voice

What does your brand sound like? Finding your voice involves understanding your audience and determining how you want them to perceive your brand.

If you sell hot pink, super-speedy jet skis, you better not sound stuffy. If you sell surgical tools to hospitals, you’d be wise to not use a ton of excitable verbiage.

If your voice isn’t appropriate, you won’t be trusted. If it isn’t consistent, people will be confused. And if it isn’t relatable, no one will listen.

What You Can Do:

Determine your voice characteristics. Try this exercise: Write down 5-10 words that describe how you want to sound in your communications. Poll employees as well and gather a list of their words.

Then, place all of the words on a board and circle 3-5 that best describe your voice. If you sell zombie bumper stickers, you might go for dark, edgy and sarcastic. If you sell bubble gum to teenagers, you might choose fun, cute, and—well—bubbly.

As you create content, make sure your voice matches the characteristics you’ve chosen, and you’ll develop a consistent voice that resonates with your audience.

2. Tone

Your tone is the mood of your voice. In your communications with customers, your voice must adapt to the situation.

If you’re promoting something, do you sound excited, or just ho-hum-business-as-usual? If you made a mistake, are you contrite and sympathetic? Your audience expects your communications to sound like they’re coming from a person who has emotions and knows you do, too.

If your tone is off, your audience will be confused or frustrated. If your tone is on point, your audience will feel understood and trust that you care about their experience.

What You Can Do:

Humanize your error messages. Review your site or app’s error messages and see if your tone is appropriate. Though necessary, error messages cause friction and momentarily annoy the user. A message in the right tone can placate them and encourage them toward success.

Use words like “please” and “unfortunately.” Be passive instead of accusatory. Instead of saying “you entered the wrong code,” say “please enter a valid code.” Sure up the way your users experience errors and they’ll have a more fond perception of your brand.

3. Professionalism

Professionals look, sound and act like experts. Your audience must trust that you know what you’re doing to do business with you. If your content isn’t sharp, if it lacks solid grammar, if it is mistake-and-typo ridden, then you will come off as unprofessional.

Have you ever started to read a blog post and noticed multiple errors in the first few paragraphs? At best, you don’t want to read it anymore, and at worst you perceive that the company either isn’t competent or doesn’t care about their work. Both bad.

What You Can Do:

Establish an editorial process. Consistent editing can ensure that your content doesn’t go out until it is completely sharp and ready for a customer to see.

First, determine who should review content before it’s published. Are you writing content yourself? If you’re not a grammar wizard, is there someone on your team who is? Be sure that person is included in the review process.

Then, evaluate how long it takes to review certain types of content (e.g., blog posts vs. newsletters), and allow for appropriate editing time. When content is rushed, it gets delivered with errors.

Wrapping It Up

By solidifying your voice, tone and professionalism, your audience will be able to consistently recognize and identify with the content you deliver. You can start to find your content groove by employing the voice, tone, and professionalism exercises with your team. After a time of producing consistently on-brand content, you’ll establish a relationship of trust with your audience who won’t give a second thought of whether to do business with you.

If I can help you with any of your content needs, please let me know.