How well you sell depends little on your sales page or the design of your eCommerce store. While this can make a difference, the truth is that your audience has already decided whether they are going to buy from you, based on emotional factors that are unrelated to how you design your drop-down menus!

People buy things because they want to feel a certain way. Unless you are shopping for crucial supplies such as bread and milk, you are buying emotionally and impulsively. Understanding this is the most important lesson for those hoping to drive more sales online.

This is why content is so important. Through your content, you can create an image for yourself and your products. You can make them seem exciting, new, and different. And you can make more sales as a result.

Content also allows you to stay on your customers’ radars – so that they don’t forget about your brand. And it helps create more in-roads to your store.

Here are five types of content to create:

Blogs/Articles: Written content is the primary tool most online businesses use to bring in new customers and to form a relationship with them. A good article should be viewed almost like a product itself: make it exciting (give it a USP), make it look good (font and images matter), and spend time promoting it.

Video: YouTube marketing can be hugely effective. This is a huge built-in audience with a relatively low amount of competition. YouTube videos also give you even more ability to trigger an emotional response.

Whitepapers and Reports: Providing a free report is an excellent incentive you can use to gain emails or to get people to visit your website. This is also a good way to offer a free “taste” of the kind of value your larger information products can offer OR demonstrate more uses for a physical product.

Webinars: Webinars are a powerful tool in your arsenal, as they can be used to create more engagement with your audience. Teaching people on a one-to-one basis feels a lot more intimate and this is therefore very good for building trust.

Podcasts: Podcasts are great because they provide a built-in distribution network that makes it easy to reach your audience. They also let you show personality while creating content more easily than you would do with the video.

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