If you want to increase your website’s conversion rates, consider focusing on transactional content for your content marketing. Savvy marketers use it to turn casual browsers into eager buyers.
Imagine the last time you bought something online. You probably read product descriptions, compared features, or checked out pricing pages.
That’s transactional content in action – content that’s optimized to help people make purchasing decisions.
In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know about transactional content and the types of transactional pieces brands use.
What is Transactional Content?
Transactional content is created to convert visitors into customers at the bottom of the sales funnel. Content from product pages, dedicated product reviews, comparison posts, etc, are great examples of this.
Usually, this content is intended to send a message to the right people to capture their interest or make a purchase happen.
This content is different from informational content that educates people. The overall aim of this type of content is to make some transaction/actions happen like:
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Adding products to their carts
- Filling out your contact forms for inquiries
- Booking a call on your calendar
For online businesses, this is a great way to connect with their target audience who are ready to close. It’s like a digital salesperson who brings in leads 24/7 for you.
Transactional messages have real power because they can address buyer concerns, answer last-minute questions, and give customers the insights to make a decision.
If you’re not satisfied with why you should use transaction content in your business, here are its benefits:
- Reduces friction in the buying process to drive direct sales.
- Better conversion rates by placing right clear calls to action
- Shortens the sales cycle by addressing purchase-ready customers
- Builds trust through transparent pricing and product information
- Increases ROI by targeting high-intent visitors
Most e-commerce and online businesses strategically use transactional pieces in their content marketing. They place them where customers are most likely to convert, such as on landing pages, product comparison pages, etc.
a) Commercial Content vs Transactional Content
Transactional content is focused on immediate sales and conversion. Commercial content is focused on promoting your brand and products on a broad basis and doesn’t focus on immediate purchases.
For example, keywords like ‘Buy Organic SEO services‘ can be considered transactional, and keywords like ‘local business SEO services’ as commercial
Sometimes, people can get confused between these types of content.
However, it is important to remember that transactional content takes commercial content awareness and turns it into a purchase angle by creating clear purchase paths and compelling calls to action.
In the world of business, transactional information is prioritized over others because:-
- It directly relates to business metrics
- It helps demonstrate marketing’s impact on the bottom line
b) Transactional Data vs Transactional Content
On one end, transactional content means content that helps customers take action, while transactional data is the records and details of those purchases/actions.
The best analogy is transactional content is like the menu at a restaurant, whereas transactional data is the receipt after you eat.
So, Transactional data is nothing but recorded data like purchase times, amounts, and customer details. Whereas transactional content is the pathway to get those purchases in the first place with content. Hence, they are both different.
5 Types of Transactional Content Used By Brands
Understanding the transactional impact of your content is important, but you need to be aware of the types of transaction content used by the brands online across multiple platforms.
Each type of transactional content has a specific purpose in moving the user/reader closer to making a purchase decision, and it is also specific to the platform being used.
Here are 5 types of transactional content businesses and intelligent marketers use.
1) Blog Content
Transactional intent blog posts are focused on keywords whose search intent is to make a purchase.
These blog posts typically include comparison product posts, listicles, and product reviews. In short, these articles aim to deliver features of your products and break down of product use case with transparent pricing information
Some examples of transactional blogs:
- Best Analytics Tools for Website
- Instantly vs ReachInbox
- Hubspot Review
Brands that use subscription business models use such blog posts to generate targeted traffic that can convert.
You will see most SaaS businesses often have blogs designed to publish these types of blog content. At PullingOffStartegies, we have helped such companies grow using transaction content.
Please check out our case studies
2) Video Content
Brands often leverage YouTube videos strategically to drive transactions for their products.
The video content can usually be a product demonstration (or) an unboxing video that showcases the product’s features and benefits.
Videos like these help people who want to learn about your product and they can have a better understanding of the content.
Content that can be used to teach viewers how to use products effectively builds trust and shows value. Research shows that 80% of consumers switch between online search and video when researching products.
3) Social Media
Social media content is a great way to share your transactional information and build a business.
Here, we would like to talk about LinkedIn, which has become a powerhouse for B2B transactional pieces. Businesses leverage the platform’s professional audience to generate meaningful conversions through strategic content.
The secret to selling through social media, not just LinkedIn, is to publish content that educates and builds trust, not directly sell.
On LinkedIn, you can share your transaction content in multiple different formats, from Carousels to videos to articles and, obviously, their text posts.
Brands usually publish content like case studies, product updates, customer testimonials, and product use cases that engage people to take action.
4) Landing Pages
Landing pages are meant for transactions. Brands that use landing pages entice people to take specific actions with clear, compelling content.
Most subscription business models and often local businesses looking for leads use landing pages where they talk about their products or services.
Landing pages are designed to convert visitors to leads (or) direct customers. For example, this particular clearly want to visitors to give their email IDs and book demos for their product.
5) Product Pages in E-commerce
In e-commerce, the only primary goal on these product pages is to drive sales. The foundation of high-converting product pages is high-quality images, detailed product descriptions, and transparent pricing information.
Thus, again, the content on this page is solely used to make transactions, in this case, sales.
On product pages, transactional information means social proof in the form of customer reviews, clear delivery information, and multiple product images of the item from different angles.
Wrap Up
Today, transactional content management is a must for modern digital marketing success, as it is a powerful tool to convert visitors into customers. Yes, it should be balanced with informational content to complete your marketing approach.
This type of content is successful when you analyze your audience’s needs and create a message that meets them at the right time in their buying journey.
With the online marketing landscape evolving, businesses that can master the art of creating effective transactional content will have a huge advantage in converting prospects into loyal customers.
