• Tweet
• Sharebar

I know that it sounds like a rallying cry from a Game of Thrones episode. "Stick. Drive. Convert. Stick. Drive. Convert." But actually it's the ideal formula for using content to help sell your products.

And failure to understand how to use this formula may render your content, if not meaningless, certainly overly expensive. Let's start out by laying out how to create messaging that sticks.

Getting the Message Out

Stick: This is the first stage of content creation. When creating this type of content, you want your branding or messaging to "stick" with your customers.

"I can't believe I ate the whole thing." "Just do it." Or, for our British readers: "It does exactly what it says on the tin." We're talking Super Bowl ads, YouTube videos, Facebook taglines, magazine spreads.

This is the sexy stuff, the stuff you want to go viral and to be remembered for. It's expensive, necessary, and the ROI is often difficult to measure. And it requires slick, production-heavy content: video, graphic, text, music, and animation.

What a Deal

Drive: Better known as the call to action, this is the second type of content you need to create if you're going to successfully sell products online.

Here I'm talking about landing page content. Banner ads. Coupons. Email campaigns. Endcaps.

This is the content that drives your customers to act. This is what gets them all the way to the product page, with its buy button.

But it's not enough. You also need to create content that converts shoppers into buyers. Think your marketing content will work for this? Think again. Next week I'll explain just how to go about creating content that converts.

The Ping Takeaway

Catchy slogans, Super Bowl ads, and email campaigns--stick and drive content--have their place. But they're not enough to get online shoppers to hit the buy button.