Every good brand has its own blog filled with answers, trends, insights and more. Blogging is an effective and affordable way to bring people to your digital space and let them know about your company. By creating blog posts that educate your users on your products/services and the industry you’re in, you position yourself as a go-to resource in your customer’s time of need.
But there’s no point in having one if it’s not helping convert customers. A blog can be designed to generate leads for the sales team, but many lack the elements needed for effective lead generation. This guide highlights the steps you need to take to turn your business blog into a lead generation machine.
Your content must provide value
Figure 1: Blog growth for businesses. Source: HubSpot
According to a recent study, businesses that publish regular blog posts experience 126 percent more lead growth than non-blogging firms. Through blogging, companies can inform and educate their users on important issues such that they are willing to give their email addresses to ensure they don’t miss out on more great content.
When working on your blog, you should focus on creating valuable content your audience will enjoy consuming. As a guide, ask yourself these questions to ensure your blog content is geared towards benefiting your audience;
- Will it help your audience solve an issue?
- Is it related to any queries that they give you?
When you do this, you will be guided on how to craft blog posts that will help your users solve their problems. Think of how your blog content will help you address their pain points and guide them on what they need to do going forward. Blogs that do this endear themselves to readers, making it easier for them to get leads. When your blogs haven’t been created to solve user problems, a vast majority of the visitors to your site will leave without taking any action or identifying themselves.
If it’s not providing value to the right audience, then it’s no good to you
Audience research is the foundation of all that you do. You can create excellent articles for your blog, but it’ll be difficult to convert the readers into leads if they are irrelevant to your target audience. For this reason, you should consider making reader personas to ensure your content is directed to people who are likely to buy from you. Doing this will help you target high-quality topics that your ideal customers are interested in to ensure you generate relevant traffic to your site.
To create your buyer personas, you need to define the demographic, pain points, questions, values, and beliefs of the people you’re targeting with your products or services. Use analytics tools to gather behavioral and demographic information about your website users. Use forms to create questionnaires to receive direct input from your readers. This data will help you define your ideal customer and guide you on the topics to write about to connect with your audience.
For instance, if you’re a web design company targeting small and medium-sized businesses, you want to stay contextual and write on topics such as web development, web design, user experience, etc. Otherwise, the traffic to your website may not convert.
Know your call to action
What do you want your visitors to do after reading your blog? If you usually end your posts without asking your visitors to do something: download, sign up, subscribe, click, contact you, and so on, you’re doing it wrong. A high-quality blog without a compelling call-to-action is a lead lost. You’ve managed to attract visitors to your website, and they are interested in the content you have published. So give them an opportunity to convert.
A good CTA is action-oriented and beneficial to your readers. It should offer something worthwhile to make the readers feel like your offer is worth giving their contact details. It must also relate to what the blog is about, or your conversion rate will be low. No one would download a website template after reading a blog on email marketing because the two are not related. Instead, an offer to download a free email template would work. This is how to structure your CTAs if you want to turn your blog into a lead magnet.
The placement of the CTA doesn’t have to be at the end of the blog. Try putting it in different places until you find the best placement.
Provide something extra
We have talked of the importance of having a CTA on your blog posts to capture valuable leads. You can do this with a standard subscription form or, ideally, provide a link to additional resources that visitors can access after providing their contact information. Gated content is amazing at getting conversions, whether they’re signups or subscribes. Such content upgrades will help you discern the serious readers from those who are going to bounce.
Tease your readers with additional content that will help them deal with their issues more effectively than the free content published on your blog. These value-added resources are great for enticing readers and will help you build your authority in the industry. To succeed with this tactic, you first need to make sure that your regular blog posts are valuable and offer more depth with the exclusive content. You should also ensure your offer for exclusive content is useful to the visitors you want to convert; otherwise, those who fill the form might have no intention of purchasing from your business.
Promote your content
To boost your conversion rate, you need to promote your content in the right places to reach your target users more effectively. Your blog post could be designed in the best lead generation practices, but if you are not promoting it on your audience’s preferred platforms, your conversion numbers will remain low. Sharing your blog content ensures more people get access to it, and the constant awareness will eventually drive a sale.
Your audience uses email communication to engage with brands, and you need to ensure your subscribers receive the latest blog articles delivered straight to their inboxes. They are also on social media, and you need to share your blog posts on social media. To succeed with content promotion on social media, you should share your posts on the right platforms at the right time.
Research your social media audience to know where your target users spend their time. If they are not on LinkedIn, don’t waste your time sharing your blog posts there. If they are found on Twitter and are most active in the evening, schedule your posts for that time. This strategy will help you reach more interested users with your content, which could significantly boost your conversion rate. New blog articles also give you an excuse to post on your social media pages, which will help you maintain an active social media presence.
A good CRM will help
You need to have an adequate system for collecting customer data and following up with them after giving you their details. The CTA on your blog posts could lead to a contact form where visitors give their details to be added to your email list, but you need a system that organizes all the data and makes it easy for you to follow up with the customers.
You can start with a tool like MailChimp that organizes your subscribers’ data for easy contact. However, your drip campaigns need a more advanced tool like HubSpot’s CRM system. These tools will help you send targeted emails to your subscribers and establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry.
When choosing a CRM system, you should get one that properly catalogs your contacts and monitors their interaction with your company. This will help you understand your subscribers better and make personalized follow up with them.
We have explained what you need to look at when choosing a CRM for your company in our blog Customer Relationship Management: How to Choose the Best CRM System.
Your blog is a powerful tool if you know how to use it well. Besides informing your readers about your company and the industry you’re in, it can be used as a powerful tool for generating leads for your sales team. When visitors land on your blog, you want to captivate them with your content, compel them to action, and convert them into customers.
The team at Growth Marketing Genie can help you create a content strategy that will bring qualified leads. Our growth specialists will ensure your blogs are developed with the best lead generation strategies in mind to help you convert most of your readers into leads. Get in touch and let us help you transform your content marketing strategy into a lead generation engine.
Contact us today to seize this chance to improve your brand’s presence in the industry!
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