You can convert blog readers into leads by using CTAs, buyer personas, hello bars, exclusive content, exit pop-ups, and retargeting.
If you have read about content marketing, you probably wonder if you can convert your blog readers into customers. How important is quality content to lead generation?
Blogs are valuable in helping your audience to find you through searches and social media but are you utilizing this valuable traffic? Consistent quality blogs will generate organic traffic that you can convert into customers.
Statistics also show the value of blogging in generating leads. Consider some data:
The annual blogging survey by Orbit Media found that 77 bloggers were confident that content delivers results. HubSpot also showed that 60% of consumers are regular blog readers.
If your blogs already contribute to your website’s stable traffic flow with likes and comments, you should focus on conversion. It is the reason for blogging in the first place; without conversion, your content strategy remains ineffective, and all the positive metrics don’t matter.
To boost your conversion rate, focus on generating leads through blogging. Therefore, the biggest question you want to know is how to convert a web visitor into a lead customer.
However, before explaining how to utilize blogs to generate leads, let’s examine why lead generation is essential for your business growth.
The Importance of blogging in lead generation
Statista report indicates that spending on advertising geared towards leads generation will reach over $3 billion by 2013. These statistics signify that most companies know the value of online lead generation.
The first step to creating leads is getting blog traffic into your conversion funnel. The goal is to convert website visitors into potential customers and potential customers into loyal customers.
Blogs will help you with lead generation to deliver potential organic customers. However, ensure that your blogs are valuable to your present readers to attract new readers through your CTAs.
Blogs can also enhance your lead generation by helping you to:
- Build a customer loyalty
- Create quality leads
- Connect with the targeted audience
- Enhance business and product visibility
- Create quality leads
- Familiarize potential customers with your brand.
Lead magnets for your blogs
You have endless content types that you can employ as a lead magnet. Nevertheless, the kind of lead you intend to generate will determine the lead magnet you use. Consider some examples of lead magnets and the charges they generate.
- White papers: They are often used in the B2B sector, providing detailed information about a product to help with the buying decision.
- Downloadable books: eBooks are often used in the initial stage of a customer’s purchase journey, providing educative and entertaining information about a product to help inform your audience’s decision.
- Videos and webinars: They are often interactive and educational, enabling you to deeply connect with your leads, build trust and move prospects along the marketing funnel.
- Cheatsheets and checklists: They are also valuable when gathering essential customer contact details to help you conduct productive campaigns.
- Product demonstrations: These lead magnets are suitable for prospects who are almost making a purchase and could need additional product information to make a decision.
Please note that leads deep in the funnel are likely to convert; therefore, invest more resources in them.
What is a reasonable blog lead generation rate?
After discussing the value of lead generation, you may want to measure its success. Adoric says that 2% and 5% is a reasonable conversion rate, though the average falls between 1% and 3%.
Other factors that may affect your conversion rate are the product’s price (highly-priced goods tend to have lower conversion rates) and conversion volume in the funnel.
How do you build an excellent blog lead generation strategy?
An effective blog lead generation strategy will likely bring prospective customers from the blog to the funnel. Here are some guidelines to jump-start the process:
Know your audience- You will gain insight into your clients through forums, surveys, feedback, and social media.
Write down your goals and establish how your content will enable you to achieve those goals.
Offer value: You can provide value to your clients by knowing their pains and problems through surveys, social media, and forums, then presenting your products or services to solve those problems. You could also include CTAs in your content urging readers to take necessary steps.
Expand your reach: You can expand your reach and attract more prospects by promoting your content on various platforms with a wider following.
Test the strategy: Try using A/B testing to determine the effectiveness of your content strategy.
Measure results: At this stage, you track KPIs such as conversions, click-throughs, and acquisition costs to determine contents that resonate with your audience.
Ways to create more blog leads
You can increase your blog’s leads and understand your customers better by implementing these strategies.
Introduce CTAs naturally in your blog posts.
All your blogs should have a call to action. Some bloggers miss out on the benefits of CTAs by only inviting readers to leave a comment.
You want visitors to take actions like downloading, signing up, subscribing, installing, clicking, reading something, or contacting you; otherwise, your lead generation strategy will not meet its purpose.
The question you should ask before publishing any blog is: have I asked MY audience to take action, or am I hoping that they will take action on their own? Even a small call to action can significantly impact your conversion rate.
A strong CTA should be persuasive, action-oriented, create a sense of urgency, and show customers how to benefit from the product. Furthermore, it should easily be found. You can include your CTAs:
- At the end of the post
- In the middle of the post
- At the top of your page
- As a sliding pop-up
- In the sidebar
- As a full-screen overlay
- As a scrolling or floating pop-up
Use a Hello Bar
Since you want to make your intention clear to your visitors when they open your blog, it is essential to include a CTA at the top of the page because you cannot guarantee they will scroll to the bottom.
You could also use the hello bar, also called the floating bar, to place your CTA in an attention-grabbing place. Your audience will immediately see it, and it remains static at the top of the page even if the reader scrolls down.
Instead of making the hello bar static, you can create a slide-in, pop-up, or blinking feature to grab the visitor’s attention.
Hello bars show that users see an 83% increase in subscribers, buyers, and lead generation. You can also get a similar feature from SalesPand, Sleeknote, Sumo SmartBar, and OptinMonster.
You will likely improve your social engagement, promote new products, improve email subscriptions, or remind users of various offers available by adding a hello bar.
Offer Upgraded or Exclusive content
You can also offer gated or exclusive content as a blog lead generation tactic. You can request those who want these contents to provide you with their contact details. This way, you create engagements and conversations.
An excellent example of a company that used this tactic is Whole Whale. The company experienced a 100% increase in email signups and a 62% surge in conversion.
You can include additional content in the post or at the end in the form of a checklist, template, or blueprint to enable readers to apply what they have learned.
Another way to offer gated content is by providing a registration box for an upcoming relevant event or webinar. Ask for the prospect’s email address and a name.
Whole Whale focused on visitors who were:
- Returning to buy
- Interacting with the campaign
- Viewing certain pages
Use Exit Pop-Ups
Have you ever wanted to leave a web page, and a pop-up comes to the screen? These are called exit pop-ups, often asking the visitor if they would like to subscribe or follow your page on social media.
Bloggers with few subscribers and followers can use this method to increase their following and get more leads. HubSpot is an excellent example of a company that uses pop-ups to move visitors to sign up or subscribe.
If you know how to use this strategy, you could reduce the problem of cart abandonment, promote a sense of urgency, and increase leads.
Use reach back out or retarget
Regardless of your best efforts to generate leads through your blogs, a significant percentage of traffic will leave your site without leaving their contacts behind. Probably your offer did not interest them enough, or they ran out of time, or maybe they missed your CTA.
You can capture these customers through retargeting, giving you a second chance to do it right. One study showed that 83% of marketers employ retargeting tools quarterly or monthly. You could pay for services like AdRoll, ReTargeter, or SharpSpring to help you succeed in your retargeting campaigns.
Use the buyer personas.
A buyer persona is a fictional customer representing the desires and needs of the targeted audience. A buyer persona will help you make informed content and design decisions concerning your product or service.
With customer persona, you can personalize content for different groups of customers. A compelling customer persona considers customer demographics to help you improve your marketing focus.
The Bottom Line
Why do you think big brands use content marketing? It is because it works. If you know how to use it, you can generate traffic to your website and blogs. Once you have traffic on your site, you need to convert these visitors into customers to build a sustainable business.
Which blog lead generation method works bests for you?
