How to Turn Your Blog Into a Lead Generation Machine

Why are you blogging? Does your business have an end goal in mind? More often than not, a business blog is designed to bring in leads for the sales team. Unfortunately, many blogs can be lacking what they need for proper lead generation. This guide is meant to give you the information you need for effective blog lead generation.

With these elements, you’ll be able to create a blog lead generation machine for your business. Act on them today to see how they’ll make a difference for you.

Always write content of value – for humans.

First and foremost, all your blog content should be directed toward and benefit your human audience. SEO should always be secondary. Your content should help people resolve an issue or learn something new. It should address one of their pain points and give them the instruction they need to move forward.

Alternatively, when you focus on SEO first, you take several unnecessary risks. You risk getting penalized by Google. You risk alienating your audience. You most certainly risk lowering your conversion rate. Instead of trying to force a higher ranking, focus on creating quality content, and your ideal ranking will come naturally.

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Make your content relevant to the right audience.

You can create a fantastic, thorough article for your blog, but if it’s off-topic or irrelevant to your target audience, you won’t see them convert. In fact, all that hard work might be completely wasted. That’s why having reader personas is so essential.

You maintain your blog to reach a lead generation goal, not for vanity metrics. Getting visits and social shares can help you feel good, but it’s not enough and won’t directly contribute to your business goals. Create targeted, relevant content directed at those who would likely buy from you, and make that content helpful enough that your readers will convert.

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Always have a relevant, strategically placed CTA.

When you write an article for your blog, it should always have a single call-to-action included somewhere within it. This CTA should include or lead to a form for interested readers to fill out. It should always relate well to the article content. Otherwise, your conversion rate will suffer. Your CTA should also offer something worthwhile. People need to feel like your offer is worth providing their contact information.

The CTA doesn’t have to be placed in the same location with every article. In fact, it’s best if you experiment with placement until you find your own sweet spot. Mix it up a few times till you see what works best, but only include your CTA once or twice within each article. If you include your CTA too many times on one page, you distract and overwhelm your readers. Be strategic with CTA placement, and your conversion rate will increase.

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Offer an additional, gated resource to enhance your content.

As mentioned earlier, with every article you write, include a form-based call-to-action. This can be the standard subscribe form, or ideally, it’ll have a gated offer attached, such as a free download. With a gated offer, make sure it includes a fully optimized landing page with a form.

When you include an additional offer with your blog content, you filter your readers into who is just visiting and who is more serious about what you provide. Make sure your offer is highly valuable to the visitors you want to see convert. Your blog’s lead generation is highly dependant on whether you’re offering resources targeted toward the right people. Otherwise, the people filling out the form might have no intention of buying from your business.

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Promote your content in the right places to reach the right people at the right time.

You have a blog article that follows lead generation best practices, but are you promoting it effectively? In order to see people converting on your blog content, you need to promote your content where they are and when they are paying attention. This can be in the form of an email, on social media, or through another means. The importance is on attracting the right people to your new article or resource.

Social media promotion is all about being on the right platform at the right time. If your target audience isn’t on LinkedIn, don’t waste resources there. If they’re only on Facebook in the evenings, make sure you’re scheduling your promotions for that time. Most importantly, you need to properly research your social media audience beforehand.

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Make sure you have an adequate system for contact collection and follow up.

Your blog lead generation goals depend on your ability to properly collect, organize, and follow through with targets’ contact information. It can start as simple as gaining subscribers, but your most qualified leads will come from landing page forms. Either way, you need one central place for all that collected information.

You can start with just using a tool like MailChimp to gain subscribers, but your landing page requires a more in-depth tool. Using a tool like HubSpot’s free CRM can help you organize and follow up with contacts you gain, but its limitations might convince you to invest in a more advanced tool, such as Salesforce. The most important tool you need is one that can properly catalogue your contacts and monitor their interactions with your business. This will help you better understand them and follow up in a more personalized way.

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Create a strategy that’s focused on one goal: qualified leads.

While it’s nice to see people coming to read your content or even share it with their network, your main focus should always be on getting qualified leads. Having a blog strategy that revolves around lead generation will help you create targeted content that brings results.

When creating a content strategy, keep in mind this ultimate goal. For each section of your strategy, from content planning to creation to promotion and beyond, remember why you’re blogging in the first place. This will help you stay on point with your efforts for maximum blog lead generation results.

Read more:

• Ways to Become a Lean, Mean, Blogging Machine