Companies understand the importance of having a blog. It is a great SEO tool to keep your website relevant and to drive traffic. However, companies often fall short at turning that traffic into qualified sales leads. With the right strategy, your blog can be one of the best tools to supercharge your lead generation. In this article, we discuss how to generate leads from your blog.
Always Have a CTA
The key to conversion rates is to get your readers to take action. No matter how great your blog post is, it is still just a passive read unless you ask the reader to take action. Blog posts often fail to convert readers into leads because they don’t have a Call-to-Action (CTA).
CTAs can be very simple. At the end of every blog post, you should include a call-to-action that asks the reader to take a specific action. For example, you’ll see a CTA at the end of this post that looks something like this:
“Call us at (312) 254-8248 to schedule a consultation with our team.”
The CTA asks you to take action by calling our office. This is a common type of CTA, and a closer look at many of the business blogs that you read will reveal that there is something like it at the end of every post. You can also use a button, form, or anything else that gets readers to take action as soon as they are done reading. Say, you are in restaurant management, have a CTA in your blog that leads to food purchases or features your menu.
Header Bars
CTAs are the foundation of many different ways of generating leads. This is because they are versatile. In fact, your CTA doesn’t have to say anything as long as it can convey the message visually. Other methods of generating leads that use CTAs focus on positioning, which is what a header bar does.
A header bar, also called a Hello Bar, appears at the top of the page and has a simple CTA. Most applications treat it as an action item, meaning it should be designed with buttons so that readers can click on them and go to the page where you want them to go rather than providing passive information for them to do something later. One of the most common uses is as a signup form for email lists. The bar is big enough to include a field for an email address and a signup button. Many applications also scroll with the user so that it is always present at the top of the screen. As soon as the reader decides to take action, the CTA is right there for them to interact with.
Offer Free Value Through a Giveaway
If you want to create a consistent source of leads, then should create more value for your readers in a way that incentivizes engagement. One way to do this is to create a product that offers value and give it away in exchange for following through on the CTA. For example, many companies offer free ebooks about relevant topics for their readers that are only accessible once you sign up for an email news list.
For this system to work, the value must be worth the effort. You’ll have to invest some time and effort into finding out what your potential customers want to know and creating a product to give it to them. However, the tradeoff is that you will get more conversions since the cost for leads is minimal and the value is worth the effort. It is also important that this value item be kept exclusive to people that follow through on the appropriate action. Otherwise, there will be little reason for anyone to engage with your CTA.
Strategically Place CTAs
Although it is common to place CTAs in the text at the end of a blog post, you can place them in a variety of locations. For you, this means you can place them where they serve you the bests. It makes experimenting to find the best place for your CTAs possible, and you may want to experiment with placement to find the best option.
There are many places to place a CTA. You can use the sidebar, which is usually where blogs put their ads. Adding in a CTA or two can help you advertise your services alongside other companies. You can also use well-timed pop-ups to deliver ads and CTAs. Timed pop-ups are effective at surprising the reader with more content that includes CTA. Many bloggers also like to have exit pop-ups that only appear when a reader tries to exit the page. It gives you one last chance to capture that lead before you lose it.
Develop Content with a Partner
Perhaps one of the best ways to increase your ability to generate leads is to increase the quality of your content and improve your SEO. At KitelyTech, we can help you develop content and systems for your blog that can bring in a larger audience and increase your leads. Call us at (800) 274 2908 to discuss how we can help you with your blog.
