When a blog is well-positioned, it can generate an unlimited number of highly qualified leads.
Every business with an online presence utilizes a step by step approach in order to win customers over. There will always be a certain number of steps they’ll undergo before they open their wallets in exchange for your product and services.
The process of engaging your potential customers and turning them into a paying customer is called a sales funnel. This process involves four basic steps:
- Acquire prospects
- Turn prospects into leads
- Convert leads into buyers
- Get those buyers to buy more
Your Blog’s Role in Your Conversion Funnel
Think of your blog as a platform through which people learn about your product or service, what you have to offer, and likely engage with you further. Every piece of information on your blog is quite valuable.
A lot of companies do not see their blogs as a valuable lead generation tool. This may amount to them missing out on an opportunity to gain more customers because every visitor on your blog represents the audience who are interested in what you have to offer. On a blog, this can mean one of three things:
- Getting people to sign up to your email list
- Enticing them to click on an offer on your blog
- Tagging them for ad retargeting later on
You can transform your blog into a high performing conversion funnel by following some steps. They include:
Step 1: Create Your Lead Magnets
You must aim at getting leads to sign up for your email list. This is so that you can market to them from time to time at a cheap rate. Getting someone on your email list depends on the value you give them in exchange for their email address.
Whatever you offer to your potential customers is referred to as a lead magnet. The essence of the lead magnet is to attract new leads. Your goal is to sell the click in order to sign up for your list.
The nature of your lead magnet varies depending on your target market and the products or services you sell, but all lead magnets are usually free.
Step 2: Create Your Content Plan
After deciding on your lead magnet, the next cause of action you should take is to create blog content that attracts your visitors and make them stick around long enough to take your offer.
A lot of companies do not pay adequate attention to who’s reading their blog and why. On the other hand, successful businesses with winning marketing strategies plan their content around generating interest and more sales.
This is achievable if you put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers. Who are they? What do they want? What are their hopes and dreams, wants, and needs, even their fears? What are they on the lookout for?
Your content must speak to the needs of your potential customers because that’s why they’re on your site in the first place.
Once you decide on what your post will be about, creating a schedule to ensure you produce content regularly is necessary. Your content should be fresh and you post at least twice a week. Providing you potential customers with consistent and fresh content will guarantee a continuous visit to your post and eventually result in higher conversion rates.
Step 3: Design Your Blog
Designing your blog isn’t a challenging task. Most successful blogs make use of similar proven setup. It is structured as follows:
Section 1: The Header
The header which contains your navigation, search bar, and social media links must be included because it is present on every site and most importantly visitors use them to navigate.
Section 2: The Sidebar
A lot of high-converting blogs make use of a sidebar to place their offers, this is because it’s the area where you can place consistent lead generating elements and they will all yield results. The reason is people read left to right, and their eyes often stop on the sidebar.
Section 3: The Content Area
This area includes blog content such as articles, videos, etc. It is a mistake to not make optimum use of this area by placing lead magnets to help generate leads because this is where potential customers will most often be looking. You must utilize this opportunity.
Section 4: The Footer
Your site’s footer is also important and should not be overlooked. Visitors will sometimes scroll to the footer to find some information about your company, so this is a good place to show them an offer. While using the footer you must adopt a subtle approach to inform visitors about your offer.
Step 4: Utilize Lead Capture Tools
There are a lot of third-party tools and plugins that provide you with all the tools you need to capture leads. You do not have to build any of this from scratch yourself. During installation, you can add a few lines of code to your site or, if you’re using something like WordPress, install a plugin.
Step 5: Use Analytics, Track and Retarget
After setting up your blog, the final step involves measuring, tracking and retargeting. Analytics comes in handy to show what’s working and what isn’t, this is so you can work on your ROI and plug leaks in your funnel.
When you add analytics to your blog it will produce valuable data that you can channel to your sales and marketing efforts. You can make use of some of these tools.
Basic Tracking: Google Analytics
Google Analytics can be used to track audience behavior. It is used by every successful web marketer in the world. The setup is absolutely free, and it allows you to track valuable information, such as:
- The geographic location of your audience
- Traffic source
- Device
- Age
- Time on each page
- Pages viewed most
- Time on site
Your blog is an important piece of that funnel, it takes first place in your marketing efforts. When you get it right, and you’ll have a lead generation engine that keeps on increasing your leads and converting more sales.
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