Blogging is an integral part of content marketing. Content marketing is a subset of digital marketing. Due to the widespread availability of the internet, online shopping has become a societal norm.
It is no wonder that digital marketing has gradually become the top marketing method. In content marketing, blogging is used to promote brand awareness, build trust, and promote brand loyalty. If you take a second to think about it, all of these things only amount to one thing: getting customers to buy from you.
This is called a ‘lead conversion’. A lead is any person who has shown some interest in your brand’s services or products i.e., a potential customer. The purpose of blogging is to catch the leads at the start of the buying cycle and instigate them to move deeper in the cycle. Once a potential customer has successfully bought a product/service from your brand then we consider that a successful lead conversion.
Now that you know what lead conversion is, let’s look at some ways in which your blog can boost it.
When someone finds your blog post, you have mere seconds to hold their attention and make them curious enough to peruse the rest of your content. To achieve this, youwill need to write an engaging title to your post and have a really catchy beginning to the post.
You can use some kind of power word that makes one curious. For example, a title such as “5 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Fail” will make anyone who is starting their own business or has recently started a new business want to read the post. That’s because since the word “fail” directly affects them, they wish to know how to avoid it.
Words that can elicit a big response are known as power words and typically they include some adjectives as well. Using power words is one way to grab someone’s attention. But further in this post, we will look at other ways as well.
Your blog posts should be targeting your potential buyers. You need to do some in-depth research about your brand’s buyer personas.
Doing that will help you find out which product or service is popular among which type of people.
When writing a blog post, you will need to leverage that knowledge and write in a way that is engaging to read for a particular buyer persona. To explain this further, let’s take an example.
Suppose your brand sells casual shoes targeted toward young people and teenagers. If you write a blog post about them in formal language with a stiff and serious tone, they will not like it. They will feel a weird disconnection between them and you. This may cause them to leave.
However, if you were to use casual language and include some jokes and stories then they would be very engaged. They may also show interest in buying the product you’re writing about (you may get some lead conversions).
So, knowing who your audience is crucial to writing a good blog post that will boost lead conversions.
Your blog needs to be useful to your readers. People do not invest any time in something they deem to be unnecessary.
Addressing customers’ complaints and problems is an effective way to make them feel that the post is useful. Pain points consist of four major types, those types are:
Financial pain points may include the fact that customers feel that their current solutions are too expensive.
Productivity pains are when customers feel they are spending too much time on their solution. Process pains are similar to productivity pains but relate more to internal processes.
Support pains are when customers feel like the support from the company is not good enough i.e., have late replies, or solutions are inadequate.
By addressing these problems in your blog posts, you will instill a sense of trustworthiness in your brand. People are more likely to buy stuff from places they trust. And that is basically lead conversion.
Plagiarism in your blog posts is harmful to your brand for a number of reasons. In the case of lead conversion, plagiarism can do irreparable damage.
Trust and reputation are some of the hardest things to build up. Yet, they are so fragile that one misstep can utterly destroy them. When a reader/potential customer reads your posts and finds out that they are copied from someone else, they will lose all trust in your brand.
The moment a reader loses trust in your brand is the moment when they are no longer a potential customer. People don’t like to deal with untrustworthy brands.
The harm does not stop here. the people who found plagiarism in your blog will tell more people about it. In this age, rumors and bad press spread like a wildfire. This will result in a destroyed reputation and you will lose even more leads.
So, you should always detect plagiarism in your blogs using a Plagiarism checker. Then, you should take steps to remove it so that the worst-case scenario does not come to pass.
A call to action (CTA) is usually some text or a pop-up in a blog post that incites people to take an action such as registering for a demo or a free trial so that they can become a lead.
Similarly, CTAs are used to convert leads as well. There are quite a few different ways in which CTAs are used. They can be:
Usually, a call to action is used to ask readers to like, subscribe, comment and share. However, these things are not as useful for lead conversion as they are for lead generation.
Studies have shown that including a compelling CTA will boost your lead conversion and sales. Humans are more receptive to suggestions. Waiting for them to decide on your product or service is not good for lead conversions.
Hello, bars are small floating bars that either sit at the top or bottom of your website. These bars are really useful for lead conversions. Here is how you can use them.
You can add a hello bar at the top of your page and have it feature some kind of call to action. You could offer some exclusive deal such as a discount on a product or service so that people are compelled to click it.
Adding one to the bottom does the same thing. Suppose someone comes to your blog and reads a post from start to finish, then what is that person supposed to do after finishing it?
If you have a CTA on a hello bar at the end of the post, it is very likely that the readers will actually click on it and proceed with a purchase (meaning a lead is successfully converted).
If there is no CTA in a hello bar, then the reader will just click away. Hence adding hello bars to the start and end of your blog post will help in lead conversion.
Images are powerful tools that if used effectively are far more potent than just words. Adding powerful imagery to your blog can entice your readers to proceed with the purchase.
Adding text to the images in unorthodox writing fonts or a graffiti style will attract the attention of young people, if the image is accompanied by a compelling CTA, then the chances of a lead conversion happening are high.
For more mature and serious audiences you can use subtle imagery. Be careful not to overdo it though, because sensory overload is a real thing and too many images can ruin your blog post.
Lead conversion is the ultimate goal of all marketing. Blogging and content marketing aims to do the same.
We checked out seven tips to help your blog boost its lead conversion. Knowing your potential buyers and writing according to their age and demographic boosts engagement.
Using CTAs in images, text, and hello bars invites your readers to make a purchase. Inviting someone to do something reduces their apprehensions and makes them more likely to do it.
Removing plagiarism from your content makes it trustworthy and safeguards you from reputation damage.
Following these tips will help you increase your lead conversion through your blog posts.