Imagine you’re a machine operator.
Not just any machine operator.
A lead generating machine operator!
Well, guess what, as a content marketer, that is what you are. And one of the best machines at your disposal to generate your leads is your business blog.
I’ve used the analogy of you as the operator for a reason though. This isn’t the type of automated manufacturing process where a machine can deliver results with little or no human intervention. Your blog is more of a spluttering, rickety machine that needs a bit of a kick-start to get going and generating leads. As the machine operator it is your responsibility to make sure the machine is well maintained and in running order.
Here are 5 pointers on keeping your blog machine in tip-top shape for lead generation.
How To Generate High-Quality Leads From Your Blog
1. Create VIBEY Content
What is VIBEY content? Content that holds the following characteristics!
- Valuable - If your blog content holds no value to your prospects, you can rest assured they aren’t going to download your eBook for fear of even less value for them. Your content needs to help them do something better/smarter/cheaper/quicker in order to be of value to them. Aim to become their go-to resource for your industry if you are to win them over as leads.
- Interesting – This goes hand in hand with being valuable. You may consider your latest press release or jargon-laden product documentation an interesting read, but your audience may not agree (in fact, I guarantee they don’t). Content needs to be relevant to them … which leads me to my next point.
- Buyer Persona Orientated – Absolutely every piece of content you create should be written from your buyer persona’s perspective. What are their greatest pain points? What problem are they actively looking to solve? Got it? Great, now go write about it!
- Educational – This point ties in with the first three. As inbound marketers, it is our aim to educate our prospects and leads on solutions, without the traditional hard sell, features-heavy approach. Sure, the overall objective is that this educational process will generate a lead or, better, a sale for your business, but we do this differently from traditional marketers. We aim to help prospects through the buying cycle by arming them with the information that guides them to a buying decision, at their own pace and on their own terms.
- You-nique – Yeah ok, I totally cheated on this one. I desperately needed a word starting with a Y for my acronym to make sense. Give me a little leeway, would you? In order for your content to be effective you need a unique angle or original perspective. Take the time to establish your brand’s ‘voice’ and let your content be a true reflection of your business’s personality and culture.
2. Don’t Forget to Optimise for Search Engines
The clever folks over at Pardot tell us that 72% of B2B buyers begin their research on a business product purchase with a Google search. So while content should absolutely and positively be written for real people first (and your buyer persona in particular), it is also important to optimise for search engines if you want to attract those on the look out for solutions that you provide. There are a few basic SEO tactics that you can use to achieve this:
- Craft a compelling title that includes your keywords
- Also use those keywords in your headings and throughout your blog content (without keyword stuffing)
- Write a good meta description for your blog post that will entice search engine searchers to click through to your link
- Provide alt tags (again, use keywords here) for your images
- Link to internal content in your blog post to share the link love
- Use a blog format that is easy for search engine sto understand.
3. Publish Consistently
There is security in consistency. Consistent behaviour helps us develop a sense of trust. Trust leads to relationships (and good ones). Marketers can help establish and nurture this trust with prospects and leads by sticking to a blogging editorial calendar and publishing regularly. The more input into our machine, the more the output remember. So if your team only has the capacity to generate 1 blog post a week – that’s fine – as long as it is every single week (and preferably on the same day). Your prospects will start to rely on that schedule and not showing up is like standing them up on a date. Not on!
4. Include a Related CTA for Each Blog Post
In order to generate leads from your blog, you need to establish clear conversion paths to do so. By adding a relevant call-to-action with each blog post, you encourage readers to discover more about the topic at hand. Offer them the opportunity to download an eBook, checklist, whitepaper, case study, attend a webinar or book a demo in order to convert them as leads.
5. Link Up To Other Internal Resources Too
I mentioned this above under the search engine optimisation point, but it is relevant here too. Is is easy to forget that inline hyperlinks can also be considered calls to actions when they link to other resources that may lead to a conversion. So while that big, beautiful CTA button at the end of the post is important, don't forget to use the opportunity to link applicable text too. (See what I did there?)
6. Embrace Social Media
Before your blog can generate leads for you it needs the traffic to convert. Help it along by sharing out your blog posts to your social media networks. Adding social media buttons to your blog posts will also encourage existing readers to share out, extending your reach and helping towards driving more traffic.
Follow these simple steps and you'll have your lead generating machine (your blog) chugging to churning in no time at all. And don't forget to grab your free copy of our eBook that outlines some more great lead generation tips, tricks and ideas.
