One of the main goals of your digital marketing strategy is lead generation. There’s a lot that goes into capturing leads, but none of it can happen unless you get traffic moving to your website. This should be the natural result of an SEO strategy designed for lead generation, but it isn’t enough to just get traffic landing on your site. Leads aren’t always captured on the first visit, which means you need to provide them with a reason to return.
With the exception of e-commerce sites, there isn’t a lot of incentive for someone to make return visits to your site. There’s only so many times they’ll want to read your service pages but something seems to be halting your efforts to capture them as a lead. They need to get to know you better, and content marketing helps with this process.
Blogging is a form of content that can add fuel to search engine optimization to generate leads. More than half of marketers claim that blogging ranks number one among their content priorities, and with good reason. Companies that blog see 97% more clicks to their website, with each one of those clicks bringing with it the potential to capture a new lead.
If you’ve been thinking of blogging as nothing more than a means of creating content to share on social media, you’re approaching it all wrong. When done correctly, blogging can not only build visibility for your business online, but also help establish elements that are crucial for lead generation – like trust, authority, and authenticity.
Content in general is essential for effective search engine optimization, and blogging is one of the most accessible forms of content you can invest in. A great website blog that provides meaningful value elevates your business above the competition and helps you stand out. When you’re consistently putting out high quality blogs, you’re giving your website visitors a better idea of who you are, and why you’re the trusted go to when they have a question, need, or even a curiosity.
Blogging is also an important SEO lead generation technique. Every time you create fresh content, you have the opportunity to attract new leads to your site. Through the use of a targeted keyword strategy and focusing in on topics that are relevant to your audience, you capture the attention of search engines and enhance your positioning in search engine results. Blogging generates the type of online visibility that allows you to attract the segment of your audience that’s carries the most potential for lead generation. Is your current blog being found online through SEO? Get the audit to learn more:
Lead generation shouldn’t be thought of as a stand alone objective. It’s part of a journey that begins before you’re ever introduced to your future leads. The journey begins when you attract relative strangers to your business and then nurture them through the lead generation process, with the goal eventually being conversion and lasting customer relationships.
Blogging has the potential to carry your audience through this entire process.
Blogging can be a portal that introduces someone new to your business. Maybe they came across one of your blogs on social media, or a search engine query lead them to your site and one of your blogs captured their attention. Either way, a great blog captures interest and keeps a visitor engaged with your brand.
Extending the length of time you keep them engaged is important on several levels. First, the longer they linger over your blog, explore other blog topics or decide to take a deeper look into your website, the better you look from an SEO perspective. Google really likes it when businesses provide the type of meaningful value that keeps people on their sites. Second, the longer someone spends digesting your blog content, the more invested they’re going to feel. It’s a lot easier to back away from a site that you’ve only spent 30 seconds on than one that you’ve just invested 15 minutes of your life in.
Once you’ve built the initial foundation of a customer relationship through your blog, you can further leverage that content to encourage lead generation. A blog strategy that moves the potential lead along in steps, providing more information and incentive each step of the way is an effective way to generate more leads. You can also work CTAs and incentives into your blogging content which makes lead generation a no-brainer for the person reading it.
Even with the best blogging strategy, you need a game plan that includes SEO lead generation techniques to optimize the quality and quantity of the leads you’re bringing in. Here are a few strategies to get you started.
Include CTAs in your blogs. Call to actions represent the final decision point for a new lead, and while many businesses understand the value of having prominent CTAs on their website, not as many realize the importance of working them into their blogs. Work a natural sounding CTA or two into your content with a clickable link that makes it as easy for a visitor to take the next step.
Have a lead generation content strategy in place. What are your lead generation goals? The content you publish should have these goals in mind. Consider creating blogs around topics that matter most to the audience you want to attract as leads. Address their pain points, answer their questions and keep them engaged with new, fresh blog content.
Promote your blogs across multiple channels. If you’ve put in the work to optimize blog content for your target audience, then the next step is getting it out there for them to see. Make sure you’re promoting your blogs on all relevant channels, and not just on your website. For instance, make blogging a regular component of your social media strategy and offer to share exclusive blog content with your subscribers.
Ready to learn more about how you can be maximizing your lead generation potential with a blog focused content marketing strategy? We’re here to help. Contact Knowmad and let one of our digital content experts fill you in on how we can drive more leads to your business today.
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