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Enjoying a healthy amount of blog traffic? Great! It’s a positive sign that your content marketing is working.
But what if your visitor-to-conversion ratio tells a different story?
If you don’t have a sales funnel in place to actively convert blog traffic into leads, you could be losing out on potential customers.
Getting potential buyers to arrive on your blog through social media, search engines, and other forms of inbound traffic is an important starting point. But what happens next?
Read on to discover how to bridge the gap and turn visitors into customers.
Step 1: Know your audience
The first step to making your blog sell is making sure your content is highly targeted.
The more your content speaks directly to your audience’s needs, the more likely they are to become your customer.
To get to know your customer a little better, ask yourself the following questions:
Who are you blogging for?
If your answer to this is “everybody”, then wrong answer!
The best bloggers out there always choose a specific niche. A more focused target audience allows you to create content that answers the questions and needs of a particular group, which is key to earning trust from your readers and making that conversion.
If you’re in the tech industry, for example, are you going to write about everything and anything to do with technology?
Remember, you’ll be competing with giants such as Techcrunch, Mashable, and Wired. To stand out, it might be better to narrow your content into smaller niches, such as wearable or mobile tech, for example.
The same goes for any industry: how can you make your blog more specific, more targeted, and more unique?
What are their pain points?
Understanding your customers’ pain points enables you to address their questions directly and provide high-quality content that resonates with their needs.
Not only does this make your blog their go-to source, but, more importantly, it makes it easier to sell to your audience further down the line.
What questions are they asking on Google and Quora? What problems are they experiencing that your product or service can solve?
Once you identify your visitor’s needs, you have the advantage of meeting these needs by presenting your business or service as the solution.
Where are they in their buyers’ journey?
A big part of getting to know your blog visitor is understanding the “buyer cycle” – the pathways your potential customers take before they decide to make a purchase.
Customers will typically go through these four stages:
- Need: Your visitor knows they need something, but they’re not sure exactly what it is, or how to get it/solve the problem yet.
- Initial research: Your visitor turns to social media, blogs, and forums to try to find the answer.
- Solution: The visitor has found the answer to their question or a product/service that offers them a solution.
- Purchase: The customer makes their purchase- yay!
If you’re creating blog content intending to sell, chances are you’ll be targeting audiences in the initial research stage.
The aim of the game here is to accompany your audience through the rest of their buyer cycle, right through to that purchase.
Easy, right!?
Step 2: Write conversion-friendly content
Many business owners believe the real selling starts after you’ve written the content and clicked “publish.” However, that’s not the case.
Content should be planned and written with conversion in mind. Here’s how:
Choose your topic wisely
Conversion should be on your mind before you even put pen to paper.
What content solves your readers’ pain points and answers their most frequently asked questions? Going back to your customers’ pain points, this is useful.
Once you’ve established a few key questions, you can then begin to structure your content around your audience’s needs.
Avoid distractions
Blogs aimed at driving sales should stick to one, easy-to-follow narrative.
You aim to (a) inform your reader on how to solve their problem and (b) lead them seamlessly to making a purchase.
A post full of irrelevant information or too many outbound links distracts your reader- and steers them off the path to that all-important conversion.
So, always try to keep your posts clear, concise, and to the point.
Write with readability in mind
We’re all very busy people. We all have relatively short attention spans.
To keep your blog traffic on your page for as long as possible, you need to make your content super easy to read.
Given that the average bounce rate for most websites is less than 8 seconds, you have a very short window to convey your point.
Make sure you do the following so that your content is easily skimmable:
- Include bold headings and subheadings as much as possible.
- Keep sentences short (no more than 20 words).
- Keep paragraphs short.
- Use images and screenshots to break up the text.
- Use bullet points or numbered lists where appropriate.
Include a bold CTA
We’ve said it before, and we’ll repeat it: a blog without a call to action is like a party with no cake.
It’s not just upsetting; it’s unthinkable.
If your reader has enjoyed your content, this is your time to sell to them; so make it count!
Your CTA should tell your blog traffic exactly what it is you want them to do next, without being too pushy or intrusive.
For example, a small banner on the side or at the end of your content, or an exit-intent pop-up saying “Sign up for your free E-book” or “Download our free crash course” could be very enticing to the right reader!
Step 3: Lure them in
Create urgency
Have you ever made an impulse buy (or two)? You don’t really need that delicious cake, but it’s today’s special, and the price is too reasonable to say no.
We’ve all been there.
The idea that something we want is only available for a limited amount of time can drive many customers to make a purchase or sign up on a whim.
You can add urgency in two ways:
- In your content: Use language and data that convince your reader why they need to buy your product or sign up to your newsletter right now.
- In your pop-ups or content CTAs: Offer time-sensitive or limited-edition freebies, coupons, or money-off deals.
Give something of value for free.
Giving something away for free, otherwise known as a ” lead magnet, is a proven way to get leads.
Lead magnets encourage visitors to download/subscribe/watch something of value in exchange for their email address.
“Something of value” could be any of the following:
- Style guides
- How-tos
- E-books
- Content calendar
- Travel tips
- Vouchers, discounts, or freebies
Neil Patel, now one of the most significant online presences for content marketing, created $30,000-worth of advanced content marketing guides.
He shared every single one of them (several thousand times over) for free.
Why? Because the inbound traffic and conversion rate generated from his free guides would go off the charts, generating a lot more cash (through partnerships with big companies) than he would have gotten from selling them
Step 4: Nurture your leads into sales
Once you’ve got your lead, the real work begins.
The fact that your reader has given you their email address means they’re interested, but it could take some time before they become a paying customer.
Email marketing
Make sure you stay in touch with a well-thought-out, highly personalized, and consistent email marketing strategy.
At this stage, it’s good to warm your lead up a little further.
Rather than go in all guns blazing, trying to sell to them as soon as they’ve signed up, continue giving your lead something of value at no cost or commitment to them.
Show them that they’ve made the right decision in signing up by giving them more great content in a weekly newsletter, roundup, or by building an email course with educational content (you can then pitch your product/service at the end of the course).
To do this more effectively, we’d recommend using an email marketing automation tool like Drip or ConvertKit.
This is a great way to build trust between you and your lead, putting you in a better position to start selling at a later date.
Here’s an email campaign example from DigitalMarketer.
What we like about this:
- The email identifies the lead as a new subscriber, which adds instant personalization.
- Familiarity is being established through a drip-fed 3-part email series, creating expectation and intrigue.
- Content is carefully worded as ‘gifts’. This puts the focus on your lead and less on your business.
- Provides highly relevant and valuable content to the lead.
Messenger bots
An increasingly popular way to stay in touch with your leads is through Facebook Messenger bots.
Bots can respond immediately to common questions, select useful/entertaining content according to the customers’ interests, and even process a sale.
If you’d like to give bots a go, I’d recommend using ManyChat or Chatfuel.
Make them an offer they can’t refuse
Once you’ve built a relationship with your lead, you can then make them a value proposition.
A value proposition provides both an insight into why your lead should become a customer and how they would benefit from your service/product, and, most importantly, an incentive.
One of the most effective ways to convert leads into sales is to follow up with a discount voucher for your product or service. Seven out of ten leads are proven to convert using coupons or discounts.
For example, you could offer 20% off a first purchase, 2-4-1 offers, or free shipping.
As we mentioned above, low supply creates high demand, so provide your special offer for a limited time only. This scarcity and urgency technique helps build a sense of exclusivity and value.
Remember: quick follow-ups and responsiveness significantly improve your chances of conversion, so keep a close eye on your communication channels.
Retarget your audience
Is Google Analytics telling you you have lots of blog traffic but not enough conversions?
All is not lost.
There’s this clever thing called re-marketing: ads that follow your visitor as they browse through the web.
It’s a little creepy but quite effective. Ever wondered how brands that you were looking at earlier that day (or maybe earlier that week) will pop up on other sites or whilst you’re browsing your social media feeds?
The idea is that if someone has clicked off your page without making a purchase, you have another chance of redirecting them back to your site via your retargeted ad.
There are tools out there like Perfect Audience, ReTargeter, or Google AdWords to help you retarget audiences on other sites.
Conclusion
A new blog isn’t limiting you in any way. You don’t have to be small; just because you started something new, you can boost your site visits and conversion optimization.
Take responsibility. Focus on these two crucial content marketing strategies:
- Create long-form, useful, and engaging content consistently
- Promote the heck out of the content
Remember that your title plays an important role. For this reason, you should write catchy headlines and split-test them in your landing page optimization.
Use consistent and benefit-driven calls-to-action in your landing pages.
If you’re sending new visitors to your homepage, make sure that your homepage has a lead capture form – and a valuable lead magnet to give away – in exchange for the user’s email address.
With your new blog, you will spend less time driving traffic. Instead, focus on converting your current visitors into leads (this happens after they sign up to your email list).
Why is this critical? Well, for one, let’s assume that you’ve got 100 people on your email list.
If you take care of them and solve their problems, they can bring 1,000 new users to your blog.
