Tactics for Small Businesses to Use a Blog for Lead Generation

Having a blog for your small business is an outstanding way to generate valuable leads and boost your sales.  However, without the right tactics behind your blog strategy, you’ll end up spending a lot of resources for modest results. With just a few tweaks to your strategy, you can turn your blog into a well-oiled machine for lead generation.  In this blog post, we’ll be bringing you the top tactics for your small business blog. 

Make Sure You Know Your Audience and the Topics They’re Interested In

Understanding your audience and the topics that interest them is vitally important if you are to make a powerful blog for generating leads. Knowing your audience is necessary if you want to write topics that interest them and provide them with insightful, actionable knowledge.  When you understand your audience, you can cover topics that they will read, share and interact with.  Readers who actively engage with your blog are more likely to enter the funnelling process and begin their journey from reader to customer. You have to understand what interests your audience to start that process.  Covering topics that are interesting to your audience, and implementing the best copywriting practices, gives you a competitive advantage over your competitors. Offering content centred around their needs shows your customers that you understand them better than your competitors, making them turn to your blog first when they’re looking for advice. You should strive to understand your audience, so your blog has the edge over competing blogs in the same industry.  According to a study by GrowthBadger, blogs that make over $50 000 a year are 213% more likely to have a detailed understanding of their audience.  Understanding the goals, lifestyle, attitude, and interests of your readership helps them cover relevant topics that their audience will engage with.  The most successful blogs make a great effort to know their audience, so they can be successful in serving great content.  If you want your blog to generate leads and earn big bucks, you have to make sure you know your audience and the topics that interest them. 

Create Content for Different Stages of the Sales Funnel 

A great way to make sure your blog visitors convert into buyers is to create content for every stage of the sales funnel.  Creating stage-specific content is necessary if you want your blog to secure more sales and leads.  When blog readers enter the sales funnel, each stage must have its own content.  This means ensuring they don’t become bored, disengaged, or confused as you’re making a sale.  If you want to make sure they don’t give up halfway through the sales funnel, you have to create content for different stages of the funnel. When you make content for different stages of the funnel, you offer your visitors an outstanding experience that leads towards a sale.  When every piece of content matches a specific stage, your visitors will have a focused, user-friendly experience. This adds value to the user experience.  If you want to create a great user experience during the sale, you have to have different content for every stage. A global survey by Semrush has shown that 87% of interviewed marketers create content for every stage of the sales funnels to increase their likelihood of success.  To make sure their visitors complete their journey through the funnel, they use different types of content in every stage, such as: video testimonials  free case studies coupons consultation offers  Creating content specific to each funnel stage is crucial for supporting the sales strategy of your company.  You should create content for every stage of the sales funnel if you want your visitors to complete the purchase and have a great sales experience. 

Create Lead Magnets for Different Stages (Ebooks, Case Studies, White Papers…)

Using lead magnets for different stages is a great way to supercharge your sales process.  Lead magnets are vitally important for keeping your visitors engaged throughout the sales process. When you create content such as ebooks, case studies, and white papers, you provide your visitors with something valuable that encourages them to go through the sales funnel.  You should create lead magnets for different stages so visitors will commit themselves to complete the sales funnel.  Strategically placed lead magnets help you filter out who is just visiting your blog and who seriously intends to make a purchase.  When you offer a valuable resource at a specific stage of the sales funnel, the visitors that are genuinely interested in your product or service will go through the process to get it.  Distinguishing casual visitors from would-be buyers is important for focusing your resources and achieving sales.  The previously cited Semrush study has revealed that 72% of interviewed marketers use how-to guides as their preferred lead magnet for the beginning of the funnel.  With a how-to guide, they demonstrate to their visitors that they are experts in fixing the problem and make them want more information and advice, so they are compelled to go through the funnel.  Creating lead magnets and placing them strategically is key for generating leads with a blog.  You should use lead magnets for different stages of the funnel to create an effective sales process for your business blog. 

Create a VIP Section and Content Upgrades to Capture Lead Data

A great way to capture lead data and boost your sales is to create a VIP section and content upgrades for your most promising prospects. .  Creating a VIP section with content upgrades provides your business with a wealth of quality lead data.  Since your VIP customers are far more engaged with your blog than regular visitors, they give you an opportunity to capture detail-rich lead data that you can use to develop specialized sales strategies.  The data you rely on for marketing decisions can make all the difference for the success of your strategy. The more detailed lead data you have, the better your sales can be.  A powerful VIP section encourages visitors to upgrade and engage with your blog on a deeper level than regular readers.  Creating a VIP section and complimenting premium content upgrades gives you an opportunity to supercharge their customer experience.  This benefits your sales immensely and drives leads. That’s why you should design a great VIP section for your blog.  For example, a case study by Sleeknote has shown that offering content upgrades to clients has provided them with 28.83% more email subscribers in 30 days and increased blog conversion rates for 11.46%.  When VIP readers upgraded to get premium content, their user metrics were tracked and used to create new strategies that drove conversions.  This way, their entire lead generation strategy got a major boost. Creating VIP sections and content upgrade opportunities is vital for capturing lead data and improving the sales of your blog. 

Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines 

You should not neglect to optimize your blog for search engines. Otherwise, even if you wrote a great post on a relevant topic, it’s not going to appear anywhere in the search results. Great SEO practices are incredibly important because they directly contribute to attracting very targeted traffic and warm leads to your blog.  When your blog’s SEO is up to date, organic, qualified audiences will stream to your blog posts and engage with your content.  This way, when you write a terrific blog post on a topic, whenever the topic is googled, your post will come up.  Using simple SEO techniques can do wonders to drive organic traffic to your blog.  Conversely, poor SEO practices keep your blog away from reaching the first page of search results.  If your blog isn’t SEO optimized, it won’t rank at the top of the search.  This effectively means that the vast majority of users that google for advice on the topic you covered won’t see your post, and the resources you spent on putting it together will go to waste.  You shouldn’t neglect the SEO of your blog. The first five organic results on the first page of the search results bring in 67.6% of all the clicks.  Having your blog optimized for the search engine has a direct impact on how many people find it when they search the keywords. To achieve high organic search traffic, you have to optimize your SEO. Neglecting to optimize your blog for search engines is very harmful to your visitor traffic.  Adopt the best SEO techniques to prevent that from happening. 

Conclusion

Optimizing your business blog for more leads is not a walk in the park. Thankfully, there’s a lot of ways you can improve your blog to make it fine-tuned for success.  In this post, we’ve shared the best tactics to make sure your blog thrives at collecting leads that you can use to secure more sales for your business. Even though these tactics might challenge you to do things differently, adopting them will transform your blog and get it on the right track. Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today’s business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Contact her @JazzyWilliams88.