7 reasons why blogs need to be part of your lead generation strategy
When we think about lead generations we think about ads, SEO, PPC, campaigns and other activities that usually have a price tage. Blogs aren’t often a natural part of a lead generation strategy.
But what most people don’t realise is that blogs can be a really effective lead generation tool.
Prompting action
A blog shouldn’t just be standalone. They shouldn’t exist in isolation. People need to be told what to do next. For blogs to be effective in your lead generation strategy you need to carefully consider your CTAs.
It’s no good just plonking any CTA on a blog, you need to think about the intent behind the blog and what makes most sense for your audience. Are they at a stage where they’re ready to buy now - if so then booking a demo or a call makes sense. Maybe they’re still exploring their options so you have another blog that explores a slightly different angle? Or perhaps they’re looking for solutions in which case directing people to your service pages could be the best strategy.
Every blog needs an action, without the action you’ll struggle to get leads from your blogs.
2. Highly specific
The beauty of blogs is that they can be as niche as you like. That makes them highly relevant to your different audiences. When your audience are at the point of making a purchasing decision they want specifics, they want details, they want you to geek out about that specific area. That’s where blogs come in.
Unlike the rest of your website or social media, on your blog you can be as geeky as you want. Bring out the numbers, the data, the quotes - whatever makes sense. The more specific your blogs the better they’ll perform.
3. Content for every part of your marketing funnel
An effective lead generation strategy nurtures people from cold to warm, from leads to prospects which means you need different levels of information for those different stages.
It’s hard to segment your social media in that way. You’ve only got a limited amount of exposure on social so you need to be quite broad in your posts. But on your blog you can create top line content that’s a bit lighter to digest, and then you’ve got your uber niche geeked out blogs.
When you’re creating your blog strategy identify what stage of the buying cycle your audience is at to allow you to tailor the content to that audience. It might seem like extra work but doing that upfront thinking means your blog performance will increase and as a result will become a powerful aspect of your lead generation.
4. Establishes authority
Your clients have a problem that they think you can solve. They think that because they believe you’re the expert. That means you need to show your potential clients that you’re the expert. If you aren’t in front of them or talking to them that becomes a challenge. How do you overcome that? You guessed it, blogs.
Blogs are the perfect space to establish your authority. You can provide industry updates, debate topics impacting your clients, and go into more depth, establishing your values and your knowledge in the sector.
This works particularly well if you’ve got a CEO or senior executive who’s happy to become the face of the business and write a regular blog.
5. SEO boost
Beyond audience nurturing, lead generation is about just that, creating more leads and you can only do that if you’re attracting new audiences. A big part of attracting new audiences is through investing in your SEO.
Blogs create new regular content for your website which Google loves helping your SEO efforts. I talk about this all the time, so I’m not going to go into too much depth. Check out this blog if you want to read more about SEO and blogs.
6. Objection handling
Often sales and marketing are removed from each other, but your marketing outputs can be a fantastic resource for your sales team. Talk to them and find out what questions they’re asked, what objections they hear and what client’s pain points are and then turn those into blog posts.
That way, next time they’re asked the question they simply send the link over. Making the whole lead generation process slicker and less resource intensive.
As an aside, as the content is live on your website for anyone to find, it can also help lurkers overcome their fears and objections before they even engage with you.
7. Low point of entry
Besides time, the cost of entry to creating regular blogs is pretty low. Yes you need to have someone in-house that can write them for you and you’ll need to upload them to your site and promote them but in comparison to ads, PPC and SEO experts you can get started with what you’ve already got.
That means there’s no excuse not to be blogging. You have all the resources you need, you just need to carve out a little bit of time to put your thoughts into action.
When it comes to blogs the sky is the limit in terms of their impact. The more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it. If you want to increase your leads then blogs can absolutely help you do that, if you’re using them strategically.
A solid content strategy, thought through CTAs, relevant topics all seem so basic but they can take your blogs from gathering dust to a lead generation machine.
If that seems a bit daunting or you don’t have the time to do it yourself, then I’m here to help. Discover my blog packages and see which one suits you best.
