The ultimate goal of every marketing effort is generating traffic and leads. And blogs are a popular, effective, and affordable way to bring people to your digital domain and to do just that. According to HubSpot blogging businesses experience 126% higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses. Also companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. For businesses these days, blogging does much more than let followers know about recent news and events. And in this post we’re going to explore why exactly blogging is important for your business and lead generation, and some of the best practices to generate quality leads.
So let’s dive into the details !
Why does a business need a blog in the first place?
With today’s online consumer behavior- if you want to stay competitive, get more visibility and generate more quality leads, blogging is no longer an option– it’s a necessity!
Here are 7 ways a blog helps your business grow, and why you need to work on it:
1. SEO Ranking – Blogging is one of the most effective ways to add new content to your website. The more blog content you create, the more opportunities you’ll have to show up in search engines, increase visibility, drive organic traffic to your website and most importantly – convert leads.
2. Internal Link Building – The more relevant links you have, the more likely it is you’ll rank better, build page authority which can lead to more traffic and potential leads.
3. Explains Your Services – With your blog, you can show off your business’s “personality” , explain your products and services and establish your blog as a reputable, relevant and trusted source of information – which are key ranking factors for Google.
4. Social Exposure – Sharing blog posts via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Tik Tok, Instagram and other channels opens up opportunities for shares, likes, and more visibility for your brand.
5. Builds Credibility – A blog also gives your business a voice, and a chance to prove your expertise to your audience. It can be a powerful tool to gain customer confidence.
6. Develop A New Sales Funnel – Blog helps in lead generation. Once you have some traffic coming to your site through your blog, you have an opportunity to convert that into quality leads, by following some tactics which we’re going to discuss in this blog later on.
7. Keeps Your Viewers Updated – Blogging about newsworthy topics related to your industry, your customers and the world around you positions your company as a thought leader, also brings you to the attention, makes you searchable and competitive.
Sounds like something you need for your business right? Blogs can do wonders if done right.
What is lead generation?
Now, before going to the ways of generating leads, first let’s talk about what lead generation actually is. Simply put, a lead is any person or potential customer who indicates interest in your company’s product or service in some way. And lead generation is essentially the process of turning a prospective lead into a customer. It’s the first step in moving potential customers through the buying process by getting them to share their contact information with you, so that you can save their info and nurture them to convert later on.
There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in. Such as –
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
- Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
- Service Qualified Lead etc.
Lead generation and an individual’s journey with your product can be described through the following diagram:
List of ways to generate leads:
One of the main purposes of a blog is to connect you to the relevant audience. Another one is to boost your traffic and send quality leads to your website. And the great thing about using your blog posts to promote your business is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal. So now if you’re wondering how exactly you can leverage your blogs to generate leads, here’s a list of tactics and best practices used to generate leads through their blogs.
1. Create helpful & unique content
Offer your readers valuable content with real, actionable information. Start by thinking about your prospects and what they need. Find out their pain points and research the questions they’re asking. Write your blogs in a way that answers what your readers are looking for and delivers additional value to them. Attract your readers with great content and tease them with even more exclusive resources relevant to it – webinars, free trials, free downloads etc. and close by placing a clear call to action that invites the user to receive it.
Here’s an example from HubSpot:
2. Use appropriate keywords
Your blog should be a place where you cast a wide net to get people onto your site. So don’t be overly narrow with the keyword you use, so that your content is not too targeted. Also, to generate more leads from your blog, it’s important you implement a good Keyword Strategy using various keyword research tools to create high-quality, keyword-informed content.
3. Use a live chat widget
As your blog works to keep your readers informed – using live chat in your blogs for lead generation, is one of the best multi-purpose tools your business can take advantage of. Having a conversation that is personal, instead of one to many, can pay off to generate more leads from your blog. Through this you can keep the visitors engaged, answer their queries, provide expert recommendations and show that you’re interested in helping them.
4. Include Call-To-Action (CTA)
Now if there were a ‘secret sauce’ to lead generation, it would be the call-to-action (CTA). Like it’s said – a high quality blog post without a compelling CTA is a lead lost. It’s because every blog post is an opportunity to convert traffic into a lead, which you can do so by channeling that traffic through a CTA. A strong CTA is action oriented, benefit-to-them driven, visual, persuasive, and ideally creates a sense of urgency. It should get your visitors to do something like download, sign up, click, read another post, install, subscribe, contact, etc. However, you don’t want to crowd the page and choose them all. The last thing you want is to provide a frustrating experience for a visitor.
There are several options to consider while placing CTAs on your site:
- Hello bar
- Recommended reading CTA
- Lead magnet banner CTA
- Integrated link CTA
- Blog homepage CTA
- Sidebar CTA
- Header or footer bar CTA
- Pop-up CTA
- In-text CTA
- Exit intent overlay
5. Use Quora/Reddit to grow your blog audience
Thousands of people are looking for answers on the web every day. And Questions & Answers websites such as Quora/Reddit are one of the biggest online communities on the internet, participating in sites like which can be a good help to build your blog readership and lead generation. The idea is to find relevant questions and answer them in ways to sell the reader on visiting your blog, either to get the solution to their issue or to get further information. However, we don’t recommend you to just go there to post your links. Instead, you should write actual detailed answers with links to your blog posts only if they fit in the context.
Here’s an example of how many views an answer can garner over time and you can imagine the conversion rate of this traffic:
6. Share your blog content on social media
This is another way to lead capture. You can use your blog to boost your multi-platform content marketing strategy and lead generation by sharing your posts on social media. Sharing blog posts via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and other channels opens up opportunities for shares, likes, and more visibility for your brand. This helps expose your company to audiences you might not even know yet, which in turn can benefit you finding more leads.
Let’s take a look at an opt-in form for newsletter subscribers that A hrefs uses in their blogs:
7. Host surveys and giveaways
This is another useful tip for using blogging for lead generation. Have your readers answer some fun surveys that will give them a chance to win awesome prizes. In this way, you will have the opportunity to gather data and generate more leads.
8. Use pop-ups
The use of targeted, well-timed and strategically placed pop-ups can be one of the most effective ways to drive users to take action. You can encourage a reader to take an action with a pop-up triggered by them being on a page for a certain amount of time, viewing multiple pages, about to exit and more. Depending on the content, it’ll ask them to view other content that may interest them, subscribe to the blog/newsletter or even speak with a sales rep if you view the content closer to the bottom of the funnel.
However, be careful, so that your pop-up doesn’t disrupt the person’s browsing experience through an annoying placement, it should only supplement it.
9. Retarget
Despite your best efforts, there will still be a sizable chunk of traffic that leaves without completing your CTA. Maybe they were pressed for time, or your offer wasn’t compelling enough, or they simply missed it.That’s where retargeting comes in.
Retargeting is one of the best ways to close sales that didn’t happen. As described by Neil Patel here are three examples of retargeting that actually work
- Retarget Specific URL Visits
- Retargeting Existing Customers
- Lead-gen Ads Based on Page Engagement – which you may consider as a part of your retargeting strategy.
10. Integrate the right lead generation tools
One effective way to generate leads for a blog is to integrate useful tools within the content. There are a few different tools and templates out there that’ll help you create different lead gen assets to use on your site:
- CTA templates.
- Lead generation Software tools.
- Form-scraping tools.
- Visitor tracking tools.
The goal of the blog is not just to have people read articles for the sake of it, but to foster a connection with your customers in a meaningful way to reach your objective of lead generation and eventually – conversion.
Lead generation strategy, when it’s done right, can be one of the most effective marketing channels you’ll have. It can reliably bring a steady stream of traffic to your blog and business website. It might sound like a lot of work, but it pays off.
The basics we’ve gone over in this blog post are just the beginning. Keep creating great offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms — and promote them in multi-channel environments. The more you tweak and test every step of your inbound lead generation process, the more you’ll improve lead quality and increase revenue.