A well-run company blog can raise search engine rankings, generate leads, encourage customer loyalty, and bring new customers to your door. But is your blog performing well enough to garner these rich rewards?
Traffic can grow at a steady rate, your search rankings may rise, and you might retain more clients. But if you can’t attract new customers for your business, you’ll remain at a virtual standstill.
More conversions is a common goal of company blogs, and running one can be an effective method for winning them. Expanding conversions using your blog is entirely possible if you know what to do and how.
With a carefully crafted conversion optimization approach, Hubspot increased lead generation from its top-ranking blog posts by 99 percent, and the result was an increase in conversions of 87 percent.
You could accomplish the same, but that will require some significant tweaking of your strategy. Here are seven highly recommended strategies.
- Make Customers Want Your Product
A blog may have many purposes, but one of the most worthwhile is to demonstrate to the customer why your product or service is useful. Your blog posts should propose and illustrate clear value through the use of facts, statistics, reasons, tips, graphs, videos, and more.
Consider this blog post from a personal injury attorney in Indiana for a solid example. The author cites facts and statistics with regard to driving mishaps in the state, and describes the precise problems his or her service can solve.
This blogger also employs multimedia, calls to action, and strong headings to drive the points home. The blog post makes potential customers realize the service’s value, and that’s what draws conversions.
- Highlight Your CTA and Include More
Every blog post should include a call to action of some kind, and it should stand out. You could make your CTA slide into the screen or pop up suddenly. You could also use boxes or colors to separate the call from the other text.
Customers like to be told what to do with a piece of content, but if they can’t see it, they won’t follow through. Also, if you have customarily included only one CTA per blog post, consider adding more. You could place one in the header, one at the end of the post, and a pop-up CTA in between. Multiple CTAs should be a standard for blogs that seek to boost conversions.
- Use Interactive Content
Interactive content, such as a quiz, is one of the best ways to attract and hold more attention. When employed in a blog post, it can both show the value of your organization and match customers with the product or service they desire.
For example, an e-learning organization called SkilledUp compiled a quiz that focuses on Microsoft Word. It was written in a conversational format, and helped quiz takers both to discern their greatest obstacles with the software and to identify a solution.
The CTA directed users to SkilledUp’s Microsoft Word online courses. The result was more than 5,000 solid leads collected within the span of six months.
- Draw the Eye
Heat maps show where customers spend the most time on your site by following the cursor’s movements. It indicates what draws people’s eye and lets you know whether or not they perceive your call to action.
One of the best ways to draw the eye is to include an image of a person facing or looking at the text you want visitors to read. It works best if the image is on the left and the text is on the right, since we read left to right.
After you make this change, a heat map will verify how successful you’ve been in drawing readers’ eyes where you wanted them to go.
- Target Customers More Specifically
If highlighting your CTAs and improving your blog posts doesn’t increase your conversion rates, the problem might lie with your customer targeting. Your content might not be resonating with your target audience the way it should.
Try targeting users when they’re further down the sales funnel. Aim your content at those who are ready to make a purchase rather than putting so much energy into prospective customers when they’re still at the information-gathering stage.
- Use Social Media
Blog posts circulate among your target audience best when they’re shared socially. Improving social sharing metrics will naturally raise your conversions. Watch competitors and ramp up your social media game accordingly to get more out of each social post.
Social proof can also be used to your advantage. Research shows that more than two-thirds of customers will pay attention to the testimonials of others, even complete strangers, as a key factor in their purchasing decisions.
Publishing social feeds and complimentary reviews within your blog can help reinforce the idea that your product is right for visitors who read it.
- Change Your Design
Sometimes, the best way to stand out from your competitors is to be a little different. Try changing something about standard web design conventions that will add contrast and draw people’s eye to your converting content.
A great example of this is provided by the inbound marketing organization Impact, which saw a 71 percent increase in blog performance simply by removing the sidebar on its website. The resulting white space created a higher level of visual contrast that increased brand awareness among its highest competitors.
Conversions occur for those who use their blog to its fullest potential. As you incorporate the handy tips above, you will be able to take advantage of greater leads, more brand awareness, and expanding monthly revenue.