You plan and write and edit articles for your company’s blog, expecting that they’ll attract people to your website, where they’ll be so impressed they’ll subscribe, convert to leads and eventually become customers through your stellar content marketing and nurturing. Whew. That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself and your articles.
If you’re not seeing conversion results from your blog efforts, here are five potential reasons that you should look into.
One of the biggest reasons a blog is so crucial to an inbound marketing strategy is because it is critical to having your website turn up in search results. Your articles should be based around key words and phrases that your best prospects (aka target personas) are searching for—in other words, what questions are your personas asking at the beginning and middle of their buyer’s journey?
Also make sure you’re covering basic on-page SEO with optimized page titles, H1-H4 tags, alt image text, etc.
If your blog articles are getting views, but have a high bounce rate (people are quickly leaving your site without converting), your tone could be missing the mark, or your articles may not match the level of sophistication your personas are seeking.
For example, instead of being educational, your articles might be too 'sales-y,' which is always a turnoff. Or your content might be too ‘fluffy’ and not provide real answers to their questions. On the flip side, your content may be over your personas’ heads—know your audience, and if you’re writing to equipment technicians for example, they require a simpler level of sophistication than plant managers or engineers.
Once your articles have attracted visitors, you want to provide them with a very obvious next step so that they’re compelled to provide their email address for additional content. This means including calls-to-action within your blog post that clearly spell out what action you recommend they take—whether it’s subscribing to your blog or downloading an ebook/whitepaper/tip sheet related to the blog topic.
For best practices on CTA design and usage, read this recent article.
Especially in the early stages of blogging, a good portion of your subscriber base is likely your employees and existing customers. While this is great for promotion potential (more on that in #5), these readers don’t help your conversion rate because they’re already contacts. To help grow your subscriber base, consider prominently featuring a blog subscription module on your home page and sending a promotional email to your entire database encouraging them to subscribe.
Sharing your articles on the company’s social media accounts is a great start, but similar to above, if many of your followers are employees or customers, you run into the same problem. This is why it’s crucial to encourage (heck, we’d even say expect) employees to share the company posts and blog articles with their own networks and in LinkedIn Groups or other industry-related social groups. Doing so expands the reach of your blog and your brand. Not to mention, your employees’ networks are likely ripe with connections who fit your target personas.
You put way too much effort into stocking your blog with relevant content to have it go to waste. By checking your content and promotion against the five culprits above, you can help improve conversion rates of website visitors-to-contacts, and the ROI of your marketing activities.
If you’ve dealt with this issue, I’d love to hear what other ideas you’ve implemented! Tweet me or comment below.
Topics: Search Engine Optimization, Content Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media
