Blogs are pretty common on the internet.This much is obvious just from a cursory browse around the internet. The vast majority of internet users read blogs, and there are millions of blogs out there on the net.
However, an interesting fact here is that innumerable as these blog pages are, there are in fact even more blogs on the net that are instead only one part of another website, usually an ecommerce site. The reason for this is that blogs are a marketing tool par excellence.
Azola Creative, a company with offices in Jacksonville and San Francisco offering website design and lead generation services, say that the reason for this is simply that blogs are also great for lead generation. The benefits of blogs extend even beyond this though, and they are also a great form of customer education about a product or service.
In this arenahowever it isparticularly important that the blog does not just appear as an extended list of marketing material. Blogs should feature your product or service, but they shouldn’t always be strictly about it. A blog should be interesting to read in its own right.
How Does a Blog Generate Leads?
But to return to lead generation, it’s clear that blogs have massive potential here. To understand this better, it’s important to know what the lead generation process actually involves.
Lead generation is all about getting interested customers to share their details with you. That is a lead generated, and it can be used to nurture conversion later. The basic principle behind this is not only that a blog can attract visitors to your site, but that it can be used to turn those visitors into customers.
Naturally, the content needs to be good (see above) but this alone does not necessarily generate a lead. Instead, a blog needs to include calls to action (CTAs), which are invitations to readers to take some further action beyond just reading the blog.
The forms this can take are diverse, and we will outline some below. Before that though, it’s important to keep one very important thing in mind – a blog is only successful for lead generation when the reader wants to engage with your company further after reading. At the bare minimum, this can even just be further exploration of your site.
Ways to Generate Leads with Your Blog
The best way to see how this all works thenis to look at some examples. Here are some of the most common, the strategies which are most likely to generate leads:
Create Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are items of downloadable content that the reader will find valuable. Providing an attractive downloadable freebie is a terrific way to do this. However, it doesn’t stop there – you should also include in this download the requirement for the reader to share their details with you. That is a lead you can soon turn into a sale.
Unique Topics
Your industry niche is very unlikely to be a niche including only you and nobody else. Accordingly, your blog needs to provide even more than your product does – or at least something unique and sperate from your product. The best example is blog content on unique and interesting topics beyond your product.
Offer Exclusive Content
Depending on how prominent and popular your blog is, you can also offer further blog or video content which users have to pay for. This will not work if you haven’t first generated sufficient interest but, once you have, this is the real jackpot for fostering conversion.
More ecommerce sites have blogs than do not – that alone should firmly underscore their potential.
