In the previous part of the series “ The Essential Guide on How To Generate Leads With Blogging” we have analyzed the importance of using surveys in preparing and optimizing the lead generation campaigns for an online business.
Once again, I encourage you to review the big picture. More exactly, let’s see where do we find ourselves on the road to generating leads with business blogging for your company:
Before getting in the advanced stuff, you should know that I’ll use the term “subscriber” to define the people who:
A. Want to receive regular updates from the blog
B. Leave their email address to access a free offer
Traditionally, the term “subscriber” refers to someone who pays in advance for a publication. Though, as you have seen many times on the internet, the term subscriber is used within the online marketing community to define the people who follow a blog.
A: Blog Subscribers
Regarding the blog subscriptions, you may find yourself in one of the following scenarios:
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You have started to create targeted & quality content, but you don’t tell people that they can subscribe to receive updates from your blog
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Your content is not good enough for them. They don’t find it insightful, nor actionable or useful.
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The blog’s traffic is not qualified. People are not interested in your products or services, nor in the content you’re writing for them.
In any of these cases, you should come up with some fixes to optimize your blog for conversions (read subscriptions).
Image source.
My advice would be to reevaluate some aspects of your blog regarding the design and copy. In order to validate design concepts, you could use a usability tool like UsabilityTools.com to see how the users react to the visual designs.
Either we talk about footers or the subscription box from the blog’s sidebar, you need to make sure that you’re telling people where should they click and why should they click those buttons. You can validate which version of copy or design is getting the largest number of subscribers with A/B testing. Therefore, you need to start designing some creatives for your blog. Your tasks at this moment would be:
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Create a footer for your blog posts. Encourage people to click it in order to get on the landing page dedicated to subscribers. The other alternative is creating a box where people can leave their email address without being redirected to the landing page.
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Create a landing page to emphasize the benefits of subscribing to receive blog updates. A few aspects to consider when creating it:
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Provide with the top reasons for subscribing to the blog
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Insert a testimonial
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Have repeated Call To Actions
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Do A/B testing to test CTAs and forms
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Set up a “Subscription Goal” in Google Analytics to validate the results reported by the conversion optimization tool used to test the landing page. Go back to the second part of this guide to see how to create Goals in Google Analytics.
Obviously, the mix between Call To Action and landing page for blog subscribers will ensure that people who subscribed have a high level of interest in your content. As a consequence, it will confirm that the subscribers have an interest into consuming your company’s products or services.
B: People who leave their email address in return for a free offer
Offer samples of your work to your prospects.
Like in the previous case, you need to let the blog’s visitors know that they can access something useful for them. If you have created a hook(e.g.: ebook, webinar, template, etc.) to start generating leads for your business, you need to start promoting and distributing it. You need to work with the same two components, Call To Actions and Landing Pages. The additional task is preparing a series of automated emails that will close up the circle (e.g.: convincing subscribers to try for free your product or request a service)
Your tasks:
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Create lead generation footers to insert at the end of the posts
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Create lead generation pop ups triggered either on-scroll (when users scroll 50% of the page’s content) or at exit (when users intend to leave the web page)
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Create a landing page in order to allow prospects to download the offer
The next step involves testing. Here are a few testing ideas:
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2-3 versions of Call To Action button copy within the pop ups
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2-3 versions of Call To Action button copy within the footer
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Landing page elements to test:
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headline
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call to action
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forms
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PRO Tip: create an exit survey to figure why people are leaving the landing page. Ask the users what is missing on the page that it doesn’t convince them to download the offer.
Don’t forget that all of the email addresses you’re starting to collect have go into separate email lists according to the content the users have accessed.
A few examples:
- Email list 1 – “ E-commerce Benchmark 2014”,
- Email list 2 – Webinar X,
- Email List 3 – Blog subscribers.
Naming the email lists helps with tracking the efficiency of your lead generation campaigns, so please don’t forget to set up goals and target metrics before doing anything.
Let’s elaborate a bit with an example. In order to track the number of downloads for the “ E-Commerce Benchmark 2014”, let’s say, you can validate the results reported by the conversion rate optimization software with Google Analytics (or any web analytics software that you’re using).
Supposing that you set up a goal for this list named “Email list 1- E-commerce Benchmark 2014”, you’ll want to see how you’re doing against your objectives. Go to Behavior>SiteContent>Landing Pages. Within the table, you should check for Conversions, and then, select your Goal. You’ll be able to see if your efforts to generate leads are efficient right from the beginning of your campaigns.
Wrapping it up:
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Design creatives for your blog (footer, sidebar boxes or banners, pop ups, etc.)
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Optimize the blog’s Call To Actions using A/B testing
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Create the required landing pages (mentioned within the article)
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Use a conversion rate optimization software to test landing pages and figure which design and copy versions lead to higher conversion rates
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Use exit surveys on the landing page to get qualitative insights about the abandonment reasons
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Create email lists for each campaign and set up goals and target metrics
We didn’t get into creating the automated email series. This is a topic for the next part of this guide. For now, I think that it is important to take one step at a time. If it helps, use the six steps checklist above to make sure that you don’t forget something on the way.
Author: Elena Dobre is learning about digital marketing, business and life at Marketizator.com, the complete conversion rate optimization tool. She plays the role of the content strategist, but she’s also experiencing with CRO and lead generation. She enjoys discovering new online tools, hacks, brilliant minds and beautiful souls. Follow her on Twitter @HDobre.
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