One of the questions I get most often is how to get more leads coming in from your blog posts. This is obviously a pretty huge subject, and it’s something we discuss in consulting sessions quite a bit, but I wanted to take a stab at it here and cover some basic points.
I have some notes to share with you as well as a video today. I also use the words “whilst” and “y’all”, just for fun. Hope you dig it! If you have any questions, please hit me up in the contact form. It’s my pleasure to help however I can 🙂
Here are a few principles to consider:
- Consistency
- Calls to action
- Relevancy and Contribution
- Fun (yay!)
Here is a brief outline of each:
Consistency
This is a situation where a lot of us drop the ball. I say “us”, because I’m included 100%. What I’ve found is that best results come from consistency. I work with small business owners. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a Realtor, a chiropractor, an attorney or other small business owner or professional. As such, we don’t have unlimited time to write a blog. It needs to be efficient, and it needs to produce a result.
One thing that may stress you out is the time commitment of blogging. Don’t sweat it. It doesn’t have to be this huge project that takes all day. An hour or two per week is plenty to get results over time. Share some ideas once per week. Every Wednesday for example. No need to overthink it or turn it into a big project. If you do that, you’ll never do it.
Instead, do something that fits into your schedule. Do it consistently, and before long you’ll notice that people come to expect and look forward to your posts. This is a key element to getting results. Consistent publishing leads to consistent lead gen.
Calls to Action
When clients ask me to critique their site, they’re often looking to get more leads coming in. When I swing out to the site, I find that they’re not asking people to sign up for their email list. There are very few calls to action, and they’re not very compelling at that. This isn’t a very good combo.
If you want more inquiries or people signing up for your email list, you’re gonna have to ask. I’ve had a lot of clients express an expectation for visitors to hunt down their contact page out of appreciation for the awesome content and ideas they share on their blog. Some will. Most won’t.
Here is a video with some notes on how I place calls to action on my site (if you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to click here to see the video):
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Relevancy and Contribution
A couple of the frustrations I come across whilst talking with you are lack of leads and low quality leads. In other words, you’re not getting the response rate you want from your blog, and the leads you do get are not responsive or uninterested in what you do professionally. Relevancy and a focus on contribution really go a long way to help here.
By relevancy, I mean your content (both your calls to action and your blog posts) need to speak directly to the most pressing needs of your readers. A small business blog is a different animal than most others. You’re looking to produce a pretty specific result. This is marketing.
I see a LOT of small business blogs miss a lot of opportunities in this area. They spend a lot of time writing for search engines for example. Everything is really optimized and keyword rich. But the content isn’t solving any pressing problem. Your readers could care less how search optimized your site is. SEO is fine, but the one and only thing it will do is bring you visitors. You can have all the visitors in the world, but it means nothing if your blog doesn’t convert. This is why I write for people, not search engines. I know a lot of y’all disagree with me on this point, but I’d rather get less traffic and 40% conversion rates any day of the week, as opposed to a high number of visitors and very little engagement.
What’s funny is that when you write for people instead of search engines, people like your site better. They visit it often and tell their friends. Traffic is never the issue. Relevancy and contribution are what really matters. Follow these steps:
- Identify your ideal prospect
- Learn their biggest frustrations
- Use your blog to solve their problems
- Use your blog as a means of “giving back”. Share ideas and solutions with your readers. Give away too much. Give em stuff you could actually be charging for.
If you combine these steps with effective calls to action, it’s a pretty unbeatable combination!
Fun (once again…Yay!)
One of the biggest missed opportunities in the whole small business blogging world is lack of fun. Have some dang fun! Your blog doesn’t have to be perfect. Write short posts, long posts, video, pictures, podcasts…whatever the heck you want. Whatever is simple and fun for you. Yes, you may need to learn a thing or two, but simply pick up some tactics as you go and employ them. Obsessing over whether you’re doing it “right” or not (I come across this mentality all the time) is only going to keep you from taking action.
People know when it’s forced. People know when you’re doing something just because you think you’re supposed to be doing it, not because you really want to. And that’s not fun for anyone. Something funny…people think when you share ideas with them, but they ACT when they’re emotionally engaged. You can have the most badass, super-optimized rock star blog in the world, with half a million visitors every day, but if you’re not having fun and helping people solve their problems, it’s unlikely you’ll see impressive lead generation.
If you’re inclined to think you don’t really want to blog..that the truth is you really ARE doing it just because you think you’re supposed to, then that’s cool. There’s no rule you need to write a blog. It’s just a really effective and leveraged way to share ideas with people.
It really does work. This is my livelihood. It works. But just like any tool, you get out what you put in. Just because you have an office doesn’t mean people are gonna visit. Just because you have a phone doesn’t mean people are gonna call. These are simply the tools of our trade. A blog is a publishing tool. Your prospects are on the web, looking for content. This is your opportunity to get in front of them, be cool to them and get a conversation started.
If you are having fun with your blog, contributing relevant content that solves people’s problems and offering compelling calls to action as I outline in the video above, it’s nearly impossible for you to not start seeing high quality leads come in every day from your site.
It can take a minute to get the pieces put together. That’s true. It’s true that marketing and the internet has changed quite a bit over the last few years. Shoot me an email if you have questions. I’m happy to help!
That was a call to action. Get it? No seriously, send me an email! There’s a contact form right here 🙂