Optimizing your blogs without converting the traffic into leads is a massive loss for small businesses. Content has proven to be a valuable tool for businesses in every industry, regardless of the business size.


Often, we read about best practices on how to optimize blogs and keywords to be recognized by search engines and climb the ranks to the top of the search business. Algorithms have also taught us that the true essence of a search engine 'worthy' blog is not about stuffing keywords but about providing genuine value for searchers.


This also extends to the user experience created for searchers, making that fine line between creating blogs that search engine friendly while also delivering an excellent experience for searchers the most critical balance act for results. What affects an experience for a user extends beyond the content alone (although the content's value is one the most extensive indicators of which blogs get shown in search engines) and into other factors such as speed/load time and how mobile-friendly the website is.

In short, getting someone to your blog is not as easy as it may seem. Achieving a higher traffic rate without a high bounce rate is an enormous accomplishment on its own, especially for small businesses.

But now that you have gotten over the first hurdle, increasing traffic, converting that traffic into leads will be the next important step for your small business digital marketing strategy.

How do you convert your readers into leads or get them to show interest in your services? 

You know, you have the right audience; you have confirmed it with various traffic stats.

So how do you make this happen? 

Here are several ways of doing that. By taking these actionable steps, you can convert them into leads and hopefully turn those leads into customers.

1 - Getting People To Sign Up For a Newsletter

Once you have an audience built up for your blog, it's natural that these people would like to hear more from you. 

As a content marketer, it's your job to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter in exchange for more value-filled content. 

However, before you go ahead and send them any emails. 

You have to think about what you're doing. What are the reasons these people trusted you with their emails? 

They expect certain things, and you should let them down. It's okay to mix in a few offers or promotional emails here and there but focus more on providing value.

This way, they would be more receptive and will have a higher chance of converting. 

2 - Incentive-Based Offers

During your time as someone who curates blogs regularly. You would have come across many incentive-based offers placed in the sidebar of many blogs. Ever wondered why they're there? 

Placing your offers in the sidebar is a great way to generate leads. But you have to be smart about it. Salesforce does an excellent job of offering a two week trial on the sidebar. This sort of lead gen option can also be used with e-books, whitepapers, or any valuable piece of content that you can trade with your readers in exchange for their emails and produce a blog that converts.








 

3 - Using A Display Notification Bar

You would have never thought that a simple notification bar placed at the top of your website can help bring conversions up by 3%. There are different tools or plugins that you can use to make this happen. But what matters is how you make use of this par. What incentive you offer, how you position your content and how much impact you want from it. It could be an irresistible promise. It could be a show of credibility. Or something the readers will not want to miss taking a look at, like the example below.





4 - Remarket To Your Blog Visitors

Remarketing is a great way to bring back those people who have previously visited your website. You use advanced audience targeting algorithms to target people based on the actions they have performed on your website.  But does that work for blog audiences too? Can remarketing turn your content marketing efforts into blogs that convert. It does seem like a longshot to take. But stats say otherwise, as many different websites have seen their lead conversion go up by 51% by running a simple yet effective remarketing campaign.

5 - Hosting Weekly Webinars

Another great way to lead capture from your blog will be to host weekly or fortnightly webinar events if you're offering a service. You're already producing blogs that convert and bring in a high frequency of readers. Using the webinar strategy, you can provide more value. The topics of these webinars could be specific to something your readers will like to know more about. For example, if you are a small accountant firm in Toronto, choose whether you would like to generate leads for personal or corporate taxes. Once you have chosen this, further narrow down the specific type of corporate leads you would like to generate, this can include individuals in the real estate industry or running their own medical clinic. Once you have chosen your target create interest on the top 3 pain points that your leads typically face. The more value you provide and answer their questions the more your leads will be attracted to you as a professional. Don't be afraid to give away information for free, value will be your best asset to obtain more clients. 

For any blog, the biggest challenge is to generate any positive ROI. Usually, people focus on producing quality content and bringing in swarms of readers.

However, a substantial effort is also needed to convert them into subscribers and have a blog that converts.