Sometimes the simple, tactical solutions work best.
If you’re creating blog content in part to drive traffic and convert it into registration for gated content and warm leads for your sales team, here are a few tactics to increase lead production significantly with the same volume of content.
1. Integrate offers as text links right into the copy
Offers on your blog are great, but they aren’t hitting readers who primarily get your content via RSS feeds on third-party sites. But if you integrate offers right into the copy, or at least as contextual hotlinks in the copy, you’ll get more clicks and conversions from your non-visiting readers.
2. Add offers to the sidebar
I’m always surprised at how many blogs give great content and clearly drive significant volumes of readers, yet fail to offer clear calls to action in a right-hand sidebar. This should be table stakes.
3. Add italicized offers at the bottom
If you’re nervous about being too aggressive about adding offers into a post itself, add something at the end in italics, so that it’s clearly differentiated from the body copy but still part of the post itself. Everyone who reads to the bottom will also see this.
4. Add integrated ad links custom to the content towards the bottom
If you’re publishing a blog post specifically about sales, offer a sales leader-specific asset at least halfway down the post, via an integrated graphical ad. Check out an example of how we’re doing that here.
5. Measure which topics get the most traffic and conversions, and increase your volume of that type of content
For example, when we write about sales, we get far more traffic, retweets and leads vs. when we write about marketing. And we know that specific topics and types of posts also get far more traffic, which translates into more leads as well. Know your analytics, and use the trends to your advantage.
6. Repurpose past blog posts into best practice guides
Check out the guides on the right-hand sidebar of this blog, and you’ll find primarily content that’s been published as individual blog posts before. Better yet, build your blog’s editorial calendar with future best practice guides in mind. Great way to get more leverage out of a finite amount of content-development bandwidth and/or budget.
7. Google+ authorship
Seriously no brainer. If you’re already active with Circles, you’ll see an immediate bump in blog traffic.
8. Use InboundWriter or similar to optimize posts as you write them
Even if you haven’t done your SEO research in advance, tools such as InboundWriter (integrated right into WordPress) can give your blog post draft an “SEO quality score” and offer specific suggestions for how to improve it’s findability.
Would love to hear more best practices from those that are actively optimizing blog posts, pages and traffic to increase lead registrations.
