8 Tips For Converting Blog Readers Into Customers

Article Contributed by Lana Richardson

When it comes to content marketing, getting visitors to your website is hailed as the ultimate goal.

So, what happens when you reach that goal? What happens when you publish a blog post for your business which goes viral overnight or your blog becomes a huge hit, reaching millions of people who then click and land on your website?

Do your phones starting ringing off the hook? Are you bombarded with sales, leads, orders, sign ups? Does your brand become a household name? Is your business front-page news?

Having created ‘viral content’ for businesses on a number of occasions, I can categorically (and unfortunately) say that the answer to all of those questions is no.

Getting tons of traffic to your website is great on the surface, but millions of visitors mean nothing if they’re going to bounce right off your site and forget about you once they’ve read your post – which is most often the case.

The real battle with content marketing is not about getting tons of traffic on your site; it’s about turning visitors into customers once they land there.

So how do you make blog traffic convert?

There are various steps and measures you can take to increase conversion through your content, but before implementing them it’s important to understand that content marketing is a long game.

Direct return is very rare with content marketing and as a result, many companies abandon their efforts altogether in fear that it’s a waste of time and resources – two things that small businesses can not afford to spare.

However, with the right strategy, some creativity and dose of patience, content marketing can pay off for any kind of business and here a few basic but effective techniques to help turn those readers into customers:

1. Know Your Goals

Your blog simply can not generate results if you don’t know what kind of results you’re hoping to achieve – having an objective in mind will make it much easier to take steps towards it.

When it comes to blogging for a business, you need a purpose from the outset, so that you can create, write and format your posts in order to reach it. Whether you are hoping to increase brand awareness, improve your acquisition, get more online sales or reach a new market – your objective will dictate who you write for, what you write about and how you write it.

2. Know Your Audience

When blogging for your business, you must know your audience in great detail in order to create content that not only compels them to click and read, but also inspires them to take further action when they land on your page – like signing up or making a purchase.

Firstly, use your analytics tools to lay the foundations and gain insight into your audience demographics. After that, dig deeper and uncover exactly what kind of content they tend to read and engage with most.

Take a look at your competitors or other blogs in your field and examine the posts with the most comments, shares and interactions. This is what your audience wants. Try find common themes – does your audience like ‘how tos’ or do they prefer funny lists?

Monitor the comments they make on other articles to get a feel for the topics and themes they are discussing themselves. Mining through these conversations will also give you an idea of the tone and language your audiences uses and will relate to.

3. Call To Actions

When you have defined the purpose of your blog and have a clear profile of your target audience, ensure that the practical metrics are in place to drive your visitors towards the desired action. If you want someone to land on your blog post and go on to make a direct purchase, have a clear pathway to do so – like a giant ‘buy now’ button on widget and a shopping cart clearly positioned in the corner.

If you want to create brand awareness, have a prominent logo on your blog and a ‘learn more about us’ button at the end of the post.

If it’s leads you want, place data capture on your site. If you want more social followers, put links to your profiles or follow pop ups on the post.

If you want someone to take an action, make it as easy as possible for them to do so. We live in an internet era of instant gratification. No matter how great your product or service is, if it’s too complicated to book or buy, your reader is going to bounce off your site and into the arms of a competitor.

4. Always Add Value

Give your audience value in order to get it back. Human beings are reciprocal by nature and we are much more likely to become a customer of a company, if we feel like the company has given us something.

Furthermore, as there are over two million blog posts published every single day, yours needs to offer something special to be worthy of a click.

In terms of content, ‘value’ can mean many things and the definition will depend on what your particular audience wants.

Your audience research (as mentioned in point 2) should help you discover what value means to your readers. By looking at the content your audience tends to share and interact with most, you’ll be able to determine what value is to them. For example, if they share funny content, humour is the value. If they are sharing lengthy informative posts, knowledge is the value.

Before publishing a blog post or piece of content, a good way to gauge quality is to ask yourself ‘what value does this bring my audience?’ If you can answer definitively, then hit publish. If you hesitate, then walk away and wait for inspiration to strike.

5. Engage, Engage, Engage!

As mentioned, content marketing is a long game and conversion becomes more likely when  you are able to build trust and loyalty among potential customers. The best way to do this is engage with your readers.

Reply to every comment and retweet. Say thank you for every share, follow, mention or like. Going that extra mile to give a personal feel can make a significant difference, not only to how your brand is perceived, but also to the amount of engagement you get in return – with every interaction, your overall reach will increase. And, if someone has engaged with your brand, they will be more likely to choose you over a competitor when they need your product/service in the future.

6. Write Content That Answers Queries

Not all web traffic is created equal and traffic from certain channels will be more likely to convert than others. Traffic from search engines is always of a higher quality as visitors will arrive on your site this way be searching a specific query. These visitors are more likely to being on a buyer journey than traffic that lands through social media – most visitors through social media click on your posts simply out of curiosity.

7. Remarketing

This is probably the most effective strategy in terms of ROI with content marketing. Once you have written a blog post, you can use remarketing ads through Google and Facebook to target people who read your post and visited your site but did not make a purchase or sign up.

8. Measurement

With any kind of marketing strategy, your effort is wasted if you do not set goals and measure the results.

Once you are creating regular content, step back and assess the impact that it is having on your business. See what content is performing well, not just in terms of views and visits, but also with regards to the time visitors are spending on your page and the bounce rate.

Use your analytics tools to determine if traffic to your home page and purchase pages has also increased as a result of your content marketing. Use Google Trends and keyword planner to see if there has been an increase in searches for your brand/company name.

Continual measurement will help ensure that you’re moving in the right direction with content marketing and working towards a specific outcome.

Author Bio:

Written by Lana Richardson, journalist and digital marketeer, specialising in content and social media marketing. Lana is the current blog editor for NIParcels.com and IrishParcels.ie.