I did a meetup on writing solid content in Manama, Bahrain the other day. Met a lot of great people like Ali, Hasan, Fifi to name a few. And as usual doing workshops we wound up having great discussions. The topic of marketing and conversion especially was talked about quite a bit. I told them and Fifi in particular that though blogging is a slow means to generate traffic – takes time to build up an audience – and convert visitors to buyers it is a very useful one. So using your blog as a leads funnel is something everyone should consider.
Track Blog Lead Generation
She retorted, “Well then, how do you track how blog posts readers turn into customers?” How do you analyze, use and improve blogs used as conversion funnels? How do you know basically that blogging is helping you gain the right customers? When do you have your blog as a leads funnel in place?
That is a fair question. Stating that blogging is good to generate traffic and leads and get you clients is one thing. Quantifying it in data is another.
It does sometimes feel like you are alone at a mountain top screaming great services here!
Direct Evidence
Customers contact you and refer to blog posts they read and ask for a quotation. That is a clear sign a certain blog post has been working. However that way of gaining customers in my experience does not happen overnight. Especially if you are not located physically in the same location or approximate location as the client.
Trust
Clients tend to trust someone closer by. Or at least will reach out quicker if you do. Or trust you based on a referral. That is why local SEO seems to be so popular these days. A referral offline or online can work, sure. The latter is much harder often though. It requires much more work in my experience.
Online referrals
Online referrals often means recommendations by several solid authorities while offline could be just one guy and you presenting yourself and portfolio well. If you are working on the web solely and move around a lot these online referrals matter a lot. So for me as a digital nomad online presence and referrals matter a great deal.
Inbound links
Online referrals to blog posts can lead to clients and though you cannot always track how clients wound up on your site you will be able to with inbound links
Analysis of Traffic
Using Jetpack Stats, Google Analytics and or Leadfeeder you can get information on companies hitting certain posts . Lead Feeder is a tools that helps you filter GA data and making sense out of it. It also allows you to direct email form their board and connect a CRM to your leads.
Google Analytics for Content Marketers
Video by Benjamin Mangold on analysing content for content marketers. This video helps you understand how you can use Google Analytics to analyse what content is having successful, what content is needed to get customers and what content to create next based on data.
Based on the GA, Leadfeeder or Jetpack stats data you could do several things:
Send cold e-mails stating you noticed them visiting and asking if they are interested in your services. If they enjoyed your blog posts they are likely interested in other great blog posts and or services you are providing.
You could also try to locate them on LinkedIn and message them there if you have a premium account or connections close to the lead. Leadfeeder helps you with this really well. GA can also be of assistance, but it takes more time gathering that data. In jetpack you do not really get to see whether they came from LI unless you posted blogs there. And then still you cannot see who clicked. Unless you perhaps have a premium account.
And finally you could create more content based on the blog posts you see getting lots of interest and thereby increase your chances of getting quotation requests / requests for help. If they like certain content and certain content is found a lot it would make sense to create more and increase your chances of getting a bigger audience and or more leads / sales.
Email Funnel on Blog Posts
You can add email subscription popup funnels to popular blog posts asking visitors to subscribe to more news on related posts. I am currently doing a trial with Sumo.me to build a Mailchimp list and may go for pro to offer visitors more tailor made newsletters.
What is better for a customer than to get tailor made news? And what better way for you to promote your services and gathering email addresses of potential customers? Customers that are genuinely interested in what you are up to? So even though many tend to say email is dead I’d like to beg to differ. Email is still very much alive.
