Inbound Marketing Strategy: 3 Hidden

Insights Explained

by ZERIN TASNIM on OCTOBER 15, 2015

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Today I’m opening up how you could use the most effective inbound marketing

strategy on your blog to generate leads in your favor.

You may have chosen the right colors, the correct shape of the CTA buttons,

optimized your sidebar banner and even gotten a fabulous headline – yet you

could be suffering from the scarcity of leads.

Investment in blogs for businesses have increased greatly as a part of investment in

marketing, and what is significant is the fact that marketers who blog have

experienced a 67% increase in leads as opposed to those who don’t.

Not just that but blogging has resulted in 55% more leads for internet marketers.

Here’s why.

How does a Blog Work?

At this point you could be slightly confused as to how a blog could ever be effective

in capturing leads.

When it comes to capturing leads, the first thing you’re told is you have to be quick

and precise to get the message through, right?

You’re told that you have only 8 seconds to get a visitor to your landing page

interested, otherwise the person’s bound to leave.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

While that is undoubtedly true, a blog works wonders of its own.

The word blog is basically a mash up of the two words web log and it serves as a

journal mostly.

However, the use of a blog has evolved over the years and now for most internet

marketers it serves as a platform where they can advice their potential or existing

customers and even have discussions with them.

Joy the Baker for instance is a baking blog where Joy Wilson broadcasts her

baking skillsthrough text and images and at the same time participate in

conversation with her visitors.

In doing so, not only Joy Wilson, but what other internet marketers can achieve are

as follows:

1. Broadcast yourself. When you’re blogging you’re talking about the various

services that you offer.

This is the one place where you can talk about yourself as much as you want

without coming across as a haughty personality.

2. Give advice. People won’t always arrive at your landing page wondering

what you’re services are. Maybe they already know.

However, what they may be seeking is expert advice on how to proceed with the

next step whether it be closing a financial deal with you, or simply how they can

implement your services.

For example, most companies providing B2B services to internet marketers have a

blog where they write on a regular basis providing detailed information about how

one can avail their services.

Blogging is like consultation, except a lot more exciting perhaps – or maybe it’s

just me because I love writing!

Anyway, that’s enough about me.

3. Generate leads. That’s right. Your blog will help you generate the leads that

you so desperately want.

There are 2 factors that you need to be addressing in order to generate leads from

your blog.

One is where your visitors are coming from, and two, at which stage of the sales

funnel they are situated in.

And this is what the next section is about.

Where are your Visitors Coming from

There are a few ways in which people could have arrived at your blog:

They could have searched for something on Google for which you could have

been a result

They’ve keyed your address in after they saw/heard from someone

Seen your page on an ad

Where your visitors are coming from is important to determine simply which of the

channels you are investing in are giving you a profitable return.

You need to look after and maintain each of these channels so that you realize

which ones need pruning and which are doing just fine.

However, what’s more important is not how they wound up at your page, rather

what they came seeking because that is how you have to gear your content.

The Sales Funnel

The sales funnel allows you to pinpoint the position of your visitors on the ladder of

sales.

Here’s an image that will help you understand better.

So I hope you understand now that the preferences or needs of each visitor will

vary depending on which stage they stand and this is why you’re going to have

to make sure that you have a little bit of something for everyone in your blog

posts.

And this is why the next part deals with how you make an effective blog that

generates leads.

A Blog that Converts

If you’ve come this far you’re now absolutely ready to take on the most

essential inbound marketing strategy of a blog that’s sure to earn you your

leads.

Let’s get down to business.

1. Quality not Quantity Matters

Simply putting together a how-to article will not help you in any way. It’ll simply be a

waste of time and resources.

You have to do more than just jot down the 7 things that you believe a person

needs to have on their landing page.

Your blogs have to be detailed.

There’s no reason to be scared. It’s actually quite an easy task.

Suppose you’re going to be talking about analytics that can make landing pages

convert and you decide to discuss 5 such pointers.

Now instead of just listing them, address each of the issues one at a time and

enrich it with examples and references that you’d come across during your

research. That way you can build on your quality.

There are two direct benefits of breaking things down and explaining them

separately.

One, for those who’ve arrived at your blog and don’t know a thing about, say

internet marketing, will be still able to comprehend what you’re talking about.

And two, is that you’ll be able to rank high on Google without compromising on

quality.

While making your article detailed for your customers is great idea, you have to

remember to make something for the finalists who are scrutinizing your offers

along with that of your competitors.

What do you do now?

Well you could either partake in price competition or non-price competition.

How you’re going to be handling your prices is for you to decide, however, I’ll tell

you how you could get an edge over your competitors by upgrading the quality of

your content.

Instead of just elaborating points, you could also use case studies in order to make

your post more specific and profound.

2. Arm your Blog Posts with CTAs

This is one of the most important aspects of your page, whether it be your blog

post or your landing page.

CTAs or call-to-actions buttons are your lifelines in internet marketing

because this is the only way you can sustain your business.

This is why there are several blogs that help explain how you can make CTAs that

can emotionally appeal to your visitors along with the technicalities of CTA

optimization.

If you or your CTAs sound vague or unsure, there’s no chance your visitors are

taking a single step ahead. To have CTAs dispersed throughout the post is a great

idea.

Also CTAs don’t always have to be buttons, but if they are make sure the

message goes out loud and clear.

Add subscription or opt in forms onto your sidebars like in this picture below.

Here is another example,

Here a secret strategy Brian adds that only subscribers get more exclusive

tips that not published on the blog.

And ask your readers to share, comment or mail you at the end of your blog

(an example below) .

3. Full Speed Ahead!

Finally what you’ve got to do is maintain your steady progress with the quality and

type of blogs you were writing.

The reason is this: you can’t expect results in just a few days or even weeks. It’ll

take at least a few months for your cogs to be oiled and smoothly running.

Like Neil Patel says,

“Just don’t focus on monetizing your blog until you have at least 20,000 monthly

readers.”

And chances of getting 20,000 readers overnight could be nothing short of a

miracle.

There’s nothing wrong in hoping for one though.

Conclusion

Well, I think that was a pretty intense session on how you can generate ‘custom

made’ leads for visitors to your blogs for each stage of the sales funnel.

Unlike other pages of your website you can’t exactly expect results instantly.

But that’s perhaps the only down side, because once you think you have the perfect

blog (you want to get it A/B tested in order to be safe) you’re all set to type away.

So let me know how you’re doing with these steps and if you’ve got any

problems, or just want to say ‘hi’ leave me a massage below and we’ll strike it up

some time soon.

Till then happy blogging!