It is a well-know fact that blogging is an integral aspect of content marketing. However it is not an easy practice, specifically when the main goal of your blog is to generate customer leads. Many businesses struggle with their blogs, because while they understand the importance of valuable content, they do not know how to wield it correctly to achieve their desired outcome.

Let’s dive into 5 reasons your B2C blog isn’t generating the leads that you need it to…

You do not have a clear content marketing strategy

‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’ -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

There are many famous adages that harp on the value of planning, however when it comes to content marketing you can’t say it enough- you NEED to have a strategy. Content creation and blogging takes lots of effort and hard work, therefore you want to see ROI. Before you spend any more time, ask yourself; ‘What are my conversion goals?’ If you don’t have benchmarks, and a plan of action- you are wasting your time. There are tools available such as free* lead generation calculators that could help you kickstart the benchmarking process.

(*More on the exact definition of ‘free’ later…)

You’re not blogging consistently enough

Blog posting needs to be regular and consistent, it cannot be a ‘when time allows’ exercise. There is a somewhat infamous case study from 2017 about a marketing agency that increased lead generation by more than 250% with blogging. While this is an amazing example, (that has been mentioned in several gimmicky ‘How to make money with blogging!’ articles), it is definitely an outlier. However, we can take away some of the best practices from the case study- the company set a goal of 3 blog posts per week and kept to that schedule. While 3x/week might not be a reality for your team, set a realistic goal for the frequency of which you publish blogs, and stick with it!

You would be surprised how quickly your content will add up! A recent Hubspot study of 1400 websites showed that increasing your google indexed pages (IE- blog posts) will directly correlate to number of leads. In the graph below, notice how once websites pass the 300-page mark lead generation increases by more than 200%!

Obviously this is not a goal you can achieve over night, however if you consistently publish new content you will be on the road to success.

You aren’t producing high quality and unique blog posts

Are your blog posts answering a question that is asked by your audience? In this day and age, producing original content can seem like a daunting task. If you have a question/ issue, you assume others have that same question, therefore someone has written about it. Surprisingly, that is not often the case! As a writer and marketer, I cannot tell you how many times I need a unique stat or an answer to a specific question and can’t find anything substantial. Quite often, I can only find poor quality or out-of-date sources.

Write down questions or issues that come up in your field (even when you aren’t in blog-writing mode), do the appropriate research, then convert those into a post.  Even if there are articles available, if the content is not evergreen, rewrite an up-to-date version.

When you are trying to focus on both quality & quantity there is still the issue of developing creative blog topics on a regular basis. Faced with increasing content production, generating a wealth of quality topics is challenging, to say the least. Delegate. Talk to members of your team, you would be surprised how many non-creative individuals have topics they can speak to. Even if the contributor doesn’t have formal writing experience, you can always edit afterwards to get the quality up to par. Content creation can even be used for recruiting or employee morale boost! More on that here.

Delegation can also go beyond your company; depending on your budget, you could explore influencer marketing or contributors to bolster your content quality.

You are trying too hard

It is a delicate balance to have the appropriate amount of call-to-actions (CTAs) on your site, while avoiding the in-your-face pop-ups that cause a ‘get me off this page!’ response. CTAs should be effective and cleverly placed on your blog. Annoyance with ad placements can easily lead to low conversion rates.

Try a native advertising approach to CTAs, employ in-text links. It is easy to slip a link into text without being obvious or obnoxious. Check out Ryan Robinson’s example below, not only does he have two clear CTAs; on the sidebar and inline, but he links to his free template download in the text as well. Three ways to convert.

You do not offer valuable downloadable resources

If you clicked on the lead generation calculator mentioned above, you’ll noticed it is not necessarily ‘free’. Users need to opt in with their email address to complete the download, also know as lead magnets. The template from Ryan Robinson has the same stipulation- add your email to download the full version.

Ask yourself: what relevant resources and exclusive content can your company offer? Whether it be in the form of an infographic, survey, checklist, etc etc.- create an exclusive and unique asset that can be introduced within a blog post and gate the content to capture leads.

Your Turn

Is your blog generating the B2C leads that you’ve hoped for? We’ve presented five issues that could stop conversion in its tracks- it’s up to you to put these suggestions into practice!