Are you doing enough to turn your blog visitors into customers?
Ask any number of digital marketing consulting firms (like our own here at PENNInk Productions) and they’ll tell you that blogging’s a pretty darned good thing to do for your online business presence. You may have even gained great results from yours already. Alternatively, you may be wondering when that influx of visitors will turn into a juicy influx of actual buyers of your products or services.
You often need to be patient when trying to convert blog visitors into purchasing customers – studies suggest that customers typically ‘touch’ businesses many times before actually buying, so your blog should be seen as a mere part of this ‘touch’ journey.
Still, there are a few specific steps that you can take to accelerate your blog visitors through the marketing funnel. Here are the top three mistakes many people make when creating business blog posts.
1. Poor blog page structure
The secret is to treat every post or page as a landing page. Share on XWhen your visitors read through your blog, the blog text itself and the occasional photo shouldn’t be the only part of their experience. As they scroll down, for instance, is there more content to one side of the blog post – perhaps related to a side product or subscription option of some kind?
What about having a search bar to encourage them to search for further content of relevance to their needs once your blog post has whetted their appetite? Social sharing icons, meanwhile, are an almost obligatory addition to your blog articles, and could make a massive difference in helping to spread awareness and get more of the most receptive eyes on your site.
You can also include a ‘related articles’ feature to drive interest further by surfacing older articles that are tagged and categorised similarly to the initial post the reader landed on. The secret is to treat every post or page as a landing page.
2. Missing calls to action
Calls to action, or CTAs, give your blog reader an instruction to carry out some kind of desired action. Perhaps for you it could be to sign up for a free guide or webinar or explore your current product range.
Most blog owners make the cardinal mistake of not including any CTAs. Share on XMost blog owners make the cardinal mistake of not including any CTAs. (Remember that part about every post or page being treated as a landing page?) Many blog owners do who use CTAs are accustomed to including them at the bottom of their blog posts, though they can also be used very effectively between paragraphs of your blog content or in a sidebar. You might even be tempted to incorporate yours into a pop-up that the visitor only sees at a certain point, for example if they are moving their mouse to leave your site or if they’ve scrolled down a certain amount.
3. Slow loading
If you want your visitors to stay on your site, your posts and pages should certainly load in three seconds or less. Studies have indicated that almost half of your visitors could end up leaving your site if they are made to wait for longer.
Speed optimisation also helps with search engine visibility, as Google prefers sites that are quick to load and this now applies equally for people who browse on a smartphone on a mobile 3G or 4G connection. So to be found better in searches and to keep people on your site, make sure to optimise for speed.
Final thoughts
Hopefully, these steps will provide you with a starting point for beginning to think about whether your site and blog are set up in the best way to generate not only visitors, but also visitors who could conceivably buy from you.
Why not get in touch with one of the best digital marketing consulting firms out there – PENNInk Productions – today to learn more about how you can start to extract even greater potential from your brand’s site and blog?
Edward Solomon has over 30 years’ experience in project management, technical education, computer networking, web design and development and is a Digital Business Consultant for PENNInk Productions Ltd.
