Although social media can be a lead-driving force, 52% of marketers cite difficulties in accurately measuring ROI from social marketing.
4 Ways to Convert Social Media Leads on Your Blog
Much of that frustration is caused by social media’s ability to drive traffic, but not conversions. So, to make sure you’re making the most of these social media leads, here are four different ways you can optimize your blog to convert them.
1. Design Clear CTAs
Although we all spend tons of time optimizing the call to actions on our primary websites, most of us aren’t nearly as focused on optimizing the CTAs on our blogs. Instead we’re busy tinkering with button color on our main site, rather than designing clear call to actions for our company blog. Even when you look at the businesses that have realized they need a systematic way to capture blog leads, many just install an animated form that pops up at inopportune moments to say, “HEY! I WANT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS!” While there’s plenty of articles out there about how these forms can be effective, there’s something to be said for considering user experience. So if aggressive lead capture forms aren’t ideal, how can we still entice our blog visitors to give us their information and enter the sales pipeline?
We all know you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and the same principle can be applied to attracting leads on your blog. Rather than hounding social media visitors with pushy messages, use lead lures to draw them in with informational resources like ebooks, infographics and other robust, value-packed assets.
So, which lead lures should you create? An easy way to start is to make one for each category on your blog so offers are always related to the post a visitor is reading. If you take this approach, it’s a really gentle, targeted way to capture a potential lead’s information.
Though generating leads with informational offers is effective, you will have to do additional nurturing to turn them into a sales qualified lead. To shave some time off the sales cycle, try promoting your primary conversion point on your blog as well. For example, if your company’s core call-to-action is signing up for a free trial, make it easy for website visitors to do that on your blog. Neil Patel, one of the most successful content marketers, and founder of KISSmetrics, makes it possible for website visitors to “sign up for a free trial of KISSmetrics from almost every page on the blog.” This tactic will make it easier for your most qualified leads to get the information they’re looking for and make a purchase even more quickly!
Ready to amp up your blog’s CTAs? Use these four tips to get started:
1) Use the 3-Second Rule
Only 47% of websites have a clear call-to-action button that takes users 3 seconds or less to see. (Go-Globe)
2) Link the Images
42% of offer-related graphics on landing pages are not clickable (MarketingSherpa) and that can put a dent in conversion rates!
3) Up Your Verb Game
A case study by Unbounce indicates that a B2B websites can increase conversions up to 38% after replacing just one action verb with another.
4) Be More Concise
Studies have shown that some of the best calls-to-action are under 150 characters.
2. Retargeting
Even if you’re doing a great job driving website visitors to your blog by promoting your content on social media, some of them still will not provide their information and enter the sales funnel. What’s a marketer to do? First, don’t panic. The Online Marketing Institute found that it can take between 7 and 13 touches to generate sales ready leads. Many of those touchpoints are already being made through your organic social media reach, but retargeting is another effective tactic you may want to try.
Retargeting: A form of online targeted advertising by which online advertising is targeted to consumers based on their previous Internet actions, in situations where these actions did not result in a sale or conversion.
Though that definition may sound a little academic, you’ve definitely seen these kinds of ads after your latest online shopping spree. Those shoes you just barely persuaded yourself not to buy? Now they’re stalking you on Facebook. Is it a sign?! No, it’s just a retargeting ad. And while the way ecommerce brands use them can get a little creepy, other businesses can set them up to re-attract website visitors who left their blog or site without converting. Let’s say a potential lead left an article about SEO Myths without filling out the lead capture form. You could use retargeting to show that website visitor social media ads that drive them toward some of your other, more engaging SEO-centric content. Retargeted visitors are 70% more likely to convert, so this tactic is definitely worth a try. If you want to give it shot, these platforms can help you manage your retargeting efforts:
- AdRoll (adroll.com)
- Perfect Audience (perfectaudience.com)
- Native Platforms
- Google Adwords
3. Chat Live
Yay! The leads who found your business through social media and the company blog have finally made it to your website. Now all that’s left for them to do is sign up for your product or service, right? We all wish it was that easy, but many website visitors will have questions before they’re ready to hand over their credit card information. Although many of the answers they’re looking for can be found on your website, visitors will bounce if they don’t learn what they need to know ASAP.
Rather than letting these missed opportunities slip through the cracks, you can use live chat to engage these curious website visitors. Although most people associate live chat with customer support, in a world where texting is the fastest growing form of communication, live chat enables the sales process and allows leads to reach you on their terms in the most familiar, convenient way possible. Plus, once you’ve engaged website visitors in a chat, you can capture their information and send it to your favorite CRM!
If you’re worried about the time it will take to be available for website visitors, look for a live chat software that offers mobile apps, which let you answer chats from your smartphone or tablet. Added features like weekly scheduling and canned responses will also help you connect with leads in the quickest, most convenient way possible.
4. Email Nurture Campaigns
Although many of these tactics have been focused on generating leads, conversion isn’t just about capturing their information – it’s about what you do with it after. Sadly, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales, and the common cause of this poor performance is “lack of lead nurturing” (MarketingSherpa). After putting in the time and money to attract a potential buyer, don’t just let their information go to waste! Market2Lead found that nurtured leads have a 23% shorter sales cycle, so create long-term nurture campaigns that continue adding value with the content you’ve been promoting on your social media channels.
To start planning your nurture campaigns, consider which stage of the buying process a prospect is at, based on where you obtained their lead information. Then map out each email sequence by choosing an eye-catching headline, persuasive CTA, valuable content and a clear goal.
Let’s take a look at the second example here and imagine we’re selling SEO software. Because we know that we captured a prospect’s information with our SEO Myths lead lure, the first email we want to send them is going to draw them in with more interesting SEO content. But because our goal is getting them to sign up for a free trial, the blog post our email points to also mentions how our software can help them “dominate” their SEO efforts and includes a CTA to sign up for a trial.
This nurture method helps us increase conversions by allowing us to deliver effective content at the right time.Posted in How to Do Marketing Right
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