Pamela Vaughan, Sr. Blog Strategist at Hubspot, walks us through how to offer the right blog content to customers at the right time of their purchasing path.
In the typical marketing methodology of Attract - Convert - Close Delight, blogging is often pigeon holed in the Attract stage. Shouldn't the blog actually speak to all types of visitors regardless of their stage in the purchasing process?How do you do that?
Make the blog much more contextual. Show the right content, at the right place, at the right time.
1. Nurture visitors to subscribers
Put your main blog subscribe module above the fold. Goal: Get visitors to like your content enough to keep coming back for more. Do this by encouraging blog subscribers.
- Incentive blog subscriptions using free offers. Example: offer a free e-book with blog subscription.
- Promote subscription from within the blog post.
- Create a "subscribe to blog" landing page and offer frequency offers. Add socil proof: "X number of people have already subscribed." Show sample of the blog topic lists to display the value.
- Install a recommendation plugin to improve blog stickiness. "If you liked this article, read this other article."
- Promote social media subscription. Leverage social proof to show your existing following.
2. Convert subscribers to leads
Goal: Retain subscribers to become leads
- Warm up to new subscribers with a welcome email. Personalize the email, remind them of what they signed up for, reiterate frequency options.
- Create an email frequency preferences page. This allows subscribers to customize what email notifications they receive.
- Show subscribers CTAs for offers that are suited for the top of the funnel. These subscribers are early in the buying process and need high level information about your industry/products/services.
- Use other blog real estate for lead generation CTAs (e.g. sidebar, banner)
- Include smart CTAs within RSS notification emails
- Create marketing offers to align with your blog content.
- Include another text-based CTA within the copy of the blog.
- A/B test CTAs to improve performance
3. Turn leads into customers
Goal: Move customer from lead to sales readines
- Make sure sales team knows what blog content is availble to them. This will aid them in their sales process to educate their prospects.
- Segment Smart CTAs to show more middle to bottom of the funnel offers.
- Add a blog opt-in/subscribe check box at the bottom of landing pages. Example: Hubspot increased email subscribers by 128% in 3 months using this tactic.
4. Nurturing customers into promoters
Goal: Delight customers so they become promoters of your content
- Use smart CTAs to show special offers just to your customers
Optimizing your blog all comes down to context.