Why Your Blog Readers Don’t Convert into Qualified Leads

Through the medium of a company blog, there are many benefits of content marketing that you can experience in a measurable way. But that can only happen if it is done properly. At this time, if you are generating a certain amount of blog traffic but the conversion rate is obviously disappointing, it will benefit you to understand why this happens.

In the other way round, an active interest in the topic ‘how to convert blog readers into quality leads’ and eventually paying customers is a depiction of one thing – you are not happy with your current numbers.

Undoubtedly, it is now understandable that growing business blog traffic alone won’t get you the result you desire. And in the case that you have been spending considerable amount of time and money on your blog, you’ll certainly want better outcomes. After all, it is supposed to be part of your content marketing strategy. Even if you are the one writing and publishing the content, there is still a cost to it.

So in addition to clarifying why your blog readers don’t convert into qualified leads and paying customer, you’ll also get some insightful hints on what to do differently.

What Is Qualified Lead Anyway?

This is a prospect that had expressed interest in your product, service or lead generation content. To make it contextually clearer, simply being interested enough to visit your product sales page, service description page or blog content doesn’t make that qualified leads. To increased your understanding in this regard, consider checking this SaleFusion post on qualified vs unqualified leads.

• To a SaaS business this could be demo request or free trial
• To a local service provider, it could be quote request
• To a consulting business, it could be appointment booking
• To an online store, it could be discount email subscribers

Why Your Company Blog Readers Don’t Convert

if you take into account the fact that there are around 2 million blog posts published each day according to MarketingProfs, you may think that fierce competition is the main cause of your low conversion rate.  

‘The internet is becoming increasingly cluttered. And content overload is part of the problem’. – Ash Read, Buffer.

The bad news is that standing out is harder than ever. While some business owners still see hyper competition as one of their biggest barrier to success, that may be far from the reasons why your blog reader don’t convert into qualified leads and paying customers. Let’s look at some of them and what you can do differently.

Mismatched Audience

Assuming your blog based lead generation goal is mismatched with the intent and expectation of people visiting your blog, you are definitely spending your resources on mismatched audience. The low conversion rate you see is already an evidence.

Ironically, it is also possible to be delivering value through great and engaging content, while getting zero conversion at the same time. Let me tell you this, if the majority of your blog is filled with peer-to-peer industry focused and thought leadership content that attract only your competitors, the conversion rate or ROI will always remain flat zero.

What to do: redefine your buyer persona and create content focused on their current pain points.

Low Quality Content

In my opinion, the best measure of content quality should be in its function, not form. And the core function is to bring consistent inflow of quality traffic, leads and sales. The only exception is when your entire company blog is meant for growing brand awareness alone.

As a matter of fact, creating content that doesn’t generate organic search traffic at all is a depiction of poor performance. Your current traffic volume could be a proof in this regard. Practically, writing under 1000 words blog posts that no one read is just an example. Yes, you can do a lot with social media and paid advertising. But without considerable volume of blog traffic, you won’t have anyone to convert in the first place.

The interesting thing is that there is a correlation between content quality, search engine ranking and organic traffic volume.

What to do: increase the quality of your blog post. Leverage search engine optimization best practices at every stage in the process – keyword research, attractive meta descriptions, anchor text optimization and inbound link building.

For example, you can use Google Related Search feature to get ideas on what your target audience are actively searching for. And it is 100% free keyword research tool.

Absence of Lead Generation Funnel

You don’t have a proven lead generation funnel for converting blog readers into qualified leads. This is mainly about giving your visitors something of value in exchange for their contact information – email, phone, address. And it has to be something that is tightly aligned with the product or service you are intending to sell them. In this case, simply saying ‘subscribe to our email update’ is not enough.

Your blog readers want solution to their current problems, pain points and barriers to achieving goal, not vague updates that will prove useless when you send them. This is where attractive lead magnets, content upgrades and landing pages come in.

See this content upgrade case study of 492% increase in conversion rate for more insights.

What to do: create lead magnet focused on your buyer persona’s current pain points. Then use a lead generation software to build high conversion exit intent popup forms.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Remember what I said about bringing mismatched audience to your blog? Well, the same thing happens when you try offering every one of your blog reader the same lead magnet. Imagine trying to sell intellectual property advisory services to everyone that visits a legal firm’s website.

That’s like giving the same lead magnet to everyone of your blog readers with peculiar needs. But you and I know that one size never fits everyone, including your blog readers.

The key point is that there are bound to be segments among your target buyer personas and blog readers. This matters even more in B2B content marketing. You can also relate this to what I said earlier about mismatched audience visiting your company blog.

What to do: Get an affordable lead generation software with split testing capabilities. See MailOptin pricing here. What you do is to create different lead magnets, put your ideas to test and see which one converts more than the other.

Done very well, you may see that a simple segmentation with page level targeting or variation in value proposition headline can lead to higher conversion rate within your business blog.

No Retargeting Strategy

If you are merely saying, ‘join our email newsletter for future updates’, you are currently underutilizing your blog traffic potential. Let’s say you are generating around 2000 – 10,000 blog visitors per month but you don’t have a retargeting strategy in place. Then you are missing out of the lead generation and revenue opportunities within that traffic volume. According to Larry Kim, there are many benefits of retargeting Ads which includes heightened brand recall and increased conversion rate.

The interesting fact is that you can retarget and convert a percentage of these blog readers without them having to join your email list.

What to do: Insert the necessary tags and pixels in your blog. Use Google analytics and Facebook Ads capabilities to build audience segments among your blog readers. Then start a retargeting campaign on Google Display Network (2 million+ websites), Facebook Ads and other advertising platforms.

Find creative ways to promote relevant lead magnets or direct offers to different audience segments.

Conclusion

There are even more reasons why your blog readers don’t convert into qualified leads or paying customers. Possibly, you are likely to be familiar with some of the points raised here. By taking proactive actions to put your new ideas to work, you’ll be giving yourself opportunity to get measurable results better than the ones you experience now.

Just remember that one size never fits everyone. The poor performance of low quality content you publish is already an evidence that you have to do something different.

Fortunately, you have all it takes to engage real prospects only when they are actively searching for your products or services.