A consistent blog pipeline is a key part of any digital marketing strategy. If you’re focused on digital marketing, you’re probably spending a considerable amount of time and effort in writing and promoting blog content. Now here’s the question: are you happy with your efforts? Are your blog posts converting into leads? We’ve always had mixed reactions from clients when talking about the effectiveness of their current blog strategy. Sometimes, some pieces convert to leads. But most of the time, it’s almost like you’re writing into a black hole. Where are the results?
At Flying V Group, we had this challenge with our own blog. We’ve been on a journey to ramp up our own conversions and traffic through a focused content strategy. And it’s working: over the past few months, we were able to drive conversions and traffic up by almost 435%. Here in this blog, we’ll discuss some of the strategies and tips we followed to achieve this. We hope this helps you, too!
Before we begin, though, let’s talk about conversions. Yes, page views are great. But they really only tell you how many people visited your site and read your content. Conversions matter a lot more: those are the people who got to your blog, thought your content was awesome, and then actually took some kind of action. There are three key ways to track conversions: email signup tracking, on-page CTA conversions, and social mentions. We’ll get to these later. But for now, let’s get back to your problem:
The Problem: How Do I Know if this is Working?
Even when a content strategy seems to be “working” (by some definition), digital marketers often struggle to attribute success and leads to specific posts or a specific type of content. This is an extremely common pain point that many of our clients and digital marketing teams in general face. For a content marketing strategy to work, having a solid attribution model is critical. It helps you course-correct and make better decisions about the kind of content that you are creating.
Knowing which content translates to leads and conversions is invaluable. It gives you insights that can help you optimize your efforts in both content creation and content dissemination. Noting what kind of content works is as important as tracking specific content pieces that convert. This’ll help you replicate success across your strategy.
Working Backward – Understand What Clients Want And Which Pieces Of Content Most Closely Align With That
One of the best ways to ensure success is to write content that your clients want. Keep this in mind: your client’s search for and click on the content they want. Yes, Captain Obvious reporting for duty! But you’d be surprised how often marketers fail to see this.
What the heck do clients want from a piece of content? The answers vary, but here are some common points. Your prospects are more likely to consume content that solves actual problems for them. Content that showcases expertise with a lot of examples is another kind of content that seems to work well. Third, Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOTF) content tends to convert more than Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU) content. Case studies are a great example of BOTF content. They showcase how you solved a particular problem for a client and the results you gained by implementing your solution.
This doesn’t mean that TOFU content isn’t important. Often, TOFU’s what drives traffic to your site from people interested in learning more, and this has SEO implications for your website. The key is to have balanced high search-volume TOFU content with high-intent BOTF material.
Tracking Email Signups
Email signup campaigns: most likely, you’re already running one or you’re seriously considering it. Drip campaigns that are placed at the right cadence, with great CTAs, are an invaluable source of high-quality leads. But you need to keep this in mind: your emails are actually content, too! Again, a super obvious point until you realize you haven’t actually been doing that. Your email copy needs to grab attention by addressing client problems. You want to provide real value so that there’s some point in a prospect opening your email. And you want to make sure there’s a CTA, a course of action your client can take that takes them closer to a purchase decision. This could mean signing up for your newsletter, getting on a call, or just visiting your blog. If you’re doing it right, you should see qualified leads picking up month-to-month. But how do you attribute this to emails? By using email trackers!
Using an Email Tracker
Tracking URLs are your best friend when you’re trying to understand which email CTAs are converting. You can add simple URL extensions to the CTA hyperlinks on your emails. Any conversion coming from these particular URLs can then be tracked using google analytics. Often the forms you use can also help you identify the URL which was used to access a particular landing page. To create URLs with extensions, you can try out Google’s own campaign URL builder.
On-Page CTA Conversions
You probably have more than one CTA on your pages – for newsletter sign-ups, for demos, and for any other actions. You may also have the same CTA (e.g. newsletter signup) on multiple pages. You should be taking a closer look at which CTAs are prompting your prospects to act.
If you are building out a landing page, it’s a good idea to use the primary CTA in multiple places to increase the likelihood of conversions taking place. Figuring out which CTAs are working for you and which aren’t will help you use them much more effectively. Let’s take a look at how you can do that:
Use ConvertFlow to Identify Which CTAs Work and to A/B Test Different Options
ConvertFlow is a tool designed to help you evaluate and A/B test your CTAs to identify the ones that work best. ConvertFlow lets you add CTA objects to web pages, from forms and popups to exit intent content and complete landing pages.
ConvertFlow’s A/B testing option is a real differentiator. You can create multiple options for CTA buttons and forms, then test them out on your audience to see what works best. There’s a lot you can fine-tune and improve, here: Experienced digital marketers would tell you that even the button text on forms plays a role in driving online conversions. You can test that out with ConvertFlow to iterate and improve.
Social Listening – What Your Prospects Say About You
Your social media pages aren’t just there to drive links to your blog. Social media can be a great listening tool, too. Once you have achieved a certain level of growth, your brand and content will start garnering attention on social channels. Leads and prospects will start talking about your brand and your content. This is especially true for B2C brands where audience sizes number in the millions. The amount of social mentions you and your brand garner gives you a good indication of how well your content is doing. If users are sharing your content on social platforms, you can track that too to identify which pieces get the most traction.
Social listening isn’t just for B2C brands: Professional forums like LinkedIn help you understand what B2B audiences are saying about your brand, your product, and your content.
Social Mention Tracking
If you don’t use one currently, consider investing in a SaaS solution for social media tracking. By automating the listening process, you’ll be able to understand your social media footprint better (and a lot faster!)
Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout are great options. These tools go beyond the basic social media metrics like reach and engagement. They give you powerful analytics capabilities to listen in to social media conversations, understand the sentiment, and measure the impact you are having on your target audiences.
Conclusion
Whether or not you’re happy with your current content strategy, a conversion-oriented approach can help you do better and achieve tangible growth. But this isn’t a quick fix: it’s a fundamental realignment of how you approach content. Unless you keep a close eye, unless you systematically optimize and improve, there’s a guarantee of long-term success.
The key lies in understanding what type of content and which particular pieces are driving conversions. By attributing your successful conversions to specific themes and types of content, you can help build a far more effective strategy overall.
Remember that feedback loops matter. Most of what we discussed above involves watching what’s working and what’s not working based, and then iterating and improving. This helps you extract the most ROI from your budget, and also focuses your content efforts in areas of proven success.
Keep in mind that your content strategy is just one part of your overall marketing outreach. Content that does well should find a spot in your outreach efforts too. For instance, successful blog pieces should be regularly posted on social media channels.
Also, think about repackaging and repurposing successful content for other outreach campaigns. Let’s say you wrote a solution-oriented piece that did well six months ago, but client interest’s peaking again today. You could capitalize on this by turning that piece into a video script, or breaking up your key insights and packaging them as an email drip.
And finally, remember that content marketing success isn’t an overnight phenomenon. It takes time, effort, consistency, and a systematic approach. At the end of the day, the best indicator of success is the conversions you bring in. Iterate, improve, and you’ll see long-term results.
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