This episode I want to talk about how we changed our content marketing approach two years ago, built a content lead engine and quintupled (5x) our product trial leads. One of the success posts, there will be learnings from failures in the next episodes (promised ;).
We used our blog which already generated a lot of organic traffic (we were #100,000 in the Alexa traffic ranking) but our readers were not jumping on our product train. We had a super low number of visitors trying out our product.
After some failures in putting promotional ads into our blog, we talked to some experts and started building a content lead engine. By adding a lead-generation component to our blog, we nurtured our audience slowly and moved the interested ones to our product value.
Content Lead Engine
By creating e-books as lead magnets and remarketing our audience from the blog, we increased our product trial leads by 400% per month.
Have fun and share your feedback about this episode with me. If you have a similar approach why not share it with the audience (=> Comments).
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Here’s the transcription
How to Build a Content Lead Engine and Quintuple Your Product Leads
As a SaaS company, generating quality leads is crucial for driving growth and revenue. While many businesses focus on paid advertising or cold outreach, building a content-driven lead engine can be a highly effective and sustainable strategy. In this post, we’ll share how we were able to quintuple our product trial leads by optimizing our blog content and leveraging strategic lead magnets and remarketing.
The Challenge: Turning Blog Traffic into Leads
Around a year and a half ago, we found ourselves in a common predicament for content-driven businesses – our blog was generating significant traffic, but it wasn’t translating into meaningful product leads.
Our blog was one of our main sources of organic traffic, accounting for 93% of our website visitors. We were ranked in the top 100,000 websites globally on Alexa, a testament to the success of our content strategy. However, when we looked at the relationship between blog visitors and product trials, the numbers were dismal – we were only seeing around 50 product trials per month, despite having 100,000 monthly blog visitors.
Clearly, we needed to find a way to better leverage our blog as a lead generation engine. Simply adding promotional banners and ads to our blog posts wasn’t cutting it. We needed a more strategic and nuanced approach to turn our blog traffic into qualified leads.
Developing a Content Lead Engine
To address this challenge, we decided to implement a “content lead engine” – a systematic process for converting blog visitors into product trial leads. This involved several key steps:
1. Categorizing Blog Content
The first step was to organize our blog content into relevant categories. With over 300 blog posts, it was important to create a structure that would allow us to personalize the user experience and nurture leads more effectively.
We grouped our blog posts into categories like “Customer Feedback”, “Customer Experience”, “Quality Assurance”, and “User Acceptance Testing” – all topics closely aligned with our user feedback platform. This categorization not only improved the user experience, but also laid the groundwork for our lead generation efforts.
2. Developing Lead Magnets
Once we had our blog content organized, we started creating lead magnets to incentivize visitors to share their contact information. Our primary lead magnets were in-depth ebooks, each focused on a specific topic covered in our blog categories.
Crafting Valuable Ebooks
- We quickly realized that creating high-quality ebook content would be a significant undertaking. To expedite the process, we reached out to industry experts from companies like Typeform and Uber, and interviewed them for the ebooks.
- This not only allowed us to produce the ebooks much faster, but also lent credibility and authority to the content.
- We launched one ebook after another, covering the key topics and categories of our blog.
3. Implementing Email Nurturing Sequences
With our lead magnets in place, we set up automated email nurturing sequences to guide blog visitors through the sales funnel. Using marketing automation tools like ActiveCampaign, we created multi-touch email campaigns that would:
- Deliver the requested ebook
- Provide additional valuable content related to the visitor’s interests
- Gradually introduce our product and encourage product trials
This allowed us to slowly nurture leads, building trust and familiarity with our brand and offerings before making a direct sales pitch.
4. Leveraging Remarketing
One of the key “secret ingredients” to the success of our content lead engine was remarketing. We set up remarketing campaigns in Google Ads and Google Analytics to target blog visitors who had not immediately converted on our ebook offers.
Targeted Remarketing Campaigns
- We only targeted visitors who had spent at least 30 seconds on our blog, ensuring we weren’t wasting ad spend on people who had quickly bounced off our site.
- Our remarketing ads were highly tailored to the specific blog categories and topics that each visitor had engaged with.
- This allowed us to stay top-of-mind with our target audience and gently nudge them back towards our product trials.
The Results: A 400% Increase in Product Trials
After implementing our content lead engine, the results were nothing short of remarkable. Here’s a breakdown of the key metrics:
Key Metrics
- Blog and Ebook Page Visitors: Increased by 40% to 130,000 per month
- Alexa Ranking: Improved by 34% to position 66,000 globally
- Product Trials: Increased by 400% from 50 to 250 per month
- Email Leads: Generating between 1,000 and 2,000 new leads per month
The light blue line in the graph below clearly shows the dramatic increase in product trials after we implemented our content lead engine strategy:
[Insert graph showing the increase in product trials over time]
Key Learnings
Throughout this process, we gained several valuable insights that can help other businesses looking to build a content-driven lead generation engine:
- Don’t Sell at the Entrance: Resist the urge to aggressively promote your product within your blog content. Visitors are typically in the awareness or consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, not ready to make a purchase. Instead, focus on providing valuable, educational content that builds trust and familiarity with your brand.
- Move Your Audience Through the Funnel: Recognize that your audience is at different stages of the buyer’s journey. Use your content and lead magnets to gradually move them from awareness to consideration to decision, nurturing them with the right content at each stage.
- Leverage the Power of Remarketing: Remarketing can be a highly effective tool for re-engaging blog visitors who haven’t immediately converted. Work with experts to set up targeted, data-driven remarketing campaigns that keep your brand top-of-mind.
- Involve Experts and Learn from Them: Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Seek out experts who have successfully implemented content lead generation strategies and learn from their experience. This can significantly accelerate your own efforts and help you avoid common pitfalls.
- Continuously Optimize and Expand: Building a successful content lead engine is an ongoing process. Continuously analyze your results, identify areas for improvement, and expand your lead magnet offerings to keep your audience engaged and moving through the funnel.
Conclusion
Transforming your blog from a traffic driver to a lead generation powerhouse may seem like a daunting task, but the potential rewards are well worth the effort. By implementing a strategic content lead engine, we were able to quintuple our product trial leads and significantly improve our overall marketing performance.
Remember, the key is to provide value, nurture your audience, and leverage the right tools and tactics to guide them towards your product. With the right approach, your blog can become a powerful engine for sustainable growth.
If you’d like to learn more about our content lead engine or get tips on how to implement a similar strategy for your business, be sure to subscribe to my growth podcast. I’m always happy to share more insights and answer any questions you may have.
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