4 Simple Tips to Start a Business Blog that Generate Leads

There are multiple reasons could be stated as to why financial service firms have a blog. In the end, it should narrow down to 2 general reasons: (1) Blogging will generate more traffic to your website. (2) The content for each blog post has opportunities to generate leads for their business.

Reason no. 2 is very prominent, especially in the financial sector. You want your advisors to be in contact with new potential investors.  But looking through many financial service websites, there are huge improvements that could be done to significantly increase the number of leads with your blog articles

Here are the 4 blogging tips that you should apply to start a business blog that generate leads. 

1. Stop trying to sell and instead, help in your blog articles.

You need to keep in mind that most people who will read your blog are not yet at the stage where they are shopping for a firm to process an investment transaction. Rather, they are looking for educational pieces of content that will help them better understand their situation and to apply what they have learned to improve.

All to say that your blog needs to focus on the pain point of your potential customers and guide them as to how they can alleviate them. They want to make sure that the company they will be dealing with is one who is knowledgeable and trustworthy. That can be proven with helpful educational blog articles.

2. Don’t treat it as a newsletter.

I’ve seen many business blog sites are for posting about their business updates, but blogs are not made for that. Keep those updates separated mainly because the audience for your newsletter are mostly clients already and possibly some who are towards the end of the buying process.

Typically, newsletters are all about you and how your business is going. Their primary function is to show that your company is progressive and successful. This is very different from providing content that focuses on helping potential investors solve a problem.

3. Focus on your Buyer’s Persona.

A buyer’s persona is a semi-fictional character that represents your ideal customer. When you write blog articles, you always need to keep in mind your buyer’s persona. What’s his/her name? What are their goals and challenges in life? How do they like to consume information? Is he/she married with kids? How much money does this individual have? How much of their wealth are they willing to invest? These are only a few questions that will help form a well-developed buyer’s persona.

By having your persona in mind, you will be able to instinctively write your blog articles specifically catered towards them. You want to attract the right leads for your business and the best leads are those that are your buyer’s persona.

Not only will this help with writing blog articles, it will help all your staff to be unified and focused.

4.  Add a Call-to-action (CTA) to all your blog articles.

I emphasize this a lot when I speak with other companies. When I ask them how they are using their blog articles to generate leads, they fumble in their answer. However, if they knew what a CTA was, the question would have easily been answered.

A CTA is an image, text, or a combination of the two that probes an action from the reader.

I’ve used this CTA as an example, of a financial advisor, in one of my previous blog articles.

Including a CTA in your blog is key to driving leads for your sales pipeline. You may have a well-written blog that speaks to your buyer’s persona with compelling educational content, but if you do not probe for an action, your readers will consider the content as simply food for thought and will continue on with their lives.

We suggest placing your main CTA at the end of your blog post. If you place it in the middle, it could be disruptive. If you place it at the end, it flows naturally as the reader has fully engaged with the blog article and now is ready to dive deeper.

For lead generation purposes, your CTA content (eBooks, checklists, guides, etc.) needs to be gated. Meaning in order for your prospects to view or download the content, they would need to provide their contact information in exchange. When done correctly, there is no reason why they wouldn’t, especially if the value of what they will be getting will help alleviate pain points that your persona is facing.

Pro tips:

• Add a CTA that is relevant with your blog article to increase click rate.
• Avoid using the “Contact-Us for a consultation” type of ordeal. Most visitors are not ready to speak with a salesperson just yet. They are still trying to figure things out on their end.
• If you don’t have any content that could be gated, use one of your sales documents and transform it into a checklist or a timeline.