Have you been thinking about blogging for lead generation lately? Or, perhaps you already have an up and running blog, but it doesn’t help much with generating leads?

Either way, getting your blog to send a ton of leads your way isn’t an impossible nut to crack.

First, you need to have a good understanding of your audience and what their pain points are. Creating good content that solves these pain points takes care of the rest, paired with leveraging ways to get your visitors to share their information.

But you don’t have to be as we’ve put together a list of ways bloggers generate leads from their blogs. On top of that, we’ve explained the lead generation process.

Lead generation involves getting interested or potential customers, also called leads, to share their contact information with you.

This way, you can save their info so you can nurture them to convert later on.

the lead generation process is the first step in moving customers through the buying process.

Once you have the contact information, you can take the lead through the various buying stages, for instance, from awareness to interest to consideration, and finally, conversion.

Generally speaking, a good lead-to-visit conversion rate isn’t defined by hard numbers. This is because, in most cases, conversion rates are tied directly to business goals and strategies. It’s still worth mentioning that, for many businesses, visitor-to-lead conversion rates are generally small.

The short answer: with their content or blog posts in simpler terms.

However, reading good content doesn’t mean your lead will take action themselves. Instead, bloggers have to take steps to push them to take action, for instance, encourage them to share their contact information, so they put them through the buying process.

So what are these ways to push leads to sharing their info? Bloggers employ a range of tactics ranging from adding compelling calls to action (CTAs) in their blog posts, offering content upgrades and other freebies, installing lead magnets, using interactive content, hosting giveaways, and so on. All of which can be measured using these lead generation dashboards.

All these are ways to get leads to share their info. But remember, they’re all based on providing high-quality, helpful content. Meaning: bloggers need to offer good content first, generate leads second.

However, in another space – let’s say the CRM market — you probably don’t need to impress anyone with your deep technical expertise. Instead, your best bet is to simply rank for higher intent keywords (like ‘best CRM’). So the strategy may differ depending on the context. However, I think one effective way anyone can generate more leads is the simple (but not easy) strategy of writing better content.”

Wondering exactly how other bloggers are generating leads from their blog? Here’s a brief look at the tactics our expert respondents shared with us:

Lead magnets are “pieces of downloadable content that provide value to the audience, in exchange for their information,” in the words of Andres Tovar of Noetic Marketer.

“Nothing gets people to part with their valuable contact information quicker than offering them a glossy, downloadable asset for free,” opines The Content Panel’s Scott Stevens. “It’s not rocket science, and it’s not new, but it works.”

Here’s how you need to go about creating a valuable asset that your audience will want to download:

“Find a pain point for your target audience that needs a deep dive to fully discuss. Ideally, this will be a topic that requires several thousand words to cover properly at least (without the fluff).

Then create an excellent (and we mean truly excellent) piece of content that addresses the issue and provides actionable advice on fixing it.

Format it all in a glossy ebook format, require an email address to access the download link, and add them to your list (asking permission first, of course).

The closer your lead magnet to the contents of your blog post, the better, and your conversion rate will be higher because this is the topic your reader is interested in. Finally, the best part about having clear categories is that you can also retarget them with social ads with personalized content about the topics they’re interested in. The more personalized you can go, the better

The most effective way to generate leads from your blog is to find a gap in knowledge or expertise in the blogging world

Once you find a topic that hasn’t been over blogged about in the past, then you have to write a stunning blog post with 1000+ words. This requires research and more research!

If you go into a post thinking only about generating leads, you’re doing it wrong. Think about your prospects and what they need. Imagine the questions they’re asking. Then provide answers to those questions.

If you hit the mark, you’re their knight in shining armor. They trust you. And when they need something – either immediately or in the future – they’ll know to turn to you.

Guide your potential customers to decisions rather than pushing them. Write about topics that are directly related to their industry and include useful tips on how your product could make their life easier. Skip the hard sells and focus on solving their problem.

In my experience, the best way to increase lead generation from your blog is to offer people helpful content that lets them take the next step.

Create content for your blog that targets user intent, no matter how specialized or minuscule the term or volume is!

Target your users at all different levels of your funnel by what their interest or pain point is

Even more important is providing value when the user actually lands on your blog post; in short, user intent is everything when it comes to generating leads. Provide value, and they will take the completed action.

Offer exclusive content to your readers: Attract readers with content that will help them more than free blog content

This means providing value in your routine blog posts, and at the same time, going in-depth with exclusive content. For example, you could ask readers to sign up for a webinar, listen to a podcast, or even join your online community

While there are differing opinions out there on the value of gated content, in our experience, it still works extremely well as long as the content you’re gating is useful and valuable.

In your blog post, share valuable information and then offer a full version of the content, or a resource or guide that aligns with the content. At the end of the blog, place a clear call to action that invites the user to share their email address to receive the resource.

Start by considering what the blog post is about and what the reader intends to get out of it, then think creatively about how you can provide additional value with a gated asset.

Create unique content upgrade assets that align to the subject matter of each post… Rather than slapping whatever gated content you already have (webinars, reports, and the like) on blog posts.

If you’ve written a post about how you can use video for sales, offer video scripts to help reps get started. If your blog is about creating a marketing budget, offer a budget template.

To scale this, you can put your posts in topic buckets and create assets that work for several pieces.

Regardless of what kind of content you offer, the most important thing is delivering value to your reader. Do that, and they won’t hesitate to fill out your form.

They talk to leads every day and are the experts on what concerns or questions you should cover in your content.

Use their insights to create engaging content that speaks right to your audience. If a lead sees you taking the time to understand and address their exact concerns, they’ll be more likely to move along your sales funnel.

Content upgrades is the single most effective way to generate more leads — these are specific lead magnet or marketing offers about the blog post they are reading.

Contrast this with the standard everybody else is doing — a popup or a call-to-action to subscribe to the newsletter. Boring and irrelevant. Content upgrades are the way to go if you want to generate more leads. Period. It takes more time, but it’s definitely worth it.

The idea behind the content upgrade is to create an offer that is related to what the blog post is about that can and will provide additional value.

One of the methods I implemented lately was letting my visitors download short summaries of my long blog posts in exchange for an email. It’s pretty straightforward to put it into effect; it practically takes no time, as I always write short summaries of my articles anyway.

The most important thing is not to be overly narrow about the keywords you build articles around

If your visit-to-lead conversion rate from your blog is high, that’s not necessarily a good thing, because it means you’re being too targeted. Your blog should be a place where you cast a wide net to get people onto your site, and ideally get them to give you their email (but if not, you’ve still pixeled them for retargeting).

Getting people to come to your site is about brand awareness, not immediate conversions – those come later.

Having a conversation that is personal, instead of one to many, has paid off for us to generate more leads from our blog.

We’re able to personalize the conversation around what they read and ask if they want more sent to their inbox, or ask them to take the leap to get started. I wish we implemented our bot sooner.

One of the most effective ways that have generated me more leads from my blog is using a ‘Hello Bar’ at the top of my blog posts

Within the bars, I typically include an attractive call to action, like getting exclusive content or offering an e-book, for example. The bars typically have a conversion rate of around 6.25% for me compared to having signup forms within a blog article, which has less than 1% conversion.

You need options that entice people to sign up. For example, when I announced I was hosting an exclusive Community Pinterest Board for my email subscribers, people were clamoring to get on my list.

a blogging community where bloggers are organized by niche, is also popular. People can join the exclusive community when they get on my email list. By getting on my list, people are notified of sales, discounts, and course launches.

For instance, add a call-to-action button in the middle of your blog post so visitors who read 50% of your post will see a CTA. Just by doing this, I can assure you that your visit-to-lead conversion rate will increase.

If you end your post without any invitation to something, even if it’s to leave a comment, you are doing it wrong. You are supposed to get your visitors to do something like download, sign up, click, read another post, install, subscribe, contact, etc. You basically create a lost lead without a compelling call to action.

A high-quality blog post without a compelling CTA is a lead lost. They’re already on your site. They’re already interested and engaged with you and your brand. So give them more.

A strong CTA is action-oriented, benefit-to-them driven, visual, persuasive, and ideally creates a sense of urgency

You don’t want your CTA to be too extreme (‘Buy an apartment NOW!!’) because that will scare users away, but if you’re providing a relevant service, make sure your users know about it

Our blog is the main source of lead generation for us, and the strategy that has worked the best for us is using interactive quizzes. With a single quiz, we’ve generated 25,000+ leads over the past couple of years.

We designed this quiz to help users figure out the best online course platform for their business. We ask them a series of questions and then make a personalized recommendation based on their answers. The users need to enter their name and email address to see the recommendation.

The best part about using a quiz like this is that you don’t ask the visitors to share their information upfront. Rather they’re asked to share it at the end after they’ve engaged with the quiz content, which results in better conversion rates.

Organic Slideshare CTAs at the end of a deck embedded in a post can have a post-click conversion rate on a landing page of nearly 80%. If the deck is good and gets re-purposed on other blogs, it can help scale lead gen efforts past the original blog post.

any organic traffic it gets on Slideshare is susceptible to driving even more incremental leads.

The most successful way I have for generating more leads is to understand the intent behind WHY people are searching for a specific term (e.g. ‘How to increase leads for my blog’) and then provide the users free help to solve this problem.

Give the users more value than they expected. Once you have established trust, you can bring the users a free lead magnet

Basically, give the user something for free in exchange for their email. This is an efficient method that tends to work well for me. It’s all about value and trust…

You would need to understand what people are searching and what content you need to provide to rank and compete with your competitors.

To generate more leads from your blog, you must implement a good SEO strategy that relies on high-quality content plus in-depth keyword research.

If you do the leg work and use keyword research tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs, you can identify hidden opportunities and then capitalize on those opportunities by creating high-quality, keyword-informed content.

The blog topic must have significant overlap with several commercial keywords and be strong enough to rank for these money-makers. This generally happens by creating outstanding content that uses a broad range of LSI terms and thoroughly covers the topic with high-quality content and insights.

The downside is that if you do manage to rank for high-value commercial keywords with your blog post, the searcher intent doesn’t always match, and your customer conversion rate will be lower as a result.

One of the primary pitfalls I have seen when working with clients is that what they think their customers are searching for and what their customers are actually searching for are often very different.

I‘d say you should try to make your blog posts more similar to landing pages, so consider adding a lead form (eventually with a lead magnet) aside, or a form that lets people subscribe to the newsletter

[It] is a great way to convert people that come to your form, and are attracted from content marketing activities.

One effective way for generating more leads from your blog is sharing your blogs on social media

Although social media is one of the best platforms to use to promote your blog, it is difficult to catch users’ attention in the midst of many other brands trying to do the same thing.

It is important to get your post to stand out and make it more engaging. It is common nowadays for users to scroll right past posts that require a lot of reading, as they don’t have the patience or time to get interested.

adding the popular choice of memes, gifs, videos, etc. that are grabbing users’ attention all over these social platforms, will give your post a higher chance of users engaging and wanting to read more, generating more leads.

Surveys through giveaways. Have your readers answer some fun surveys that will give them a chance to win awesome prizes. In this way, you have the opportunity to gather data and generate more leads.

“You find relevant questions and then give as complete an answer as possible, while using the answer to sell the reader on visiting your blog, either to get the solution to their issue or to get further information.

It can be a case of throwing a lot of answers at a wall and seeing which ones stick, but what you will find is that sometimes a good answer will not only get thousands of views, it may end up getting picked up by Google for different keywords. This opens you up to a lot of extra opportunities.

A super effective way to generate more leads from your blog is to add a pop-up blog sign-up

Create a pop-up window that appears in the center of the screen after a few seconds of scrolling. Entice the reader to enter their email address to sign up for a blog newsletter or weekly notifications.

The most effective strategy we use for generating leads from our blog is with pop-ups.

Depending on the content, we’ll ask them to subscribe to the blog/newsletter, view other content that may interest them, or even speak with a sales rep if we view the content closer to the bottom of the funnel.

adding both an in-line call-to-action and another at the end of the blog content is a natural way to generate leads

Although it might feel interruptive, once the visitor has read at least half the blog, this animated CTA really grabs their attention and helps facilitate the next steps. Another tactic is adding a form at the bottom of a post so that contacts don’t have to take the extra step of going to a landing page to download content on a related topic

When qualifying a lead, I need to know whether they understand direct response marketing and why it could be a good fit for them.

So, I send cold traffic to the blog post above with some UTM tags for tracking. They’re then hit with re-targeting ads that mirror the main points in this article, prompting them to join my newsletter or (just implemented) my Facebook group.

The kicker is the retargeting, which either gets them to join my newsletter (if they haven’t already) or join my group. Most of my conversions then happen over email.”

One effective way that I have found to generate leads for a blog is to integrate useful tools within the content

I have used integrated tools such as a golf handicap calculator within the content. I have found this to lead the user to naturally use the tool due to there being a natural connection between content and the resource.

This brings us to the end of our list of ways you can use blogging to gather more leads. In short, lead generation boils down to creating highly valuable content – content that you share as downloadable assets, content that you share as interactive quizzes, content that you share on your blog, and so on.