So, you have a B2B blog and are producing great content, but it may feel like that content isn’t getting viewed as much as you would like. And let’s face it, being in the B2B world, we don’t want people to just read our blogs, we want them to subscribe to them so that we can set up email marketing campaigns and turn these subscribers into engaged leads and sales.
When it comes to a B2B blog, the top metric that most marketing departments look at is the number of subscribers to the blog aka new leads. So many marketers spend more time promoting their content and getting subscribers than they spend on actually writing content. Because promoting content and getting subscribers is important.
Just in case you are unsure of how effective blogging is for B2B content marketing, let’s start with some data about B2B blogging as part of a functioning content marketing strategy:
So now that it’s been established that blogging is uber important and that a blog can generate leads for your brand, let’s explore how you can get more people to subscribe to your B2B blog.
Make your CTA to subscribe to your blog look visually appealing and prominent. You also don’t want to ask for too much information as this will turn people off. Your subscribe CTA should really only ask for the person’s name and email address. Here is where your subscribe button/box should show up on your site:
You can create a subscribe button in any WordPress theme or you can have your website designer create one really easily. Just make sure it’s hooked up to your marketing automation platform so that all of your blog subscribers are being funneled into a specific list.
Aside from having a small CTA to subscribe to your B2B blog on the sidebar of your homepage, try dedicating a section of your homepage to your blog. Talk about your blog’s theme and have a carousel of your latest posts for site visitors to check out.
In addition to having a subscribe button in strategic places on your site, you can also create a separate landing page just for getting people to subscribe to your blog. You can tease readers with a summary of the strategies and information that your blog covers and offer a sample of your best blog posts.
Having a landing page where users can subscribe to your blog means that you can easily recruit and direct people to that landing page as opposed to a small box on the side of your blog. Here are a few strategies to get new viewers to your landing page:
Tap into your email list of lead and clients and send out an email inviting people to subscribe to your B2B blog. Make it friendly and seem urgent by saying something to the effect of “We don’t want you to miss any of the tips and strategies that we publish weekly so subscribe to our blog to stay in the loop.” It may also be helpful to add “We won’t spam you, we’ll just send you great posts once a week!”
70% of people who come to a website never come there again so it’s crucial to capture their information right away. Popups are hard to ignore and if the popup goes up while the reader is viewing one of your great blog posts, they might want to sign up so they get more great content like the piece they’re currently reading.
An easy but overlooked way to get people to subscribe to your blog is to have a link to it in your email signature. Think of all the emails that you send out per day and all these people could be potential blog subscribers! This is another reason to have a subscription landing page because it would be better to put the subscribe landing page in your email signature as opposed to a link to your B2B blog.
Bribe people who come to your homepage or blog with a free ebook or white paper when they subscribe to your B2B blog. It’s completely ethical and just may help blog viewers take that extra step to subscribe to your blog.
Virtually networking in groups like LinkedIn Groups and Triberr can you engage with like-minded professionals and you can invite them to read your blog posts and subscribe to your blog. Be sure to lead with your best content and ask them to share it with their own readers and ask them to subscribe to your B2B blog. Play fair and subscribe to their blogs too!
It’s likely that part of your content marketing strategy involves producing content that is gated with a lead capture form like ebooks, white papers, and webinars. In your lead capture form, you can put a checkbox that allows people to subscribe to your blog in addition to downloading your piece of content or registering for your webinar.
OptInMonster is a tool that helps marketers convert website visitors into subscribers. In it, you can design forms, show personalized messages according to behavior patterns, A/B test your ideas and it helps marketers create the type of forms we’ve talked about in this post like sidebars, floating bars, and scroll boxes. OptInMonster has gorgeous templates so it takes the design work out of the process on your part.
Once you’ve implemented all of these strategies to grow subscribers on your blog, you want to make sure that you retain them. Here are some things to keep in mind to keep the subscribers on your B2B blog:
Do you have any strategies that have worked for you to grow subscribers to your B2B blog? We’d love to hear about them on Twitter @Feed_Otter!
