Automating B2B Lead Gen with Blog Boomerang Strategy 

Blogging is hard. Isn't it? But do you know what’s harder? 

Bringing ‘real’ leads by writing blogs on your domain. 

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7.5 million blogs are published every day.

Naturally, you can't expect your one new blog to move anything in the blogging universe (or entice Google algorithms to rank you). 

When there's so much noise, you need to shake your leg. 

Your work doesn't end after you hit the publish button as a marketer. You need to keep your co-founder, client, or boss excited about the 'organic opportunity'. 

Without distributing the piece, all the hours you spent on blog research, writing, editing, and making the blog publish-ready are just non-productive time (NPT) in the eyes of a KPI (or OKR)-driven founder. 

The world doesn't pay for the effort but results. And outcomes in marketing means having one more subscriber or MQL in the funnel who's interested in the product (or service).  

In a world of cut-throat digital competition, busy search algorithms, and dwindling user attention, bringing incoming traffic just after you hit publish is a far-fetched thought. 

So, how do you get that? And what does it have to do with automating lead generation for your startup? Read on to find out more. 

This blog will highlight a unique strategy that would promise more exciting results than your standard, run-of-the-mill content distribution plan. 

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The Concept: Remarketing to Target Audience

Everyone knows that talking about booze with your friends and bhajan (prayers) with your parents is sensible. (Unless you want to get in trouble). 

Then why do we forget this simple principle while marketing? Why do 'gurus' and industry experts have to keep shouting about the target audience repeatedly? 

If you succeed in bringing traffic (and automating lead gen), you need to be serious about audience discovery, documentation, segmentation and remarketing. 

Now, these are four different terms, but closely interrelated: 

1. Discovery: You should know your audience and where your audience is spending time online. 
2. Documentation: You should have documented target personas (or ideal customer profiles) to standardise your marketing efforts. 
3. Segmentation: You should segment your audience based on their interests, preferences, and goals. 
   
   More about segmentation in marketing automation here.
   
   
4. Targeting & Remarketing: Ideally, you should only reach out to your audience when you have something relevant for that target group (segment). 

Targeted reach is always better if you want tangible (and valuable) results. 

You don't want online lurkers to keep filling your marketing funnels. Without targeting your ideal customers effectively, any number wouldn't matter, no matter how big. It's just a vanity metric.

There is no point in having a million-large subscriber list (or trial users)if they aren't interested in your product or service.

You might have heard about building a target audience. 

This should be your first step if you want to leverage content marketing. With a well defined and documented target audience, you can market well.

Now the question is, how a targeted strike helps your blog?

When you approach prospects interested in your offering, there are more chances of them turning into a subscriber or customers.

So, let's see how we can distribute our blog to a targeted audience with minimal resources. 

The Rationale: Blog Boomerang Strategy

Blog boomerang strategy prompts the most engaged (and motivated) ones from your target audience to read your blog post. This can be done by directing the involved audience to a blog via paid promotions. 

Blog boomerang strategy is designed to make prospects become more informed and move further in the buyer's journey. 

More informed prospects are much more likely to buy something quickly. Thus, they're more likely to become paid consumers. 

The Strategy: Mix & Match Paid + Organic Channel

If you're a small business (or an early-stage startup) with limited funds, every penny counts. Even time matters, too. 

You must be spending on a content writer for blog writing, SEO, designer, etc. If not for everyone, you must be having some expense of running your blog. Right? 

And if it doesn’t bring results, everything’s wasted. Right? 

So, a better way is to be hyperfocused on getting results from every piece of investment you make. (Remember ROIs)

I love to call this approach a hybrid concoction of paid and organic marketing channels. 

Heard of the famous Hindi quote ‘ एक और एक ग्यारह:’? (1+1=11) 

Well, this is precisely the same. 

You know your competitors are everywhere — in Google search results, social media, Facebook ads, YouTube, etc. 

So, why not expand your reach by mixing and matching paid and organic channels. We'll do this to get leads your way (and automate lead gen via your blog). 

The Ingredients: What You Need to Execute this Strategy? 

Well, let's go through everything you need one by one. I will guide you on every aspect here. 

Here’s a list of everything: 

1. A website with a blog section
2. An active Facebook ad account
3. A social-media worthy informational video 
4. A lead form on your website 

Now, let’s look at each of these elements, one by one: 

1. A Functioning Website with a Blog Section 

This goes without saying. Right? You need to have an active content funnel if you want the best results. 

No need to go into the specifics at first. Just focus on writing the best you can. If you get confused about the blog ideas, think hard. 

💡 Quick Idea for Blogging 

If you are a business owner, you would have a lot of insights to share with your audience. If you have built a target persona, think about addressing your buyers' pain points in your blogs. 

Even when you are just starting up or are want to pursue blogging as a career, you still need to discover your audience persona and write to solve their problems. 

Let's say you got the writing part sorted. Now, you have to think of reaching the maximum number of targeted visitors.

2. An Active Facebook Account

We need Facebook for more than a couple of things. Even if you are an organic reach lover, you can't ignore the capabilities of a platform with 2.9 bn billion monthly active users (MAUs). 

Moreover, it has targeting features to run ads. (not only the notorious ones that landed Mark into a congressional hearing). We will come to it a bit later. 

Just keep your ad account ready.

3. A Social Media Worthy Video

Well, this is where things get exciting. Let's wait for the actual plan to unfold. 

Before that, let's create a video. Something short (15-30 seconds) with a great hook and a strong message for the target audience. 

This should not be a marketing video but an informational video. 

The first two were easy - you might already have a blog or a website. And creating a Facebook business account is simple. Right?

But to create a video, you might think you need a reasonable budget. Not really in 2022, to be honest. Well, I am not negating the hard work of video creators. 

But let's say that you have a limited budget. Then you need something that can help you quickly create a video directly. 

You can use Canva or Lumen5 to quickly create an informational video using your blog or a different script. Lumen 5 is an AI-based tool to automate video creation for social media, and trust me; it will work fine.

Now, you have all the ingredients to make it happen. Let's move on to the actual strategy.

Actionable Guide: How to Get Leads from Blogs?

1. Create an awareness/informational video

Use Lumen 5 to create an informational video about the pain point of your target audience. Remember the video should be short and informative. 

Anything more than 30 seconds would be a waste of resources in a world with a short attention span. 

2. Run ads for video views

Upload the video on your Facebook page. Now, use the Facebook Ads platform to run a video view ad from the video post. 

You can target your ad for the most common interests around your niche. 

Read more: how to create a target audience and discover their interests & pain points.

3. Create a custom audience from video viewers

Now, the fun part begins. 

After running the ad for a while, say two days, and getting some traction, look for ad analytics in your Facebook ad account. 

Now go to the audience section in ad manager and click 'create an audience'. Choose a video and select the video on your Facebook page in the 'data source' section. 

This tells Facebook to consider the people who have any connection to this video. In the criterion, we will choose ' consider with 50% of the video.'

It’s natural if someone has viewed the video for at least 50% of length, he is mildly interested in the topic. 

4. Run link click ads for the blog

We have to run a link click ad on Facebook with our blog link. We will choose a custom audience (the one we created in the last step).

We can even create a lookalike audience from the custom audience. 

Now, place an ad order and let the magic begin.

Don't forget to embed a popup form for sign-ups or lead generation

I believe you already have a popup form with exit intent or any other type of lead form on your blog. If not, get to work. 

Prospects who have viewed the ad previously will come to the blog to discover more info on the same topic; they would be more qualified to reach out from a marketing standpoint (MQLs, in SaaS terminology)  

We need to capture their interest through lead gen forms. 

You have an excellent funnel to see interested leads pumping in once you have the right combo of the blog, video, ad, and lead form.

Wrapping up

Now you know the strategy, start using it to your advantage. 

The subtle hybrid of organic content marketing with a pinch of paid ads would bring great results and distribute your content to an interested audience. 

There can be several mix and match scenarios where you add another step or broaden the audience. Still, you will be in a better position using the basic concept than many of your competitors.

I will keep adding more insights to this strategy in the future. :)