9 Effective Ways to Turn Your Blog Readers into Paying Members

When you are running a credit union, it goes without saying that attracting more members to your brand is paramount. The chart below shows the top marketing challenges facing financial institutions today, and generating traffic is number one.
To this end, many banks and credit unions have begun to recognize the importance of digital marketing.

Harnessing the power of social media platforms and creating a blog is now becoming standard practice. Yet not all blogs are equal. So, how can you ensure your blog readers aren’t just engaging with your material and then moving on elsewhere? How can you turn those readers into paying customers?
Inbound traffic is invaluable to any financial institution. Potential customers find you when they carry out an online search because they’ve got a problem they need to solve. But you need to play your part in this equation.
You can’t expect readers to immediately become paying customers just because they have found your blog. They need to click on your post and get the answers they need. More than that, they also need to see you’re an expert and have what they need to solve their issues.
To do this, you need to know how to create highly converting blog posts. With this in mind, here are nine top tips to help you to maximize the potential of your institution’s blog.
1. Understand Your Audience
The audience that you are creating your blog for will dictate the style and topics that will drive conversions. Yet, institutions create blog content to appeal in subject matter and language style to those running financial institutions. This will not appeal to their target audiences.
So, how do you choose the right subject matter for your blog so you can convert readers to customers? The key is to find out more about the pain points of your potential customers.

The above chart shows some research carried out into the pain points of banking customers. These would be a good place to begin when seeking blog content that would be valuable to readers.
Essentially, you need to know what potential customers need from your institution. How can you solve their problems and make a positive impact on them? To do this, you need to thoroughly understand the kind of person who will act after reading your content. Creating a “buyer persona” is the best way forward.
Finding out a potential customer’s age, marital status, gender, interests, and profession will give you some background to work with. Once you have these details, you can then begin to create appropriate content with the right tone.
Topics centering around potential customers’ pain points will drive conversions since they’re targeting readers who need solutions to their issues. This means they are already in the frame of mind to become customers. However, you should take care not to give all the answers in your posts. Giving actionable and useful information is important. But you need to leave some room for calls to action that encourages readers to find out more.
2. Make Content that Fits into the Buying Cycle

Inevitably, customers progress through a buying cycle, as shown in the info graphic above, before purchasing anything.
The first step is awareness. The customer knows he or she requires something. However, he or she is not yet sure what it is. The customer then progresses to the consideration stage. At this point, the customer begins looking for a solution and carrying out some initial research. Once the customer has found something to resolve his or her problem, the customer moves into the intent stage. At this point, the customer just needs to choose where to go for the solution he or she has found. It is only at this point that the customer will make a purchase. The final step is....-->

When you are running a credit union, it goes without saying that attracting more members to your brand is paramount. The chart below shows the top marketing challenges facing financial institutions today, and generating traffic is number...