Consumers have dramatically changed the way they research businesses across all industries and make purchase decisions. This shift has encouraged many businesses to cease outbound strategies and focus on inbound strategies. Inbound marketing distributes useful content in front of consumers who have expressed an interest in a business through online searches or other digital behaviors. The consumer discovers the business in a more natural process, and the business spends less time and resources generating leads or reaching potential customers.
If you’re ready to save money, increase revenue, and enter the world of inbound marketing, congratulations! Let’s get to work.
If you are making the switch to inbound strategies, don’t forget to include a business blog as a part of your overall plan. Consistently posting high-quality blog posts can help you meet lead generation goals for minimal costs.
Blogs Are the Cornerstone of Content Marketing
Blogging isn’t just for travel buffs or gossip columnists. Regularly posting a blog on your company’s website can help to introduce your business to buyers and move them along the customer’s journey for a fraction of the price of outbound strategies.
Producing and sharing content on your social media pages doesn’t have to burn a big hole in your pocket. If your blog posts are optimised and designed to drive traffic to your website, your effort and resources could generate more high-quality leads than outbound methods and give your business better insight into who is visiting your website.
Blogging helps businesses of all shapes and sizes to reach their goals.
Want to share information and news about your company? Consumers aren’t getting their information from traditional forms of communication. A majority of people between the ages 18-49 get their information and news online.
Want to generate more leads? B2B businesses and marketers that consistently blog earn 67% more monthly leads than those that do not. Small businesses who have a blog earn 126% more leads than small businesses that don’t have a blog.
Want more customers? Blog often; 92% of companies that blog multiple times a day have reportedly gained new customers from their blog.
Want to boost ROI? Marketers who make blogging a priority are 13x more likely to report a positive ROI than marketers that don’t.
Convinced? A lot of people are. A majority of inbound marketing specialists (53%) have listed blog content creation as their top priority for 2018. A higher number of marketers (58%) believe that this type of content is the most important type of content to create.
So let’s start blogging!
Generate Leads with a Business Blog: Four Steps
Build an Optimised Website.
Google is more likely to recognise your website if you have more content for users to explore and engage with. Blog posts offer readers more chances to have a user-friendly experience and further navigate your site. Once readers are finished looking at your blog post, they have the rest of your website at their fingertips.
If you want to start generating leads with content, assess the content on your website first. Are your landing pages optimised and user-friendly? Are your call-to-actions encouraging readers to take the next step down the buyer’s journey? Does Google recognise your site as a trusted source of information?
Yes? Good.
Once your landing pages are ready, it’s time to start writing blog posts. Optimise your blog posts with the following guidelines.
Write Posts that are Relevant to Consumer Searches.
Say you run an interior design company. After conducting market research and creating buyer personas, you learn that your customers like to do online research through Google before they make a purchase decision. Your customers hire interior designers to keep their homes looking fresh and trendy. So, before they are looking for specific designers, they are searching for terms like, “interior design trends 2018” or “modern kitchen designs.”
If you have a blog on your website, you can write posts that are relevant to your customers’ interests and bring them onto your site before they want to buy. Sure, you may not get a direct sale out of a blog post about 2018 Interior Design Trends, but you will introduce yourself. The more familiar customers are with your company name and website, the more likely they are to recall that name when looking for companies in your industry. When your customers are ready to buy, your blog posts will influence where they begin research.
A good blog post will appear on more than just search engine results. If your blog post has information that readers think is useful for others, they are more likely to share that post on their social media sites. Sharing posts helps your blog reach a wider network of users who already trust the information on the page (after all, your site was recommended by a friend or person in their network.)
Establish Authority and Provide Value.
Blog posts are a new tactic for an old strategy: building trust with customers in order to make a sale. When customers make online searches and conduct research, they are looking for solutions or answers to questions. As an authority in your industry, you have the ability to provide these answers and begin a positive exchange with your customers.
This is why it’s so important to write high-quality blog posts that readers want to share with others. An informative, accurate blog post gives potential customers what they are looking for. It’s a gift! After you provide this free information and establish trust and a position of authority in the industry, it’s time for readers to return the favor. This is where all of the statistics and numbers you read earlier in the post come into play.
Invite the Reader to Learn More (and Generate Leads!)
Blog posts provide a great opportunity to:
- Ask for contact information or sign readers up for your mailing list
- Direct readers to your landing page
- Sign readers up for a free consultation or trial of your product
Write a call-to-action or offer more content at the bottom of the post. If the reader enjoyed the blog post and wants to receive more content, they are more likely to share their contact information or follow your social media pages to further engage with your content.
If you generate more leads, you can generate more revenue. If you generate more revenue for less resources, you boost ROI and move closer to your growth goals.
Top Tips for Writing a Blog Post That Generates Revenue
Know Where Blogs Fit in Your Content Marketing Strategy
If you write blog post content that makes a hard pitch for your products to customers who just want to conduct research, you will come off as pushy. If you targeting blog posts to reach bottom-of-the-funnel customers, you aren’t pushing hard enough to close the sale. Understand how blog posts can be used to guide potential customers to becoming leads.
Create Buyer Personas
Blog posts give you an opportunity to speak directly to potential leads and customers – but who are they? Before you create your content marketing or blog post strategy, create a list of buyer personas. These profiles paint a picture of who you are trying to reach, how they behave online, and what problems or questions they are trying to solve with online research and your products. Use and share buyer personas with your marketing team so you know how to effectively write and share your blog posts to generate leads or meet other goals.
Conduct Keyword Research
Writing blog posts for the sake of adding content to your website won’t put you at the top of customers’ search engine results. In order to take advantage of the benefits of blogging, you have to know what your customers are searching for and what search terms they are using. Tailor your blog posts to match these search results and answer your customers’ questions before they even ask.
Keep Writing
Unfortunately, one or two blog posts on your site are not going to cut it. After a few months, customers who browse through your site and see a neglected blog will get a negative impression of your business. If you want to commit to a blog, commit to writing posts at least twice a month.
Reach Out to a Content Marketing Agency
Blog posts are only one piece of the content marketing puzzle. White papers, eBooks, case studies, and video content can all be used to generate more leads and increase your conversion rate and overall content marketing ROI. Individual staff members can take on the job of writing blog posts, but you can also reach out to an experienced content marketing agency that can work with you to conduct market research, create buyer personas, and optimise your blog posts so they reach your target audience.
Boost ROI with a Top Content Marketing Agency Auckland
The team at Digital Squad knows how important content marketing is to businesses of all sizes. We also know that SEO best practices and social media algorithms change in the blink of an eye. While you focus on improving your products and services to fit your customers’ needs, let us take over the job of creating a user-friendly experience for leads and customers online.
Megan Okonsky is a copywriter and content marketing specialist with Digital Squad. She is originally from Philadelphia but has landed in Melbourne after traveling for eight months in Southeast Asia and New Zealand. She also teaches vinyasa yoga online.
Recommended Reads:
7 Basic Digital Marketing Habits Your Business Needs to Adopt
How to Create Content for Each Step of the Sales Funnel
Effective Link Building Strategies for 2018
Helping Small Businesses Grow and Adapt with Marketing Automation
