Have you heard all the buzz about blogging, but not sure if it is right for your business?
Do you know you need to add more content to your website, but are not sure what to write about?
Are you just not sure if it will work, and bring you more customers?
A lot of the marketing activities that businesses are trying today are highly ineffective.
Do you even have a yellow pages anymore or get a newspaper delivered to your house?
Direct mail goes right into the recycle bin, cold calls get ignored, TV commercials get skipped on the DVR, and banner ads are glazed right over because we know they are advertisements.
Steve Olenski a contributor to Forbes says “The problem comes when traditional marketers rely predominantly – or even worse, solely on methods that simply do not work as they once did.”
If your competitors are already doing it, then they are getting in front of your prospects that are online right now searching for the products you sell or the services you provide.
I’m sure you have seen some of your competitors that are not as qualified as you are that are taking up space in your market.
You can’t afford to wait any longer because these same competitors are not going to wait for you to start, and they are getting your customers.
Why Do It
Marketing your company today is much different than it was in previous years.
You must have open communication between your company and your target prospects.
Blogging, sometimes referred to as content marketing can be an invaluable asset to your business when you do it right.
It allows you to become an authority for your products and services, and show your prospects that you are the best choice for them.
The content marketing institute asked marketers what a successful and effective content marketing program looks like…
…and the number 1 reply was LEADS to the business.
Some other answers included:
- Awareness
- Creation of valuable articles
- Web Traffic
They also said that all of these things are part of what gets the business to its goals –
increasing revenue and profit, lowering costs, and creating loyal, long term relationships with their customers.
It can become an important part of your new client generation and brand awareness.
It is a general rule of thumb that a portion of your prospects will need to be touched 3 to 7 times before they decide to purchase from you, or use your services.
Adding this type of valuable content to your website is a great way to continue to stay in touch with them and move them along your sales process…
…and it allows them to consume more content on your website, until they trust you enough to contact you.
Daniel Newman on Forbes.com says that the buyer’s journey has changed and that consumers do more research themselves, and engage more content to support their buying decisions.
He says that according to Forrester research:
- 70 to 90% of the buyers journey is completed before contacting a service provider
- People consume 11.4 pieces of content before making a buying decision
…and according to Nielsen:
- People rely on content five times more than they did five years ago.
So if you just have the basic pages on your website like home, about, and contact us…you could be missing out on converting prospective visitors into new paying customers.
Blogging may be one of the highest return on investments of any type of marketing available today.
Investing your time and income into good quality content for your website can pay off in many ways.
What To Put On Your Blog
Maybe you have tried Google pay per click advertising where you buys ads on Google to show up on specific keywords or phrases related to your business…
…but it wound up being a waste of money because no one that clicked on your ads became a customer.
Getting them to your site is one thing, but if they don’t find what they are looking for, and fast, they will leave and go to your competitor’s site.
Most marketers will just send the traffic from the ad directly to the businesses’ home page.
WordStream in their article 7 Ways to Ruin Your Google Advertising Campaigns said that a lot of people think that it’s good to send the traffic to your home page because it will give them the most choices and allow them to see everything that you have.
But they go on to say that people clicking on ads are looking for immediate solutions and if they don’t get them they will go somewhere else to find them.
You want to take them to the most relevant page on your website based on what they are searching for.
So the content on your site is very important, and this goes for blogging as well…
…because not everyone who finds your website is going to enter through the home page.
Google will send them to the pages on your site that are most relevant to what they are searching for.
Another reason why it is important to keep adding new fresh content to your site, is so that you get more “at bats” with the search engines, for them to send you more traffic.
How To Find Out What YOUR Customers Want
Finding out the best type of content to put on your blog begins with understanding your audience.
What are they searching for, what are they trying to find out when they are doing their research for your products or services.
What are the top questions they have about your products and/or services, even what words and language do they use when they are talking about your type of business?
This can be figured out by taking some time to:
- Review your past customer data
- Survey some of your past customers (and asking them the right questions)
- Doing a bit of online market research
- Find out what specific terms they are searching for
You can uncover some golden nuggets of information that will help you connect with prospective customers on a more personal level.
This enables them to get to know, like, and trust you much faster than with traditional media.
When someone goes online to search for a product or service they are thinking in their minds “Who can I trust?”
This is also why case studies, testimonials, before and after pictures, etc… work so well.
Creating and providing valuable content lets your prospective customers do their research on your website, and not have to go to your competitors website to find what they are looking for.
Taking the time to do this research and really connecting with your prospects has proven to sky rocket the conversion rates of business websites – leading to more new business being consistently generated.
Tracking Your Progress
The old standby in marketing is to be successful, you have to know your numbers.
How much does your marketing cost, how many leads are you getting, how many leads are converting into sales, etc…
With content marketing you can install an analytics tracking program on your website which enables you to track things such as:
- How many people are visiting your website
- See which content people are visiting
- How long they are staying on the page
- What topics to write more about
- How many leads you are getting
This lets you know exactly what is working so that you can do more of it.
The business zone website says “Unlike traditional methods you can see in real time what is or is not working for your business online and you can adapt very quickly to improve your results.”
Saving Time and Making It Work
You can take the information in this article and begin to research the type of content that your market is searching for, learn how to structure and write the articles correctly, find relevant pictures to post, create new audio and video files, and then post it correctly to your website…with the proper meta and alt tags and search engine descriptions (set it up to be search engine friendly).
Or…you can have us do it for you with our done-for-you content marketing services.
Let us do the research, create the content, and correctly post it your site…then syndicate and promote the content to drive more prospects to your site…
…who once they consume the content, that we know how to properly structure, they will be contacting you asking to do business with you.
They will be asking when can you start, as opposed to how much do you charge?
If you have any questions you can email me directly here, and I will be happy to personally get back to you.