In previous blogs, I talked about the virtues of an inbound marketing model: Attract, Convert, Close, Delight.
But, this blog is about the importance of business blogging in today’s new digital marketing world. It is a key element in putting those 4 words into action in order to attract the right kind of clients. So, let’s break it down a bit.
1. It helps to “attract” traffic to your website. There are a few different ways to drive traffic to your site, like paid ads, email marketing, etc. But, blogging helps in a few different ways. The great thing about blogging is that each blog article creates a new page on your site. Probably the only time you will really make a change to your site, right?? Why is that helpful you ask… Well, it is a sign to the search engines that your site is active, more pages get indexed, and the spiders will crawl more active sites.
Whenever you blog, not only should you share it via social media–Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest–but it allows others to share it as well which will obviously give your company more needed exposure to a wider audience.
So, the obvious lesson here is that by continuously blogging, you are going stay more active via social, solve problems for your potential customers, and, of course, increase search rankings, and drive more traffic to your site, aka, the “attract” phase.
2. How does blogging help from the “convert” perspective? Glad you asked. Well, with every blog post you have a new indexed page, and with every indexed page is an opportunity to generate new leads. Sales teams love this! Just include some type of call to action with every post. For instance, click here if you want to know how to use Google + to your advantage. You could also create a wider variety of content, i.e. whitepapers, eBooks, FAQs, etc and use your blog to promote it. Just have the offer available, ask for a piece of information like a name and email (you have that right since what you have is valuable!). People will download it and whala! You have a potential lead. That is taking the attract phase to the lead phase. Just know that not every person that downloads something you offer is a lead. But, some will be!
3. Business blogging helps to establish your position as a subject matter expert aka Close. It also helps establish authority in the eyes of Google (that is a different blog). But, I have discussed previously how the buying cycle has changed and 50-70% of the buying decision is determined prior to a potential customer even contacting you. Well, if you wrote blogs that answered the questions/problems your “buyer persona” would have and they view you as a subject matter expert, and feel you can help them, the blogging can help during this “close” phase. Make sense?? I know it does because we do it all the time in our personal lives. We do that research. We read trusted resources. Then we call/visit.
4. Delight! Keep feeding the blogging machine and make sure your clients who have traveled all the way through your sales funnel continue to get the great information you are putting out. Helps to ensure in their mind that they made the right decision to go with you! You never know who they are going to share the information with.
Here is the bottom line: Blogging helps in each of the stages above. It just takes some effort. But, it is the gift that keeps on giving. If you post something today, it may get 200 views. You may get 10 leads out of it. You go off for the weekend, and say through social sharing, 50 more people see it and you get a couple more leads out of it. So then, it is “archived” on your website. But, the juice for the blog is not done since it is ranking with the search engines. If your blog solves a problem that someone uses the search engine for to solve a problem, you may get found weeks from now and get more ancillary leads from it! I read blogs all the time that are months and months old.
Everyone now! ATTRACT, CONVERT, CLOSE, DELIGHT! While you are sitting around the dinner table watching football and devouring that turkey tomorrow, just blurt out those four words, see what kind of reaction you get…then explain what it means and you can look like a genius!
If you have questions, or you want to tell me some of your turkey stories of how you taught people how to attract, convert, close and delight, feel free to contact me.
