You have a successful business, your customer trust you, but with increasing competition, you find it hard to keep that personal relationship with your customers that you used to enjoy when you started. this is the principle reason why a blog should be a part of your marketing strategy.
People are busy these days, neither you have time. The Internet has revolutionized the world and now people prefer to spend time on the internet than sitting together to discuss things.
But why are we discussing this social change on a business blog?
We are discussing it here because it is a big change, which has changed the way we used to do business. When our customers are online, why don’t we connect with them online? I can hear tech savvy business owners saying that I have a business website, I have an account on all popular social media.
That’s is good. But you are still missing mega opportunity to attract your prospect and develop a relationship with them if you don’t have a business blog on your website. 65% of daily internet users read a blog. It could be YOUR blog if you make it easy for them to find it.
A blog gives you that extra space to share information that you crave to share on your website; a blog is a place where you can share details about your products and services, how they solve specific problems of your target audience.
Here I am listing top 10 reasons why you should have a blog on your website if you want to remain competitive in new age marketing world.
Top 10 reasons why the blog should be a part of your marketing strategy.
1.It helps you increase your rank on search engine.
If you care about ranking on the first page of Google for your business related keywords, blog writing is can help you achieve your objective. Blog writing helps your SEO efforts in three ways.
A. Fresh Content:
You can create useful content regularly with blog posts on topics related to your business, products, and services. Search Engine like Google, Bing like fresh valuable content. When they find fresh content regularly, search engine prefers to rank your content over other competitors who don’t engage in blog writing.
B. Inbound Links:
When you write a quality blog post related to your business keywords, other business blogs may connect with you and give you do follow inbound link, which will increase your Domain Authority, a metric to check your strength on the internet, and improve your search ranking on Google. Websites with Blogs have 434% more indexed pages (helps search engines & SEO efforts) and 97 % more inbound links.
C. Long-tail keyword ranking:
Google has evolved as a powerful search magnet, where users now ask complete questions and google doesn’t disappoint them. Blog writing helps you target these long-tail keywords, a technical term to refer to a full question asked by users on the search engine.
For example, if you own an electronic shop and have written a blog post for choosing a right LED TV for your home. When a user search “ How to choose a right LED TV for home?”, a long tail keyword query, he is more likely to find your content on Google.
2. Establish authority over prospects:
Before buying any product or services, people search on google to do their research. With blog writing, you can provide them valuable information that helps them make their purchase decision like explaining them about the features and benefits of your product and services, comparison with competitor brands etc. When you help a prospect, make an informed decision, your authority and credibility improves.
When they see your brand during their research, they start to trust you. Over time you establish a personal connection and authority over your prospects with useful blog posts. later on, when they see your advertisement in various online and offline media like Google AdWords, Facebook, newspaper etc, they are inclined to buy from you as they already know you and trust you.
Winning a customer, when he is making his mind about the purchase is a good marketing strategy. Isn’t it?
3.Share company philosophy and activities:
Your blog is your own media to communicate with your existing and future customers, where you not only can discuss business activities but also about your brand and business philosophy. Let your customer know what inspires you? What you plan for them? What do you stand as a business?
Your blog is the perfect place to discuss your company’s vision, mission, values and customer support policies.
4.Develop customer relationship
A famous business adage says, “It costs double to acquire a new customer than keep an existing one”. An existing customer has a propensity to buy from you because he already trusts you, he knows what he can expect. It is always wise to keep your existing customers happy. You can also cross sell him for other relevant product and services.
What makes a customer happy?
Customers now expect more than mere product and service offering–they want an amicable relationship. you can build this relationship with your business blog, where you can share useful insights about your product and services, product tutorial and your industry related posts.
People buy product and services, not just to consume them; they buy them to solve a problem, to make their life easier. If you can help them achieve this goal, you have won them.
5.Owned PR media:
Business owners spend hundreds of dollars on advertising, PR, and social media activities to keep their brand visible before their target audience. But they are all external media (paid Media), you need to pay to establish communication with your target audience, or it is better to say, you only communicate with your target audience, when you pay.
But your blog is your own property, where you can communicate directly with your target audience. With blog comment, you get their feedback. You can inform them about upcoming offers and events, all this at no additional cost than producing content for your blog. Isn’t this amazing.
Google and facebook frequently change their algorithm, print media can change their policy which can increase their already steep advertising cost, and just forget about TV when you want an economical medium to communicate with your audience.
But your blog is to remain with you, today and tomorrow. With regular blog writing, its audience will increase over time. Blog writing is an investment that pays off well in long term.
6.Support social media marketing activities:
Social media is an effective platform to develop customer relationship and build the community for your brand. Social media marketing revolves around sharing quality content for your followers and keep them engaged with it, but only sharing external content will not build your credibility; for that, you need a mix of internal and external content. Why?
Because external content may not be written keeping your target audience in mind, it may or may not address problems that your products and services solve for your audience.
Your blog is the ideal place to create useful internal content that your followers like and build your credibility in your niche. On your blog, you can create laser targeted content for your audience to support your social media marketing efforts.
7.Lower marketing cost:
Blog writing is a long term marketing strategy, where you create content to attract target audience over a period of time. Each Blog post that you create is a one-time investment that you can use time and again. Blog content is there with you forever.
Whenever a curious prospect seeking information finds it on a search engine or social media, he becomes a part of your ongoing marketing strategy.
Comparing it with traditional and digital advertising, it is a low-cost marketing strategy. As per Hubspot, Content marketing in 2015 generated 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing but costs 62% less. When you advertise on paper, radio, billboard like traditional media, or Google AdWords, facebook advertising like digital media, you pay for each time you show your ad/ click it.
Compare this with the one-time creation cost of blog content and its utility over a long period. Blog writing provides best ROI for your marketing investment.
8.Gain competitive advantage:
This is no brainer, If you are investing on an effective marketing strategy like blog creation that your competitors don’t have a clue, you have a competitive advantage.
Before buying any product or service, a prospect researchers to know the available options, compare them to choose the best one that meets his needs and finally buy it.
Many business owners advertise to attract prospects when they have already made their mind for a product or service. With blog posts, you can attract prospects when they are collecting information and influence their decision making.
This way you catch your prospects before your competitor could get a hint of it and build your credibility before your them.
9.Convert traffic into lead:
How many times it has happened that a prospect visits your website, browse product pages, but leave without contacting you? With me, it happens daily. It is equally true for thousand business owners promoting products with a website.
It happens because consumers don’t make a buying decision at once. They take their time and research. 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Demand Gen Report, 2016) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
If you have a lead magnet on your blog, you can easily make them subscribers. You get their contact details to send them valuable information and influence their buying decisions.
Blogging gives you plenty opportunity to make your website visitors, your customers. Blogs are lead acquisition machines, use them wisely.
10.Give human touch to your brand:
Businesses crave to give their brand a personality, a human touch. Blogs are personal by nature. Blogging started as a way for personal expression, which later came into mainstream marketing.
With blogging, you can present your organization culture, your organizational activity to the world. It opens the avenue to build that human touch.
While reading a blog post, your audience knows that there is a human creating all this content, who has the same fears, same difficulties of life, who can understand their problems and can suggest a suitable solution for them.
This human touch can differentiate a remarkable brand from a brand that nobody cares.
Conclusion:
A business blog has many advantages to grow your business ranging from driving traffic to your website to developing customer relationship to converting this traffic into leads. A blog is a long term marketing strategy, which will give best ROI when you stick to it.
Do you have a business blog on your website? How is your experience with it? What type of content has performed best for you? I want your opinion on the same, don’t forget to reply to comments.
Let’s be social.
