As a small business, competing with mega corps with advertising budgets equal to the GDP of small countries is impossible…
Just kidding. At a fraction of the price, you can capture your fair share of market attention. But how? Inbound marketing.
Instead of begging for attention by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on traditional marketing campaigns that blast your image over TV and print, inbound marketing lets the customers- the right customers- come to you.
So, what is it exactly? In a nutshell, inbound marketing promotes brand awareness through online content creation, social media engagement, and search engine optimization (SEO). The goal is to generate organic traffic to your site by leveraging popular search terms relevant to your industry (keywords).
Here, we’re going to focus on the core of any inbound strategy: online content creation or blogging.
And if you think blogs are for amateurs, just take a look at these statistics:
- Small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads.
- Websites with blogs have greater online visibility with 434% more indexed pages.
- 2 out of 3 US consumers bought a good or service because of a blog post.
- 7 out of 10 people discovered a business through articles rather than ads.
If these stats didn’t convince you, here are three more reasons blogging should be a major part of your online marketing strategy:
Blogs drive traffic to your website.
Bots love blogs. What do we mean? Blogs help your website gain traction online in two ways: fresh content and keywords. Search engines like Google use bots (fancy mathematical equations) that roam the web to index links and pages so that people can find useful information relevant to their search inputs. Updated content signals bots that your website is active, while keywords let them know how to catalog your site (you wouldn’t go to the romance section of a library to find a Stephen King novel).
Customers aren’t likely to search for you by name. Instead, they’re asking Google how to solve their problems and satisfy their curiosity. Gearing your content toward your ideal buyer’s anxieties, concerns, and questions rather than pitching your products and services will draw potential customers to your site naturally. Organic traffic is basically unpaid advertising as a single post can generate leads indefinitely. And don’t forget, people love to share helpful or amusing information- a social media shout out costs nothing.
Blogs convert traffic to leads.
Blogging is a low-cost but long-term marketing commitment. Potential customers won’t flock to your website overnight, but consistently providing quality, helpful content will help you trend in search engines. Leverage this exposure by adding lead-generating call-to-actions at the end of every post, such as “start your free trial” or “download your free report”- anything for which customers would freely exchange their information.
Blogs are a lot like earning interest on your investments. In fact, 1 out of every 10 posts is “compounding”, meaning that content generates more leads overtime than when originally posted.
Blogs establish authority.
Relevant, high-quality blogs that is. You’re not going to gain traffic by stuffing your content with buzzwords. Instead, cater your content to your target audience’s fears and desires and use strategically-placed keywords so they can find you.
Blogs are a powerful relationship-building tool. And what are all healthy relationships based on? Trust. 4 out of 5 people trust the information in blogs. If you provide your audience with insightful, accurate, or even novel ideas and information, you can establish your business at the forefront of your industry.
Blogging is, of course, only a piece of the puzzle. To realize the full benefits of blogging, you need to optimize your content for search engines and get your message out on social media. Our social media marketing experts at Social Spice Media can help you do just that! Get the ball rolling toward higher conversion rates with your free SEO report to see how your content is performing!
