Blogging for Marketing

What comes to mind when you think of marketing? Probably high energy meetings, flashy designs, and catchy phrases. While those are all certainly possibilities, there is a lot more to effective marketing and communications. One of the most effective methods of marketing is, in fact, blogging.

Blogging gives you, as a business owner and content creator, the opportunity to flex your expertise. Remember, compared to the average visitor on your website you are an expert. Capitalize on this expertise by not only providing a useful service to your customers, but actively engage with them. This active engagement will result in a higher customer conversion rate.

Picking a Topic

So, you’re an expert in your field. At least you know a lot more about what you do than the people visiting your website. But with all of that knowledge, how do you decide what to write about? There are a few ways to determine what your customers want to know.

Google Yourself

Google yourself. Or better yet, google the services you offer.

But why would you do that?

Google has a nifty section at the bottom of the results page title Related Searches. This shows you the top topics other people have been searching for that are similar to what you offer. For example, based off the search digital marketing we would want to write about topics pertaining to digital marketing strategy, types of digital marketing, etc.

You can make these searches as broad or concise as you’d like, making the possible topics nearly endless.

You may ask why this is a good marketing strategy. That’s simple – the more good content that you have that is relevant to what people are searching for, the higher your search rankings will be.

But don’t forget about what we covered in a previous article, Just publishing content for the sake of publishing content is a lot like progress for the sake or progress. You need to make sure that what you are writing about is unique, informative, and useful to your customers. If you are simply regurgitating what everyone else is saying, or are not publishing quality content your customers will leave your site, and you will lose that conversion.

Ask Your Customers

So, this one seems to make a lot of sense. Who else would know what your customers want to know better than your customers?

That’s right. No one.

There are a lot of ways to ask your customers questions, but the most efficient and cost effective method is going to be using surveys.

If you are already interacting with your customers you likely have their email addresses. If you have their emails you are likely already using email marketing to your advantage, right?

We like to use MailChimp for our email marketing for a lot of reasons – easy to maintain audiences, legal compliance, and a large amount of tools to market with. One of these tools is surveys – you can create custom surveys, send them in an email campaign to all of your customers (at least the relevant ones) and track their responses.

Not only are you now getting answers to your questions, but you know who is answering which question! That’s great, so now you can custom tailor your content to your customers. For example, if you have a group of customers that are interested in video marketing, you can make sure that your video marketing content goes straight to their inboxes.

Marketing Your Skills

Your blog is the one place you can truly demonstrate your mastery of your trade without any barriers. You can talk about whatever topics you want, without restriction on content type, media types, or lengths. You get to link your customers to other internal pages from your content. These pages will be relevant to their interests and will result in higher conversion rates.

This is the perfect opportunity for you to expound on your skills – more particularly what sets you apart from the competition. For example, if you are a medical device sales company, what is it that sets your products apart from your competition? Utilize all of the “buzz words” you want in order to boost your search rankings all while providing a valuable service to your clients and promoting your products.

Your website is your most valuable marketing tool. From product and service listings to online sales and customer service – your website allows you to reach people in ways that no other form of communication can. While blogging may seem like you’re only providing a free service to your customers, you are actually flexing your marketing skills. You are increasing your search engine rankings and engaging with customers, which will ultimately result in conversions.