When you think about it, the basics of marketing haven’t changed since time began – the idea is to tell as many relevant people (that is, people who need or want your product or service) about your business as possible and persuade them to buy from you rather than from your competitors. There’s really nothing more to it than that, and yet the ways in which we go about this marketing are seemingly becoming more and more complex.
With the advent of new technology, there’s more choice than ever before when it comes to the kind of marketing business owners can do, but if there’s one thing people should be aware of, it’s that sometimes the older ideas are the ones that work best, and that’s where your blog can be extremely useful.
When there are so many other things to think about and do as a business owner, posting interesting, informative content on your blog might not always make it to the top of your to-do list, but once you know how your blog can actually build your business, you might decide to give it priority after all. Let’s take a look at how it works and how your blog can become one of the best (and cheapest) marketing tools you have.
Blogging Builds Loyalty And Trust
If you want people to buy from you, they’ll need to trust you, and that trust isn’t always an easy thing to come by. However, when you use your blog as a marketing tool, trust becomes an easier thing to get from your customers and, crucially, keep.
Why is trust so important? Think of your own buying experience. Have you ever searched for something online, for example, and found a few stores that sold the same thing, all at around the same price? The answer to that is more than likely yes; there’s a lot of competition out there for business owners, which is great for customers because they’ll have a lot more choice, even if it’s not so good for businesses for the same reason!
So what do you do? You want to buy whatever it is, but how do you choose which website to buy it from? You’ll choose the one you trust the most, so you’ll take a good look at everything they have to say, and a lot of the time, that search will lead you to the blog. If that blog is interesting, informative, useful, easy to read, and if it’s regularly updated, that all points to a trustworthy business that cares about giving its customers as much as it can. If the blog is boring, copied from elsewhere, full of spelling and grammatical errors, and hasn’t been updated in months or even years, you’ll probably decide against making a purchase; after all, if the business owner can’t update their blog and take care and attention over it, what does that say about how they run the rest of their business?
Then there’s loyalty. Once you’ve built trust, you’ll want customers to stay loyal and keep returning to buy from you in the future. You’ll want them to come to you, even if a fantastic new store opens that sells similar things to you at a lower price. How can you enjoy this fabulous level of loyalty? By using your blog, of course!
The blog is the thing that made you trustworthy, and it can be the same thing that makes your customers loyal, sticking with you, no matter what. The key is to fill it with information that they’re going to find useful – explainer posts are good, and helpful tips for doing this, that, or the other. Do your research on the keywords your customers are looking for and use your blog to answer their questions, and you’ll ideally gain customers for life.
Show You’re An Expert
As we’ve said, there’s a lot of competition to contend with, and even if you are in a small niche, you’re still going to find others who are offering something at least similar to you, if not the same. That means you need to find as many ways to stand out as you can, and you can use your blog to help you. We’ve already discussed how your blog can build trust and loyalty with your customers and the public in general, but did you know it can also prove you’re an expert in your field?
By writing about the things you know most, you can show any customer or potential customer that you really do know your stuff, and you’re therefore the best person to sell whatever it is you’re selling. People are going to be much more likely to buy something from an expert than from someone who can’t show how much knowledge they have, or who even answers questions wrong (if they take the time to answer them at all), and by answering questions and writing about your topic in-depth on your blog, you can pre-empt queries and prove that you have a lot of knowledge stored up – knowledge that you can use to help your customers not just when it comes to making a buying decision, but in the future as well if they have any queries. They’ll feel confident knowing that you know what to do, plus they can rely on your blog to be a full and accurate resources, making you even more valuable to them.
Of course, this does mean you have to think of the right content to begin with, and although that might seem tricky at first, the good news is there are tools online to help you get started. As we’ve said, this is your chance to prove you’re an expert in your field, so it’s not the content itself you’ll be stuck on, but rather the best way to present it in your blog so it all makes sense and you don’t forget anything. Using an online tool to generate a content brief, you’ll have a complete structure to help you get all your thoughts down in a coherent, interesting way, showing that you’re the expert everyone thinks you are and building your business on the back of that excellent reputation.
Increase Your Visibility
We’ve already seen that there are some amazing reasons to have a great blog on your website and to keep it updated, of course, but the fact that it can ensure you’re a lot more visible to anyone searching online is definitely yet another reason to ensure your blog is as good as it can be.
This is all down to SEO, or search engine optimization, which is a technique used to promote your website and make it rank as high as possible (the best position is the top of the first page) in search engine results. There are lots of different techniques to employ, including using keywords, internal and external linking, adding images with ALT text, and more, and the best thing about all of this is that your blog can be the vehicle to take all of these ideas and keep your website visible at all times.
When you write a blog post, it’s best to do some keyword research first. In that way, you’ll know what your target market is looking for and what questions they need to have answered. You can then use those same search terms and include them in your blog, not only answering the questions and providing information, but boosting your search engine results page rankings at the same time. Of course, your blog can also be the ideal place to include links and images, and perhaps even videos (another useful SEO tactic), and the more you can include, the better.
When it comes to keywords, less is often more, so just choose one to focus on at a time and build your content around it, perhaps using the tool we mentioned earlier. This means you won’t run the risk of confusing any website visitors, and they’ll know precisely that your items and services are the right ones for them.
You Can Drive Engagement
The more engagement you can create between you and your customers (or ideal customers), the better. It shows you care about making them happy and helping them as much as possible, and it also proves you’re a real person rather than a big corporate entity or even some form of AI – you might be surprised at how much of a difference that can make to your figures. In other words, the more real you can be, the more you’ll sell, and if you can engage with your visitors, the more real you can be.
Although it’s perhaps not as immediate as engaging through social media, for example, where you’ll instantly see a notification and be able to answer a question, the fact is that people will still comment on your blog, and they will still ask questions. Check it regularly and get back to everyone (even if you just like a comment that doesn’t need a specific answer or another kind of acknowledgement) to show you’re real, you care, and you have the information they’re looking for.
This is a collaborative post
