It is a truth universally acknowledged that a business in possession of superb services and products is in want of a blog.
Kitschy Jane Austin allusions aside, the indisputable gospel is your business needs a blog. Now.
Do you want to drive untapped organic traffic to your website? Do you want to cultivate warm, long-lasting rapport with your customers? Do you wish you could explain the nuance of price for your products and services to put your customers at ease?
Whether your business is B2B or B2C, selling top-shelf aromatic whisky or brazenly zany graphic tees, you can increase traffic, revenue, and brand recognition via the blogosphere.
If you’re new to the blogging scene (no shame, please enjoy a warm welcome), my name is Seth D. Slater. I’m a content trainer here at Media Junction.
It is my distinct and sincere pleasure to walk you through why your company needs a blog to kick proverbial a$$ (dollar signs intentional).
Media Junction is an award-winning website design company and HubSpot partner with over 25 years of experience. We’re here to tell you: there is an undeniable seismic shift, a marketing coup d'état, where transparency and education through blogging is the future.
By the end of this article, you will have steeped in 7 more-than-compelling reasons why your company needed a blog yesterday.
7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog
Blogs, in their digital-far-reaching-glory, provide the perfect platform to flaunt your products and services - no matter how niche. The core of your business depends on transaction. Revenue makes the world go ’round.
Thus - selling is essential (yes, welcome to Reductionist Marketing 101). But what, exactly, are you peddling?
The capital T Truth is that you’re selling an answer - a solution that covers a need or a want (generally targeted to a highly-fleshed-out buyer persona).
Whether selling stereo systems boasting bombastic boosted bass or a cleaning service, you’re providing a solution to an existential query, assisting a client reach an aspirational identity.
A prime example of zeroing in on aspiration identity is the product descriptions embedded into the fashion-cult-acclaimed J Peterman Company’s Catalog.
Ask yourself, what about my product or service do I want to highlight:
We guarantee that if you don’t answer these questions about your products and services on your website or blog, your competition will. In today’s market, transparency is everything. This is the era of the straight-shooter - so tell it as it is, warts and all.
Don’t waste your time or insult your potential customers by dancing around hard-to-discuss issues that revolve around your products and services - hit them head-on in your blog.
Ignorance is not bliss - it blisters.
Specifically, cost should not be shrouded in obfuscated mystery - forget about sticker shock and trying to hide your priceline from your competition (after all, if you’re worth your salt, you already have a pretty damn good ballpark idea of your competition’s prices).
Be upfront. Let it all hang out. Streamline your lead-to-customer workflow by immediately cutting out the chaff via transparency.
In short, blogs are the perfect medium to exhibit your products and services, allowing you to:
In short, blogs are the perfect environment to advertise and grandstand your company’s unique niche, services, and products. Trot out your grandeur - there’s nothing to lose (except fat stacks of greenbacks).
The equation is simple (if cliché) - time is money. Your sales team is entrenched in the daily grind, busting butts to hit quotas and land the next big fish of Moby Dick proportions.
Think about it -
Giving clients “homework” before a sale’s call (a simple blog read) helps determine whether or not they’re seriously interested in your product or service. Don’t waste your time.
Target. Execute. Reel in the moolah.
A blog is the answer.
A simple blog post could address those same-old boring questions your sales team spends precious time fielding every day. According to They Ask, You Answer (a revolutionary inbound marketing how-to guide), your sales team receives the same cookie-cutter questions over 80% of the time.
What would happen if you answered these pivotal questions with a client before jumping on the phone?
Well, you would have an educated prospective client who already has 80% of their general questions answered - allowing you to zero in on what matters.
Save your sales team time, effort, and heartache - utilize a blog.
Every company dreams of monopolizing strategic keywords to land the coveted first page of Google (a hotly contested Mecca riddled with ads and keyboard warriors vying for exposure).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) via targeting germane, high-traffic keywords is one of the most essential roles of a business blog.
Search engine optimization is the caffeinated heartbeat of your organic search results - pumping traffic and new contacts.
It’s prosperity gospel - name and claim it.
Throw your targeted keywords into the H1 and H2 headers, and pound out gorgeous copy fueled by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, or T-Swift.
Edit. Stage. Publish. Wait for your work to climb Google Mountain.
Utilizing the right keywords organically increases website and blog traffic, generates more qualified leads, and, ultimately, helps convert these leads into customers - bringing in big beaucoup bucks.
Claiming keywords organically not only means your company doesn’t have to pay per click but signifies Google believes your piece of content is one of the top authorities on the subject matter in the whole wide world.
That’s right, kids - the internet is a big place.
When deciding what keywords to adopt, you’ll want to ensure they’re:
You may become so adept at targeting and ranking for relevant keywords that you can cut your ad spend budget in half or eliminate it completely. Yes, we’ve seen this happen - it’s not heresy.
Blogs never sleep - think New York or Groucho Marx or Batman (the caped crusader plagued by billionaire play-boy problems and a Freudian savior complex).
Unlike Batman (Christian Bale Batman, of course), blogs are not nocturnal or diurnal (fancy Zoology speak for us mere daylight dwellers).
Blogs work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days, and 8,760 hours a year.
Pros of a Blog 24/7 Work Week:
In summation, blogs are the answer if you’re looking for targeted 24/7 brand representation that covers your products and service
Cold calling is dead. Think old school chain-smoking-marketing in a poorly lit highrise, suits soused on bad bourbon, men pacing trenches into shag carpet, hefty phones with long cords held to sore ears. Is it time to revive the hard sell?
Modern Don Draper says no - says cold calling is as dead as Nietzsche’s god. The game has evolved.
Forget pounding pavement and antiquated fliers and damn doors slammed in your face. Forget stumbling over your tired-post-it-note talking points, trying to finesse, cajole, to manipulate the sale.
Blogs, if done well, generate organic traffic that flows into qualified leads that convert to customers. Blogs prove the perfect ecology to guide inbound traffic through the sale’s funnel - CTA to landing page to email campaign to purchase.
Think about it - these people are coming to you. There’s an inherent gravitational pull due to your deft utilization of targeted keywords that reflect your products and services, which help your clients solve a problem and reach an aspirational identity.
They’re already invested. On a conscious level, their mind has already categorized their problem, need, or want and solidified it into a searchable query. They want what you have.
So, what do you do when the lead well dries up, sales is hungry, and production is about to begin twiddling their thumbs?
Cast a wide digital net, a world-wide-web. Blog.
Even with your newfound influx of organic blogging traffic (evolving from contact to lead to customer), some leads will require a little extra nudge, a slight push off the proverbial high dive.
Email campaign marketing has long been a staple for marketing organizations. Why? Because it works.
Email:
So, what happens when you marry blogs and email in holy marketing matrimony? Beautiful things.
If utilized correctly, blogs build a backlog of leads in your CRM, helping you develop sophisticated, highly targeted, personalized email campaigns.
In a world where the internet is at everyone’s fingertips, it can prove challenging to stand out from the competition. Blogs allow you to connect with your audience on a personal level.
Blogs invite readers in: this is me, my business, and the products and services you need to help you reach your goal.
Blogs allow you to showcase your humanity and personality - connect with the people.
To learn how to develop a blogging voice in 3 simple steps to get your blog rolling, read our article How to Develop Your Blogging Voice in 3 Simple Steps.
In this article, you discovered seven reasons your business needs a blog now - from enhancing SEO to padding your email marketing list to bolstering sales.
We believe in blogging so much that we suggest companies serious about making their digital mark hire full-time content managers to crank out optimized, sales-driven content.
If you’re considering starting a blog, we’re here to help.
Media Junction empowers marketing teams to pump out ever-green, well-researched, well-executed blog articles that get results. We are an IMPACT partner and have been trained in their inbound marketing best practices - including utilizing the They Ask, We Answer blogging framework.
If you want one-on-one guidance on how your company can dramatically improve SEO and drive more qualified, invested leads, we got you.
We train content managers to take over all your in-house marketing needs. Never hire an outside marketing agency again.
To continue improving your digital marketing efforts, check out the offer below to get The Content Writer's Toolkit: a collection of templates to help you organize and fine-tune your content.