5 Ways a Blog Can Generate More Sales Leads for Your Small Business
If you own a small business, chances are you don’t have a marketing department standing by to take care of the arduous task of coming up with brilliant ideas for how you can generate more sales leads. Depending on how small your business is, you also may not have thousands of dollars to throw at a marketing firm to take care of all of that for you. Competition is always tough, and the more you can do to win customers, the more your business will grow and prosper.
Luckily, we live in the Internet age, which means that many of the marketing tools you need to increase sales and develop loyal customers are right at your fingertips, and they’re highly effective - often more so than mailing out a bunch of newsletters or sales copy that may only serve to provide a surface for scratching together a quick grocery list.
Enter the business blog, a marketing goldmine, a public relations godsend, a lead generating motherlode. You’ve probably heard that a company blog can help increase business, but you may be dubiously wondering exactly how a few words strewn across the vast and crowded landscape of the Internet can drive customers to your site and entice them into engaging your services. Wonder no more, because here are five answers to that burning question.
1. A blog can get you a better spot in search engine rankings.
One major key to getting more visitors to your website is to do everything you can to ensure your site shows up on the first page of search results, ideally at the top or close to it.
When Scoopy McPooperson decides he’s had enough of cleaning up after his pack of German Shepherds, he goes to Google and types in “poop scoopers, Cacaville.” In seconds, a list of yard cleanup companies in his town populates the search results. Chances are high that Scoopy is going to click one of the first few results on the page, and he’s probably not going to navigate past that first page of results. This means that businesses whose websites appear in the first few results on the first page have a much better chance of getting Scoop’s business than those that are buried at the bottom of the page or on subsequent pages.
So how do you get to the top of the results page? It’s called search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the practice of making improvements to your website to help ensure that your company makes it onto that first page of results. SEO is rather complicated, but there are a few very basic tricks that can vastly improve your ranking on search engines to generate more sales leads. One of the easiest and most effective SEO tricks is creating a business blog and updating it often with content that contains the keywords potential customers will likely enter when looking for the various services you offer.
2. A blog is the secret VIP entrance to your website.
To get to your website, users will probably do one of three things:
Type in the URL, because they’re already a loyal customer.
Go to the search engine and type in something like, “dog groomers, Atlanta, GA,” and click on your website from the results page.
Follow a link from another location on the Internet.
A website alone probably isn’t going to bring in all that many people. But a blog will bring people to you through the back door.
Flo Watters has a leaky faucet that’s just getting worse by the day. Flo is pretty good at fixing things, so instead of typing in “Plumbers in Leaksville,” she goes to Google and types in “fix a leaky faucet.” Lo and behold, an article comes up entitled, “Fix a Leaky Faucet in 3 Easy Steps.” Flo clicks on it and is taken to your blog. She reads the post, and one of two things will probably happen.
#1: Flo fixes the faucet, but the next week, her daughter flushes a Barbie down the toilet. Flo remembers reading on that faucet post that “Acme Plumbing can stop your leaks and clear your clogs,” and she contacts you to retrieve a rather disheveled Barbie from the pipes.
#2: Flo reads the post, decides that fixing the faucet is a little out of her comfort range, and she clicks the contact information in the call to action paragraph at the end of the post. She is taken to your website, and you have a new customer.
Now, imagine having a whole bunch of blog posts out there about the many topics that people who need your services could be searching for. Those posts have the potential to generate more sales leads than just having a passive website on the Internet will. And remember: Once the post is up, it’s up for good, and it will continue to draw people to you until you dismantle your business website and retire to Tucson.
3. A blog gives your business an online personality.
Let’s face it. Business website content is generally pretty dry reading. It exists to give users a fast and easy experience, and the content is usually optimized to meet the modern attention span. A blog is a great way to show potential customers that you’re not just another faceless entity in a sea of faceless entities. You have a voice, and you’re here to help, to give expert advice about the things you’re good at to people who may be looking for answers, and consumers really like that. Don’t you?
As Dusty Holm scans various websites looking for the perfect cleaning service for his home, they all begin to look the same. The only thing that really sets each site apart from the others is the design, and it’s hard to judge a company by the layout of its home page. Soon, all of the sites he’s visited have blended together, and he can’t even remember which companies seemed promising.
Dusty gets to your site, and over there on the side bar, he notices a headline: “Unexpected Guests Stopping By? Make Your House Presentable in Just 15 Minutes.” Dusty thinks that would be good information to have on hand, and he clicks over, reads the engaging article on your blog and gets some really great tips. Dusty thinks it’s really sweet that these folks took the time to offer him this advice, and he feels like the article was written just for him, because sometimes he has to stuff dirty dishes in the oven when his mom is about to drop by. He likes this company’s style, and he follows the link in the call to action and schedules an appointment.
4. A blog educates customers and helps sell your services.
Truly engaging the customer in a meaningful way isn’t very easy with just a website. A blog invites readers into the back rooms of your operations, lets them poke around a little, shows them how you operate, and gives them insight into the many ways in which you can help improve their lives. The longer they poke around, the more they learn, and the more likely they are to buy products and services from you – often upgrading based on what they learn in your well-crafted blog.
Ima Boyle’s furnace is on the blink. She Googles “clanking furnace” and comes across an article entitled, “What Your Whirring, Buzzing, or Clanking Furnace is Trying to Tell You.” As she browses through the article, she reads, “programmable thermostats also help reduce the work load of your furnace and lower your heating bills while they’re at it.” Ima likes to save money, and her old thermostat has a yellowing dial that betrays the age of the house. Curious, she clicks the link in the post and is taken to a post entitled, “How a Programmable Thermostat Lowers Your Energy Bills.” At the end of this article, she reads, “Programmable thermostats are just one of many ways to save money on energy costs.” So she clicks on that link, and learns from yet another post that a home energy evaluation can shave off a big chunk of her heating and cooling costs.
By the time Ima gets around to scheduling a repair visit for her clanking furnace, she’s armed with questions about having a programmable thermostat installed and scheduling an energy evaluation – two things that would never have occurred to her if it hadn’t been for your blog.
5. A blog showcases your industry expertise.
To you, building a home is as easy as breathing. To everyone else, it’s an unfathomable undertaking accompanied by all sorts of complicated hoops to jump through and decisions to make.
Homer Neuhaus and his wife Wanda are looking into building a new home. They don’t really know where to begin, so they start by Googling “home builders in Houseville” to get an idea of how the whole thing works and to see what their city has to offer in the way of homebuilders. When they happen upon your site, they find a treasure trove of information on your blog, from “15 Must-Haves for a High-Tech Home” to “How to Landscape a New Build on a Budget.”
After reading your blog, the Neuhaus's have a good idea of what they can expect every step of the way, from inception to moving day. Articles like “Ten Things You Should Know Before Building” and “Important Factors to Consider When Choosing a Homebuilder” help them mull over things they didn’t even know they should be thinking about. As they embark on their homebuilding journey, they look to your blog as a starting point for research.
You have become their indispensable guide, the local industry expert, and they trust you to provide them with sound advice. The chances are very good that the Neuhaus’s new house will be on your agenda come spring.
Atomic Content can help you generate more sales leads for your business by creating informative and engaging posts for your blog. Contact us today, and we'll customize a blogging plan for you!
