The way successful businesses are marketed has changed drastically in the past decade and even in the past five years. More than ever, physical, and digital retailers are looking for ways to build their online presence and gain followers. The good news is that now there are some really cost-effective ways to build that valuable online presence and in turn increase sales, and one of those methods is blogging. Let’s take a closer look at how you can effectively use blogging to boost business sales.
Collect Contact Information
When you blog, and allow your prospective customers to get to know you, you can then obtain their contact information via an opt-in offer when they subscribe to your blog. With Optinmonster they have a drag and drop builder you can use to create optin forms that are optimized for high conversion rates. Using this will allow you to send your visitors email updates on new products, reminders, and valuable information via your business’ newsletter.
To get this valuable information, make sure the content and opt-in offers you present to your audience adds value or solves a problem that they have. They will feel that your business is interested in their needs, and in turn, they’ll shop from your store first when they have a need in that particular area.
Build a Reputation in Your Business’ Niche
There are lots of retailers with some kind of online presence, but not all of them are respectable. Many tend to slap together an ecommerce site, but in the meantime, their potential customers know nothing about their brand or their expertise.
Sharing your expertise on a blog provides you with a way to gain customer’s trust, which in turn, will boost your initial sales. How many times have you bought a product because you knew that the brand behind the product was an authority in their niche? We do this all the time when we shop at a store because we read an article by someone from a business who had spent time and effort gaining knowledge about that particular topic.
This is something we do a lot when choosing medical providers. We read about where a specific doctor did their residency and what other accomplishments and training they have under their belt. That’s why we’re more willing to trust one physician over another. The same is true with ecommerce and blogging.
Using SEO to Gain Website Traffic
Thanks to the wonders of search engine optimization (SEO), blogging can provide your website with a lot of traffic, and when you categorize products in your posts, they’re easily tagged by SEO and your website is found by traffic.
When you repeat words in a blog post, the more they’re repeated, the closer that post comes to the top of the search results when people type in those words. For example, when you type the words “fitness equipment” into the Google search bar, the links that show up in the top of the search results are fitness equipment stores. That’s because they use the words “fitness equipment” everywhere, in their product descriptions, their “about us” page, and everywhere else on the site.
Introduce Products to a Tailor-Made Audience
Blogging allows your business and reputation to gain a following, so when you’re ready to launch a new product, you’re introducing it to a warm audience, who is truly interested in what you have to offer. You can also explain in depth how this product will meet your audience’s needs.
Remember what we said about building your business’ reputation? The same principle applies here. Over time, blogging allows you to gain followers who make a great target audience. And don’t forget building anticipation by doing a series of posts, telling just a little about a product, right before you launch your exciting new product or service. The more momentum you build, the larger your following will become and the more sales your business will get.
Give Your Business a Unique Voice
The types of posts you publish on your blog, the writers you choose, and the topics you emphasize create a unique voice for your business, which distinguishes it from the flood of other retailers online. Your business philosophy is unique to you, and if you run a small business, you can utilize your blog to highlight your business’ personality. Share your personal “why” about how you created your business and why you’re passionate about the products you sell.
People love to hear stories. It makes businesses and organisations come to life for them and will help you keep your focus and emphasis consistent, which increases your credibility in the long run, because you care about your customer’s needs.
Gives a Place for Customers to Provide Feedback
Another way that you can retain customers and boost sales by blogging is by reading through and responding to customers’ comments beneath your blog posts. This will tell you a lot about what your audience needs and/or wants. You can also learn how to make products better, which will retain your existing customer base in the long run.
Blogging also gives you a space to ask your customers questions directly, by offering pop-up polls on your blog and to your email subscribers. You can also create forms using plugins like https://wpforms.com/when you use a WordPress website to start your blog.
Direct Your Audience to Specific Products
We’ve talked about how blogging is a fantastic way to raise awareness and sales numbers for your business in general, but did you know you can direct your customers to specific products?
When you create a blog posts, you can insert the links to products into various places within a post, and when your audience clicks on that product’s link, they’ll be taken to a product that fulfills a need that they have. After all, why would they be reading that post other than hoping that it will help them answer a question they have? Just be sure to link back to products sparingly, and don’t go crazy with those links.
Extend Your Reach
When you blog, your content has the potential to be seen all over the internet. Social media sharing for your posts, may only initially boost your blog traffic, but if you’re using the information we shared in our last point, you have the potential to skyrocket your sales.
Boosts in business sales don’t just happen by accident. They happen because content has been placed where potential audience members are. Social media brings you to your audience instead of the other way around. Be sure that you have social media sharing buttons located in an obvious position on each post and page of your website.
Build a Community
“One and done” customers are a dime a dozen, but subscribers and customers will be loyal to your brand because you offer them a sense of community by having a business blog. Answering customer questions in posts and responding to your audience’s blog comments help you to provide your customers with a sense of support and community that your competitors may or may not provide. Just by being there for your readers allows you to boost your sales long term.
These are just a few of the ways that blogging can boost your business sales. While it may take a little extra work, the return your business will experience in sales is well worth the effort.
