Using Your Blog To Maximize Your Service Leads

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Generating new leads is the backbone of your service business. Quite simply, without new leads, you can’t gain new business. Yet, it can be easy to hit a brick wall when it comes to generating those new leads. Blogging is one very cost effective way to accomplish lead generation. Did you know that businesses who blog have 126% more leads than those who don’t? In addition, 92% of businesses that blog more than once a day have gained customers from the blog. With statistics like these, it is clear that blogging is one simple thing you can do for your business to help generate more leads and marks you as an authority in your area of expertise.

Blogging Is Cost Effective
Susie Anderson, Vice President of Social Media and Influencer relations for 451 Marketing, has more than eight years of experience with online marketing. She said, “Blogging is an incredibly cost-effective form of marketing because all you need to blog is an expert who knows how to write. A blog can quickly change a consumer’s view of you and allow them to feel a deeper connection to your business. It’s also incredibly easy to track your lead generation success with a blog and to alter your strategy quickly.”

Think about the average cost to place an ad in your local newspaper. Now, imagine placing an article on your blog that you can use to specifically target the type of customer you want. That article will remain on your blog, generating interest for far longer than a single issue of a newspaper. Even if you hire a writer to create your content, you’ll still get a lot more mileage out of that content than out of a print ad. In addition, you can continue to gain traction by sharing the post on social media, in your newsletter, and pointing people to it for additional information on a particular topic.
Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of College Recruiter, mentioned that one of the primary ways they drive leads is through more than 30,000 pages of articles on their website geared to help students graduating from college who are seeking a career.

“Ask the Experts questions and answers, blogs, videos, and other content that we deliver through our WordPress-powered blog pages. Roughly 15% of our site traffic comes into our site through these pages and we then convert about 10 percent of those site visitors into registered users – leads. Blogging is cost effective for College Recruiter because it drives low cost, organic leads from Google, Bing, and social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.”

Tips to Generate Leads with a Blog
Christina Clemens, Program Coordinator at Inturact, shared that blogging can be extremely successful for generating leads, because through your blog your readers will start to trust you. “They look to you as an authority on the subject matter. This is why it is so important to know your audience and know what stage of the buyer’s journey they are in. You use your content to nurture them into a lead and then into a customer.

“Think back to the last time you bought a service, one that you were really excited about, what pushed you to take that leap of faith to finally make the purchase? It probably wasn’t a single blog post that you read on a whim in passing; more than likely, it was a relationship with that company that developed over time. Every piece of content should be written with the customer’s needs in mind. Creating content that supports your customer’s goals is what paves the way for not only generating leads but for retention and brand advocacy.”

Lisa Merriam, Communications Chair on the Board of Directors for the American Marketing Association, New York, digs a little deeper and shares some tips to take lead generation to another level. She recommends really learning how to write for a blog before you tackle generating leads. “As in advertising, focus on one idea. If you have a list of things to communicate, better to consider a series of blog entries instead of one, big giant one.”
Merriam also mentions that you shouldn’t limit yourself to only writing on your own blog. “Building readership is hard and time-consuming. A better way might be to guest blog on other established blogs. You can double the bang for your buck by putting a link to the guest blog on your own blog”

Susie Anderson shared some more tips about blogging for leads:

• “Write content that will allow you to display your thought-leadership and assist in solving problems for your potential readers. Blog posts should not be all about “selling” or about your products or services.
• “Think about what your customers are searching for on the Internet. · Keep to a regular blogging schedule (2-5 posts/week), creating a calendar in advance with a balanced variety of content.
• “Enlist the help of others. You don’t need to keep your blog to one voice. Ask others at your business to contribute, put out a request for guest bloggers, or create roundup posts that share roundups from others.
• “Always allow easy access to lead generation form or website product page links within your blog design and in content.
• “Track success. Use trackable links and set goals in your analytics platform, so you can see what content is generating the most clicks and conversions.
• “Consider search engine optimization in your content, blog post titles, tags, etc.
• “Include calls to action at the end of your blog posts to generate conversation and further encourage conversions.
• “Break up text-heavy posts with bulleted lists, photos, and paragraph breaks. It’s important to make posts readable.
• “Always proofread and fact check posts. Errors in your content may cause potential customers to lose trust.
• “Have fun with it. Blogging allows you to show off a different, more personable side of your business. Make potential customers fall in love with you.”

Blogging to the Right Target Demographic
There is a thing in the online world called user personas. This is simply figuring out what type of person you are targeting with your blog or website and what typical characteristics that person might have. You can then create a mock person based on statistics. As you’re completing blog posts, write them with that persona in mind.

If your website features a blog and you haven’t gotten much traction, try changing the way you use your blog. For example, you can write a checklist of things consumers should do with each season change to keep their heating and cooling units running optimally. However, instead of just posting that checklist on your site, have the site visitor share their email to gain access to a printable PDF version of the checklist. You can then use that email to follow up with the lead.

With the proper planning and strategy, a blog can be both cost effective and successful in helping you generate new leads for your service business.

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Posted In: Technology