Every small business wants more sales. But acquiring the right kind of leads and then converting them into customers or clients can feel like an uphill battle, especially if you’re just starting out. Which is why a lot of small businesses struggle to make consistent sales. This not only affects their bottom line but also stunts their overall growth.
Yes, there are traditional sales strategies that your brand can use to increase sales. But there are three common hurdles or roadblocks that you may face using them:
- They are a little pushy by nature, which makes these tactics look a bit gimmicky. And no ethical business wants to sound manipulative to its customers.
- The idea of reaching out to your prospective customers again and again, with a high possibility of rejection, can make the whole selling process daunting and unappealing. After all, who wants to make hundreds of cold calls with zero to minimal positive response?
- They may eat into your budget because you have to invest your time and money each time you apply a traditional sales strategy.
Given the advent of the Internet, small businesses have a new avenue to market their products and services. And they’re able to do so in a non-intrusive manner.
Look around you, and you’ll find that most successful small businesses using digital marketing are leveraging “pull marketing” techniques to attract potential customers and boost sales. One such technique is small business blogging.
If you are new to small business blogging, you may have little idea as to how it can help generate more sales. But once you dip your toes in, you’ll see firsthand how your blog content can do all the selling without you having to lift a finger.
Small business blogging can help you attract your target audience 24/7 and generate more leads that end up buying from you, every single month.
Here are a few more stats to help you understand the power of small business blogging:
- Small businesses that blog generate 126% more leads
- 61% of US. consumers have bought something on the web because of a blog post
- Websites with blogs have over 430% more indexed pages, and 97% more inbound links
- 70% of consumers learn more about a company through its blog content than through ads
The reason why small business blogging works so well is because it lets you position yourself as a authority or a valued resource. When your content teaches and helps your target audience in more than one way, you win their trust.
And the more they trust you for advice and for the value you deliver, the higher are the chances of them buying your product/service over your competitor’s.
The best thing about generating sales via small business blogging is that it doesn’t involve any pushy sales tactics. Which means your sales can happen over a period of time once your potential customers are ready to do business with you. And when sales occur organically, your small business will experience a healthier growth pattern.
According to a survey done, 63% of small businesses do not have a blog. Which means a large number of small businesses are losing the chance of generating quality leads.
If you don’t want to lose leads like the majority and make fewer sales than you could, then it’s about time you took small business blogging seriously.
In the following blog post we’ll be looking into 5 small business blogging tips that you can apply today. These will not only boost your sales numbers, but also build a stronger brand that people trust.
Tactic #1: Go In-Depth Into Each Topic
The Internet has a sea of content that doesn’t get any attention. In fact, a lot of it goes completely unnoticed. If a piece of content doesn’t have readers, what’s the use of creating it? How will it generate more sales when nobody knows it exists?
Successful small business blogging is not about creating content just for the heck of it. It’s also not about producing content that you feel is important.
Rather, it’s about coming up with content ideas and going in-depth into topics that your target audience cares about. Because that’s the only kind of content that will fetch you more sales in the long run.
According to Orbit Media, more than 50% of bloggers who write in-depth 2000+ word posts report “strong results.”
Contrary to popular belief, in-depth content doesn’t get ignored. But rather it helps you get more shares and links. Because it allows you touch points that nobody else is focusing on.
It also makes it easy for you to take a different take or angle on your chosen topic. After all, you need room to get creative while giving value. And that’s exactly what you get when you go deeper into a topic.
The idea here is to build trust with your target audience so that they feel confident enough to buy from you. However, keep in mind that in-depth content does not mean rehashed content. And it certainly doesn’t give you the permission to beat around the bush.
There are three things your content should strive to be…
- Unique: If you look around the web, you’ll only find a tiny percentage of small business blogs offering unique content. These are the companies that take small business blogging seriously. Because they know unique content is engaging.
By making your content unique, you stand out from your competitors while offering something fresh to your readers. The effort you put into the uniqueness of your content shines upon your products/services and can make them look different. - Useful: There’s nothing good about a blog post that is 5,000 words in length but is not useful. It’s just a bloated piece content that serves no real purpose.
So try to offer real solutions to your readers through your content. Help them out by offering useful advice. Because ultimately, people want to buy useful products that solve real problems.
Your useful content can help you create the right perception about your products/services, and give readers a positive, useful vibe about your company. - Entertaining: People on the Internet have short attention spans, and they can easily get bored of content. In the quest to make your content in-depth, don’t forget to make it entertaining.
Get creative with how you deliver information. Use pictures that send across the right message but also add some entertainment value to your content.
People want to do business with brands that they can connect with. When you make your content entertaining enough, you will come across as a brand they’d be happy to buy from.
In-depth content allows you to build a strong foundation for trusting relationships. Which not only leads to more sales, but also a stronger brand image.
Tactic #2: Publish New Blog Posts Consistently
Small business blogging doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can be one of the most easiest yet potent tools in your digital marketing arsenal when used right.
However, there’s one factor that can make or break your small business blogging efforts. And that is consistency.
If you want to grow your blog and get more sales with its help then you need to understand the importance of consistency. The more consistent you are in your blog post publishing, the easier it will be for you to reach your goals.
A lot of brands think it’s okay to post content to their blog occasionally. They think it is enough to drive them those most-wanted sales. But the thing is, you cannot expect your blog’s traffic to grow and also win your readers’ trust unless you are consistently blogging.
Whether it is daily or weekly, your readers have certain expectations from your blog. And it’s your job to fulfill those expectations without question.
Also, when you consistently publish new content on a regular basis, you have a higher potential of driving search traffic and social media traffic to your blog.
Each new blog post opens up a new door that will bring in more visitors to your site. These people are already interested in what you’re writing about, so converting them into customers will be a lot more easier and efficient.
In order to see real results from your small business blogging, don’t just blog when you have something important to say. Try to come up with as many post ideas as possible so that you have an inventory of blog post topics to write about. This will also help you publish more blog content on a per week basis.
According to a research conducted by Hubspot, companies that publish more than 16 blog posts per month (or 4 posts per week) manage to generate 4.5x more leads compared to those who only publish 0 to 4 posts per month.
This doesn’t mean you are allowed to publish bad content just for the sake of hitting high numbers. Decide what level of consistency you are comfortable with and stick to it. Live up to your readers’ expectations, get them to trust you, and you’ll end up selling more of your products.
Here are three real ways how blogging consistently can help you generate more sales:
- Keep Readers Loyal
Since people have a fleeting attention span, you can’t expect to be inconsistent. If you vanish from your blog for a long time, your readers will move on. Which can have an impact on your sales. Long absence can lead to losing readers and their loyalty. Remember, loyal readers often correlate with loyal customers. - Grow Your Authority
There’s a reason why people buy products recommended by an authority. Building an authority takes time and effort, which people respect. You can’t buy authority off the shelf. Which makes it rare. Publishing great content consistently makes you the go-to-authority in your niche, which may result in more sales in the long run. - Make Google Happy
Search engine traffic is critical for any business blog. When you’re consistently publishing fresh content, Google favors you over other sites that aren’t so fresh on the content front.
With regular updates, you’ll not only have regular readers who spend more time on your site (leading to lower bounce rate) but also have your pages crawled by Google more consistently. More SEO traffic means more awareness for your products, which means more sales.
Tactic #3: Integrate Long-Tail Keywords Within Posts
Google loves blogs because they are constantly updated and offer consistent value to readers. Which is why one of the biggest advantages of small business blogging is that it can help you generate targeted search engine traffic that can be converted into sales.
But in order to increase your chances of improving your position in Google’s search engine result pages, you need to focus on long-tail keywords that are more descriptive and high-intent. By naturally integrating long tail keywords you can consistently drive relevant, organic traffic to your site day in day out.
Even though these 3 or 4 word keyword phrases don’t have much traffic on their own, they can help you generate big traffic collectively. If you look at the studies, you’ll find that it’s estimated that long tail keyword phrases are responsible for a whopping 70% of search volume traffic. Which is huge!
Head keywords (e.g., increase sales) may look appealing because they are frequently searched, so ranking for them can send you big traffic. But the problem is, these keywords are way too competitive, slimming down your chances of making it to the first page of Google.
However, if you go for the long tail keywords (e.g., increase sales with email marketing), you may be able to rank quickly and easily.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you can create poor quality content and avoid link building. The typical SEO rules apply even to long tail keywords. But the upside is that the results are much faster and positive.
Most of the big brands avoid optimizing for long tail keywords. Which leaves an open ground for small businesses that want to generate targeted, high-converting traffic. Since many of these long-tail keywords are buyer-intent keywords, they can lead to more sales.
Most of the top guns in any industry will want to focus on the top keywords that bring in lots of traffic. They don’t care if it’s poorly targeted. They just can’t afford to invest their time and resources into optimizing for long tail keywords that have a smaller search volume.
Now, the reason these brands are able to avoid long tail and go for the harder-to-rank keywords is because they have the needed budget.
Small businesses like yourself that are operating on a tight budget cannot take the same risk. Which is why it makes more sense to target long tail keywords that are easier to rank when compared to premium, high-traffic keywords.
Choosing the longer variation of a keyword, even if it has little traffic, is a much smarter move. Because you’ll end up ranking for other variations of the same keyword and that in itself will help you drive consistent traffic in the long run.
So if you haven’t created blog content around long tail keywords yet, start doing so. You’ll not only see results sooner, but will also experience higher sales numbers.
Tactic #4: Add Relevant Call-to-Actions at the End of Content
Each new, value-oriented blog post you publish has something useful to offer to your readers. Which helps you build trust with your readers, post by post. So in a way, you’re not only laying a foundation for getting more sales, but also strengthening it slow and steady.
However, writing great blog content is one half of the equation. The other half is actually converting your readers into customers.
And the best way to do that is take your readers by hand and have them click through to your offer. They’ve trusted you. So now you need to show them the direction and hopefully turn a profit.
This certainly doesn’t mean that your blog post should start mimicking your sales page. Rather, it should act as a cushion between your sales page and your potential customer.
Your blog posts educate and make your prospects comfortable enough to subscribe to your list or even buy from you. And then you lead them towards your offer with the help of a call to action or CTA.
Here’s an example a simple blog post CTA that works…
There’s nothing subtle about the CTA. In fact, the more clear and strong it is, the better the chances of them acting on it. The call to action is where you convert all those visitors into customers.
Without the right CTA, your small business blogging efforts may not lead to the kind of sales you want. And that can affect your overall digital marketing ROI.
If you want to make the most out of your CTA, you need to place it in the right place. For instance, if you place your CTA right after your first paragraph, you may not have many people click through it even though it is at the top. Why? Because they haven’t really read through your blog post and aren’t convinced enough to click.
However, take the same call-to-action and place at the end of your blog post, and that’s a different story.
End-of-content CTA comes after the end of each of your posts and is usually relevant to its topic. When somebody reads through your post or even scans through it, they are in a better position to convert because they are already engaged in some way.
The end-of-content CTA should be detailed and give a real reason for readers to take action. Make it large and meaningful so that it doesn’t go unnoticed. Even if you have comments switched on, you can still get a good response from this type of CTA.
Tactic #5: Weave Product Mentions Within Content
When you’re planning your blog content, it’s obvious to focus on relevancy. Creating blog posts that are relevant to your industry is important. In fact, it’s one of the most important factors when it comes to small business blogging success.
If at any time, you create a blog post that directly relates to the product/service you’re selling, you should try and reference it.
The idea is to recommend your product or service as the ideal solution in a subtle way, without pushing it. Mentioning a product in your blog post is not about selling, it’s about helping. It’s about adding a reference to your product because it adds value to the blog post.
During your small business blogging journey, do not make the mistake of tooting your own horn. The last thing you want is your blog to come across as a mere sales tool with no value to offer.
In order to increase sales with a blog post, you don’t have to cover every single benefit of your product/service or creating exclusive blog posts only about your product/service.
A simple mention of what you’re selling can work wonders, as long as it doesn’t go out of context. Weave your product mentions into your blog posts skillfully.
By helping your readers discover your product/service this way, you’re also saving their time that they may have spent on searching for something similar.
For instance, if you are selling an office productivity tool, and are creating a blog post about “Getting More Work Done in Office”, you should be able to mention your software product within the post. Because it’s not only relevant, it’s also useful to your target audience. Be contextual in your approach but not at all pushy.
Last but not the least, try to limit the number of times you mention your product/service within your post. Overdoing it may make your content marketing efforts look salesy, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid here.
Remember, your aim here is to help people discover your product/service organically. Even a little hard-selling will probably backfire, so we suggest avoiding it at all costs.
Wrapping Up
If you weren’t blogging using these tips before, you definitely will in the future. If you want to see these tips we shared in real action, just take a short journey through our blog and you’ll be able to see for yourself. Starting with this…
Notice that end of content CTA we were talking about right here. Look below!
The post 5 Small Business Blogging Tactics to Generate More Sales appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.
