If you’re running a business, you might be wondering whether blog marketing is a good way to boost sales and start building credibility.
You’ve undoubtedly stumbled upon some pretty amazing online content that may have led you to purchase something you didn’t quite need. But, for some reason, were compelled to buy it. The blog post just had some kind of impact on you. That’s the power of persuasion in action.
Blogs have the ability to influence people’s purchasing decisions by establishing trust and credibility with a particular audience, increasing visibility in search rankings. In fact, did you know that about 56% of respondents in a HubSpot survey have bought something from a company after reading a blog post from them?
So although it might seem like it’s reserved for fashionistas looking for an audience or other lifestyle and travel influencers, blogging can be an effective tool for businesses of all sizes.
Let’s take a closer look at creating the right content, and marketing it effectively can lead to purchases.
Controlling Your Online Presence
A blog can help you control your online presence better by allowing you to put out content that aligns with your brand and resonates with your customers. When someone researches your company, all kinds of things may come up – from customer reviews to press releases and more. And you won’t always have control over what third parties are saying about your business.
But blogging consistently will give you more control over how you present your business to prospective customers. And it’ll be easier for people to find all of the fresh, engaging content you’re regularly creating, which helps to boost your brand presence.
Improving Audience Engagement
The more engaged your audience is with your company, the better the chances of getting them to make a purchase. A blog can help with audience engagement by providing useful information that helps them solve a problem or by entertaining them with something they find interesting. This pushes them further down the purchase funnel until they eventually become buying customers.
So while blogging is typically a top-of-funnel strategy, it can ultimately lead your audience all the way to a purchase. But to do this effectively, you need to make sure you’re creating content on topics that key in on different stages of the purchase funnel:
- Awareness Stage – Educational topics with a wide appeal.
- Decision/Evaluation Stage – Topics that explain how your product solves your audience’s problems.
- Conversion Stage – Topics that give a reason to buy your product.
You can also use different types of media in your blog posts to keep prospects and customers engaged. For example, you can use:
- Videos
- Images
- Memes
- GIFs
- Screenshots
- Infographics
- Quizzes
- Quotes
- Polls
- Calculators (like a mortgage calculator)
- Statistics
- Roundups
- Case Studies/Customer Success Stories
Creating Useful, SEO-Driven Content
If you want to make blogging work for your business, it’s crucial to understand the need for useful, search engine optimization (SEO)-driven content. While you should aim to create content that’s entertaining and engaging, it needs to contain the right keywords so people can find it online.
Most importantly, it should also aim to help your prospects and customers solve a problem or address a challenge they’re facing somehow. If your content isn’t useful or can’t be found because of poor SEO (or both), people simply won’t find, like, or share it. That means they won’t purchase anything that your blog is promoting because they won’t even read it.
So really dig deep and think about your customers’ pain points and challenges to decide how best to market to them using your business blog. And do some SEO keyword research to determine the best search phrases you can use (and compete for). Find long-tail keywords and phrases that will enable your target customers to find you.
Besides using keywords, formatting your blog content properly using H1/H2/H3 headings is essential to helping your audience (and search engines) read, scan, and understand your content. This also makes it easier for readers to clearly understand the text and identify the key elements of your content.
Top-Performing Types of Blog Posts
If you want to be successful with blogging, it’s important to know which types of posts will be the most successful for your blog. The most popular types of posts include:
- Listicles
- How-to’s and tutorials
- Out-of-the-box posts (think bold headlines like “5 Reasons Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy Sucks”)
- Resources or link lists
- Interviews
- Step-by-step guides
- Guest posts
- Checklists and cheat sheets
- Blog series
- Podcast show notes
Create a combination of these types of posts for a top-performing blog.
Don’t Forget About Marketing
Just because you’ve written the blog post and published it doesn’t mean people are going to be able to find it – even with killer SEO. You’ve still got to promote your blog posts. The easiest way is to share them through your social media pages. But on networks like Facebook, the algorithm doesn’t favor business pages, so you’ll need to amplify your efforts through Facebook Groups.
Pinterest is also a great way to promote your blog posts as the platform’s users have more buying power than the average internet user. In fact, 88% of users buy products that they pin on Pinterest.
Try to create different Pins – like Rich Pins and Story Pins – if you want to see real traffic and results from the platform. Don’t forget to use SEO keywords on Pinterest and make sure they sound natural (but don’t keyword stuff).
Do Blog Posts Lead to Purchases?
So does all of this translate to sales?
The short answer? Yes.
People are heavily influenced by the content they consume online, whether it’s a blog post, a video, or a meme.
If you can connect with your audience and meet them where they like to hang out online, you’ll be successful with blog marketing.
Ready to Create a Blog That Drives Sales?
Now that you know for sure that blog posts lead to purchases, it’s time to create a blogging strategy to bring in more sales. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with your SEO blogging marketing efforts, allow our content strategists at Zero Gravity Marketing (ZGM) to help. Our team has years of experience creating unique content using organic SEO strategies, so leave it to us to help you create a winning blog.
