Most leads generated from corporate blogs each month come from old blog posts. This archive of blogs helps firms to build a regular, consistent level of sales leads that are of high quality and very cost effective. Businesses new to blogging just have to invest in building up their library of blog material in order to achieve the same benefits.
The corporate blog is having a transformational impact on the lead generation process of many companies. Research has already shown that sales leads from blogs and social media are 60% cheaper to generate than those from sources like telemarketing and trade shows.
Evidence now exists suggesting that corporate blogs can be very effective in providing a consistent level of high quality leads over a prolonged period of time. A sample of blog-using organisations has revealed some impressive observations:
This presents firms with a tremendous opportunity to transform their lead generation process for the better. By investing in good quality content that’s relevant to your audience, you can start to even out the peaks and troughs in lead generation that are so often experienced by sales teams across the country. Furthermore, this steady stream of leads can be produced at half the cost than has traditionally been the case.
Generating leads from blogs takes time. You need to start today
With the bulk of blog leads coming from old posts, it’s important to build up a library of blog material. Clearly, this takes time and money. It has been estimated that it takes, on average, three hours to write a single blog post, so you need to have the resources available to devote to blog creation. If your existing headcount doesn’t have the bandwidth or skill set required, consider outsourcing the task to an external copywriter.
Make sure you create blog posts that are of high quality, and relevant to your customers. This is not the place for your sales pitch. Instead, you should inform how products and services like yours solve problems. Additionally, you could comment on the implications of a new item of industry news, or perhaps illustrate how your customer could save money or improve efficiency by following certain guidelines or actions.
You could use your existing marketing content as the basis for creating blog posts. By writing a post that focuses on one of the benefits of a product, you can then include a link within the post that goes to your website where your sales brochure can be downloaded. That’s how your web traffic can increase. If you have created your landing pages appropriately, you’ll also be able to drive visitors to other pages on your site and ask for readers to follow you on Twitter and other social media platforms.
It’s this interconnected capability of digital media like blogging, social media and the web, that’s transforming lead generation strategies. New digital channels like these are moving away from being seen as experimental. Indeed, for many industries, digital lead generation techniques are now viewed as mainstream.
For firms yet to fully embrace corporate blogging, the key is to start building up that archive of blog material as soon as possible. Then start promoting on your website as well as on Twitter and social media platforms. Collectively, as your library of blog posts increases, you should see a corresponding increase in the volume of quality sales leads, month after month.
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Freelance copywriting and blog ghost writing for SMEs
New research in 2013 points to cautious optimism for UK small and medium sized firms. Business owners and managers can take steps now that will help them benefit from rising confidence and minimise the impact of any relapse.
The latest edition of the Lloyds TSB Commercial research of UK SMEs offers some encouragement for small business owners. The 41st edition of Business in Britain highlights the areas that suffered during the last six months of 2012 but also points to across the board cautious optimism for the first half of 2013.
Mixed fortunes during the latter half of 2012
It seems that manufacturers in the West Midlands, South West and Wales with turnovers greater than £5m per annum suffered the most in the final half of 2012. Smaller companies elsewhere in the country were experiencing something of a recovery, albeit a mild one as the diagram below shows:
Cautious optimism for the first half of 2013
The research suggests that all sectors, business sizes and regions expect, on balance, to see more favourable trading conditions in the first six months of 2013. Firms have slightly more positive expectations for orders, sales, profits, staff hiring and capital spending.
In terms of challenges, the biggest concern is weak domestic demand. Additionally, firms have stated that regulation is becoming an increasing burden. Any knock to consumer sentiment could shatter the cautious levels of optimism seen in this research.
On the export front, it seems firms are satisfied with the EU’s promise to do whatever it takes to keep the Eurozone stable. However, any change to the EU’s ability to honour this commitment could see a return to volatility which, given that the region faces fresh bail-out concerns and looming elections in 2013, is a bit of a worry.
In the meantime, SMEs will be looking for the UK government to push forward with infrastructure projects and see progress from schemes like Funding for Lending.
How to make the most of this optimism
As a small business owner or business manager, you will want to make the most of these early signs of optimism. You could start by targeting those industries expected to benefit from government initiatives or companies that seem unaffected by current economic conditions such as these growth businesses.
You will also want to ensure your sales and marketing activities are cost effective too. Relying on traditional advertising and trade shows for lead generation can be an expensive and unproductive option. Blogging, social media and content marketing all appear to be more cost effective lead generation techniques without any compromise in lead quality.
Now is the time to review your marketing plans. Ensure your activities will make the most of the growing sense of business optimism. Check that your staff are addressing these new marketing techniques effectively and can track performance. Alternatively, if your human resources are already stretched, consider using outsourced professionals.
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Freelance copywriting and outsourced marketing for SMEs
Firms can reduce their cost per lead by up to 60% by adopting blogging and social media over more traditional marketing techniques. The problem for small businesses is how to create quality content without compromising business performance.
Recent research published by Hubspot highlights the extent of the shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards digital tactics. This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business, as digital communications can have a significant impact on your bottom line.
Whilst the research is US based, the findings are still relevant for the UK and Europe. The research looked at the effectiveness of inbound versus outbound marketing techniques. Inbound refers to activities like blogs, content publishing, social media and web traffic resulting from SEO. Hubspot defines outbound as telemarketing, direct mail, tradeshows and more traditional activities.
In truth, the Hubspot definition for outbound tactics can be challenged. It’s probably better to consider techniques in relation to their interruptive impact on the target audience. Inbound represents tactics where the audience are in control of when they engage with your business.
At the other end of the scale would be outbound phone calls / telemarketing which represent perhaps the most disruptive tactic when engaging your audience. In between are a range of other techniques reflecting different degrees of audience disruption.
The Hubspot research found that inbound tactics featuring low on the audience disruption scale also had the lowest cost per lead. This is reflected in the chart below which shows that blogs, social media and web leads from SEO enabled traffic, head the list.
The research also found that, on average, the outbound lead cost was $346 compared to just $135 for an inbound lead. That’s a massive 60% saving on average lead costs.
The inbound digital marketing techniques that were most successful in generating new business for B2B firms were:
* LinkedIn 65%
* Blogs 55%
* Facebook 43%
* Twitter 40%
The research does not say if any of these tactics were combined when generating new business leads but the overall trend is still impressive.
However, a separate report highlights that many SME owners find the effort required for social media and blogging too onerous. Some 33% of SME owners want to spend less time on this area. Yet, if they stop, they know it will directly impact their lead generation performance.
If you run a business and recognise the value blogging can contribute, you have essentially three options:
1. Write the blog posts yourself
2. Allocate the task to someone in your organisation
3. Outsource the task to a professional
Which option you choose will largely depend on your budget, the capability and bandwidth of your staff and the extent to which you enjoy writing.
Building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate is fast becoming mandatory in order to maintain business awareness. The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget towards more cost effective digital tactics. They have moved on from being experimental fads to mainstream marketing tactics.
Traditional lead generation tactics will no doubt continue to play a key role in your lead generation programme. However, you should seriously consider how much of your budget should be allocated between traditional and digital channels for 2013.
Hubspot Research respondent profile:
972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably in the USA).
57% had less than 25 employees; 72% were B2B and 38% were owners or heads of business.
Industries included professional services, communications, technology, media, education and others.
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Freelance copy writing and marketing support for small businesses
Many SME owners adopt a DIY approach to social media which takes them away from actually managing their business. It’s a method that can back-fire badly. This post highlights the pitfalls and an alternative way forward.
Evidence from a recent survey points to a growing dilemma for small business owners. Many are embracing social media to promote their business but the opportunity cost of doing so is turning out to be higher than expected.
Conducted in September and October 2012, the survey by Vertical Response canvassed feedback from 462 firms, 93% of which had less than 100 employees and 43% of respondents were business owners. Whilst the research is US based, the findings can probably be applied to the UK and Europe too.
Managing Social updates
The survey found that 43% of respondents spent six or more hours per week on managing social media activity. Most of this was on updating Facebook and Twitter accounts. LinkedIn was mentioned by just half of respondents indicating a possible B2C bias in the data.
Blogs can work well, but…
Over half the sample managed a blog with 43% aiming to publish at least once a week. The problem is that 45% spend up to three hours to create a post with another 16% spending more than three hours on the task. The biggest problem cited was in finding suitable material to base the blog on.
The dilemma for small business owners
A third of the sample want to spend less time managing social media and blogging. However, research elsewhere indicates that almost 70% of firms find social tactics successful in generating new business. Stopping social marketing activity is therefore not something business owners really want to do.
That’s the dilemma. Social marketing is a relatively low cost activity that’s getting results but SME owners have a desire to spend time responding to needs elsewhere in the business rather than on content creation.
This is an area that warrants serious thought and consideration. Getting your social media communication strategy wrong can be very damaging to your business. Let me explain why.
The opportunity cost of your time
As the owner of a small business you’ll be stretched to cover all the bases. The benefit is that you’ll be most qualified to act as thought leader, as well as the person most able to take an item of industry news and overlay some added value for your audience.
However, if you don’t enjoy writing or don’t feel you have the right style or approach, you will end up spending much longer on the task than someone more able, and you may feel the output of your efforts are sub-standard anyway. That is time effectively wasted that could have been invested more productively elsewhere in your business.
Social media shapes how your brand is perceived
The material you publish is going to directly impact how your business brand is perceived by existing customers and prospects alike. Social media for business is different to that for personal use. The pressure to produce quality output is greater for business social media.
Your audience will view typos and mistakes as badly as those found in a glossy sales brochure. In effect, that is what social media is fast becoming – a key component of your online corporate brochure. Only instead of a hard copy brochure, your audience now expect to view your web site, downloadable material, blog and social media posts in order to obtain the insight into your business that was once only possible by reading a brochure.
Few business owners would trust themselves to produce their flagship sales and marketing material in-house. Rather, they would utilise skilled designers and printers to ensure that the most professional image is presented to the audience. Social media content is no different.
Unless you have a gift for and enjoy writing and creating charts, graphs, etc, you may be better off handing the task over to someone in your business who can focus fully on the job, or outsource the task to a professional. You’ll then be able to stay in control of the messaging by reviewing and influencing content before it’s published and still be able to dedicate more of your time supporting the parts of your business that need you most.
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Freelance copy writing and marketing support for SMEs
