It's time to take business blogging seriously

Many small firms are turning to business blogging as part of their lead generation process.  Not only do blogs allow complete control over the editorial content, but business blogging can also produce sales leads up to 60% cheaper than traditional marketing activities.  

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In the US and, in all likelihood, in Europe too, small firms are turning to the creation of blog content to help generate new business. Heidi Cohen outlines some of the key reasons why business blogging is now such an important marketing tool.  Businesses that are quick to understand the benefits will be better positioned to reap the rewards as industries in general embrace new digital marketing techniques.  Let’s look at the benefits.

A media platform you control

Unlike press releases which are exposed to the whims of editors, with blogs you have full control over the content that is published. Provided your blog is well written and not an overt sales pitch, you'll be able to create marketing messages and calls-to-action exactly as you want them.  And, as blogs have the option for readers to leave comments, you also have a great way to interact with and influence your customers too.  

It means you can actually demonstrate things like customer responsiveness, integrity and industry competence. In fact, your corporate blog can very much determine a major part of the customer experience and, being social in nature, word-of-mouth about a good experience can travel fast.

Integral to your search and social media strategy

The way most blogging platforms are created means you can write content that search engines will utilise for search queries. The more your blog site and content is set up for SEO, the higher your search rank and the greater the probability that your blog content will be found by the target group you are aiming at.

The social nature of blogs is a key ingredient that businesses need to understand too. The blog itself can highlight your industry expertise, customer ethos or corporate personality. Your task then is to extend your audience reach through other social media platforms.  Linkedin, Google-Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others, effectively become your advertising medium.  

By building-up a following, you'll be able to drive traffic back to your website. If you make that experience meaningful to your business audience, word will spread quickly to others. Compared to traditional print publications, business blogs are a much cheaper and more targeted way to reach your audience.

Content that drives lead generation

With complete editorial control over your content, you are able to exploit links to other related content too. So long as you have aligned your web content to the right buyer persona / stage, you can create content that systematically moves visitors along the sales lead funnel process.

That's not something you’ve been able to do so comprehensively in the past. As Heidi Cohen highlights, your blog archive is effectively a content management system.  Each item can have links that help your audience navigate towards sales engagement. What’s more, as most blog platforms have some form of analytics package, you can track, monitor and enhance performance to make the whole process very effective.

It's time to take blogging seriously

As the digital marketing landscape evolves, more and more small firms are recognising the potential of the corporate blog on business performance.  Not only can they generate leads up to 60 per cent cheaper than traditional tactics, but with careful planning, business blogs can become part of the lead generation process itself, helping you to nurture and qualify new sales opportunities.  Being dismissive of corporate blogs could be a very costly mistake!

Business blogging is fast becoming an integral and cost effective part of the marketing toolkit.  If you can’t find the time yourself to create blogs, consider making it part of an employee’s job description. Alternatively, hire a marketing copywriter to write them for you.  Once you have established an initial archive of material, you’ll be able to exploit the “linkability” of your content to generate high quality leads more consistently.

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Reduce the cost of your sales leads and gain an extra three hours per week

Digital marketing techniques are having a profound impact on small business performance.  Now you can publish blogs that generate new sales leads at a lower cost per lead than traditional techniques, and free-up more time to run your business.


Small businesses are responding to the challenging economic climate by consciously reviewing the techniques they use to generate new business.  The trend is away from traditional techniques like exhibitions and outbound calling and more towards blogging and social media.  What’s more, this change appears to be having a positive impact on profit margins too!

Savings of up to 60%
Research published by Hubspot in 2012 reveals small firms are reallocating up to 21% of their marketing budget towards blogging and social media.  These firms are finding that digital techniques can generate new business at a lower cost per lead.  Some 52% of respondents felt blogs produced leads at a lower cost than traditional techniques whilst 45% claimed the same for social media.

Aligning blogs and social media to “Inbound” marketing, and tactics such as trade shows and telemarketing to “Outbound” marketing, Hubspot calculated the average cost per lead based on respondent input.  

They found that the average outbound cost per lead came to $346 whereas the value for inbound leads was $135 – a massive 60% difference!  Given the current economic environment, it’s no wonder small firms are re-allocating marketing budget towards blogging and social media.

Hubspot also asked respondents to rank blogging and the main social media channels in order of lead generation importance.  

All channels scored 60% or more in terms of their usefulness in generating new leads.  Even more revealing was that 25% said blogging was “critical” in terms of importance and a further 34% ranked blogging as “important” as shown in the diagram below.

Chart 1: Importance of blogging and social media to new lead generation activities:

The hidden costs of social media and blogs
Whilst digital techniques are proving to be more cost effective than traditional lead generation methods, they still have associated costs that can have a big impact on small business performance.

The sheer time and effort required to maintain a social media presence or create a quality blog is proving too much for many small business owners.  Research elsewhere indicates that it takes three or more hours to create a single blog post.  If you wanted to create and publish, say, three posts a week, you’d need to find an extra day on top of your already busy schedule.

You may be like a number of small business owners who want to spend less time managing social media and blogging; a third of SME’s feel this way.  Understandably, you need to devote more time to running your business.  However, if you stop publishing blogs you’ll be back to relying on traditional lead generation techniques and the consequent impact on your bottom line. 


The opportunity cost of your time
As the owner of a small business you’ll be stretched trying to cover all the different aspects of your business.  This makes you best qualified to act as thought leader.  You’ll also be ideally placed to interpret an item of industry news and highlight the implications 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 longer than is necessary on the task of blog writing; that’s wasted time that could be invested more productively elsewhere in your business. 

What’s more, the material you publish is going to directly impact how your business brand is perceived by existing customers and prospects alike.  The content has to be relevant and engaging, yet still include a subtle call-to-action. Plus, your audience will view typos and mistakes as badly as those found in a glossy sales brochure; blogging and social media for businesses demands higher standards than for personal use.

Unless you enjoy writing and creating charts, graphs, etc., you may be better off handing the task over to someone in your business able to focus fully on the job, or outsource the task to a professional.  You’ll then be able to stay in control of the message by reviewing and influencing content before it’s published. 

If you were to allocate the task of publishing just one blog post a week to someone else, not only would you be generating leads at a lower cost than traditional methods, but you would have an extra three hours a week to devote to running other parts of your business!


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