Gone are the days when paid advertising actually paid off.
Today, there's a new kid in town, and it's name is inbound marketing.
According to HubSpot's State of Inbound 2015 report, marketers and advertisers from the study say that paid advertising is the most overrated marketing tactic, and say inbound marketing is king.
"Inbound campaigns achieve higher ROI than outbound," says the report, and this is consistent for companies of all sizes and financial capacities from the study.
Needless to say, if you want to drive more revenue, then you need to focus your efforts on inbound marketing tactics.
One of the best inbound marketing tools in existence today is blogging, because it enables a company to create SEO-rich content that can increase a brand's visibility, reach, and reputation online for a fraction of what other, less effective marketing strategies cost.
To help you get a better understanding of what we're talking about, here are three valuable ways blogging helps drive revenues organically.
Adds Credibility + Value
As they say, people want to do business with people (and companies) they know, like, and trust, so it's in your company's best interest to allow your audience to get to know you (and vice versa), as well as encourage them to like and trust you.
Blogging allows your company to prove that it knows what it's talking about and has something different to offer, which is one of the first hurdles in the battle to win over new leads.
Education is key when it comes to blogging, so be sure you're producing worthwhile content that your audience actually wants to read.
Communicating valuable content to your readers means that you're building trust and loyalty with them each time you publish a post.
Therefore, take the time and energy to produce high-quality blogs that make readers want to push the call-to-action button at the bottom of each post.
Increases Traffic + SEO
The entire purpose of online marketing is to drive more organic foot traffic to your site, and one of the best ways (if not the best way) to accomplish this is by producing rich blog content on a consistent basis.
You want your company to get noticed online, right? That means you need to be easily found in search engines and on social media, and the way you do that is blogging.
Allow us to break it down in very, very simple terms.
Every time you post an article, your company is essentially telling search engines, "Hey, we're still here. Look what we're doing," and your site gets one more paged indexed online.
That means there's a greater chance of your blog/website turning up in search results because your blog posts are (or should be) great, valuable content. Additionally, sharing your blog posts on social media adds to your blog's exposure and reach, thanks to a beautiful thing called social sharing.
Never underestimate the power of social media and what it can do for your company, because it could prove to be the secret to your company's success, like it did for these companies.
Converts Leads into Customers
Now that you know how blogging helps increase website traffic, let's discuss the ways a blog can turn leads into customers.
It only takes one blog post to capture a reader's attention and make them want more, which is why it's imperative to have a call-to-action button and/or lead-capture forms on every single blog posts.
If you're not capturing visitor's information, then you're not capitalizing on one of a blog's most valuable capabilities: lead generation.
If you think about it, blog posts act as a mechanism to pre-qualify leads.
Here's the methodology: A blog post attracts a new visitor to your site, and that visitor ends up either responding in some way (e.g. subscribing, downloading, or purchasing) or they bail -- this is your pre-qual. The visitors who responded in some way now become warm leads because they showed interest, and all you did was publish a sensible blog post. That, my friends, is the beauty of a successful blog (and inbound marketing).
The blog is only as impactful as the content within it. Simply posting any ole content isn't going to drive revenue, just as simply having a website isn't enough to win over visitors anymore.
If you want a blog that drives traffic, converts leads into customers, and increases ROI, then you're going to have to put a fair amount of thought and care into creating content that is both valuable and engaging -- because no one wants to waste their time reading meaningless fluff.
Ain't nobody got time for that!
Ensure that you're dedicating enough time and energy into producing rich content that adds value to your audience in an impactful way. In doing so, you can take your customer loyalty to the next level and turn them into brand ambassadors for life -- which is priceless in our books.
