When you create your company blog, there is always a clear emphasis on using this channel to educate readers and create an entry point into a relationship with consumers. This is the fundamental principle of thought leadership, where high quality content is used as a way of engaging individuals and delivering invaluable information to them.
While the days of using a company blog to initiate a hard-sell initiative may be long gone, however, it is still an invaluable tool when it comes to informing consumer decisions and driving sales conversions. There are many ways in which this can be achieved, both in terms of optimising online sales and those completed in-store.
3 Successful ways of Driving Sales through your Company Blog
So what are the key measures required to drive sales through your company blog? Here are three of the most impactful: –
Make your Blog the primary stage of the Sales Funnel
There are many stages of the sales process, from first engaging a consumer to converting them either online or in-store. Your company blog should play a prominent role in the first stage of the sales funnel, especially as estimated 59% of U.S consumers alone having confirmed that they have used their mobile devices to research products before making a purchase.
In practical terms, the blog should use engaging and informative content to draw in consumers, targeting relevant topics and creating copy that offers a valuable market insight. From here, you can place cookies on the browsers associated with individual customers in a bid to capture their email address and engage in more personal communication.
This can lead to the sharing of real-time offers and promotions with individual customers, which is more important than ever given the enhanced security of online payment transactions. The proliferation of contactless methods such as Apple Pay (which was first released on the U.S. market in October 2014) has also driven real-time sales in-store, and this is a trend that businesses should not ignore. By creating relevant content with a sense of immediacy and using your blog to capture a real-time audience, you can drives sales and make the most of branded promotions both online and in-store.
Use Gated Content to collate Data and drive sales Conversions
If you are unfamiliar with gated content, you missing out on a unique opportunity to interact organically with your customers. Gated content is essentially anything that sits behind a form, where visitors to a blog are required to share their email address and non-sensitive data in order to access e-books, downloads and similar material.
This gradually turns your blog into a channel through which potential customers can be initially captured, without forcing you to aggressively target consumers and request their information directly. Instead, you can interact with customers organically and build a sense of loyalty, as you share valuable information in exchange for contact information that offers a portal into a long-term relationship.
Most important, the data accrued can be analysed to determine and target various market segments. It can also be shared throughout the business to improve your marketing ROI and increase sales conversions.
Inform your customers and Influence Sales all year round
Typically, sales volumes endure peaks and troughs throughout the year, depending on the nature of the industry that your business operates in. While Cyber Monday generated sales in excess of $ 2.68 billion in 2014, for example, this type of expenditure is rare and not something that brands can solely rely on as they look to grow and increase profitability.
Your blog offers a medium through which you can engage and inform customers all year round, however, as you take an educational approach that seeks to build trust and optimise sales consistently. They key is in adopting a long-term ethos, creating content that offers value to consumers while maintaining a steady and consistent level of interaction. As part of this strategy, you can even adopt an objective approach that highlights similar products and businesses as a way of enhancing the consumer experience, subtly promoting your own goods and aligning yourself with relevant, high-quality brands.
In summary, you can encourage readers to interact with your blog through the publication of regular content and the decision to link to previous posts that offer relevance. This can help to build long-term consumer loyalty and optimise sales conversions throughout the year, rather than relying on periodical promotions and consumer holidays to fuel growth.
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