Content Might Be King, But Does Your Content Sell?
An Argument Against Content Ruling The Land
We’ve all heard the phrase 1,000 times in our lives. You know what i’m talking about. I know you do.
“Content is King” — A Pure Genius
As a writer, content marketer, and founder of a distributed content agency, I don’t agree with this statement. If anything is king, it’s revenue. Every company revolves around a product that solves a problem for a set of people. Ideally, these people pay for the solution to their problem. That’s what it comes down to, right? Revenue. Revenue is king in B2B land.
You are are writing a blog post because it will impact your company’s overall success, not to get one million views just for the hell of it. Content is made to support the product, because the product brings in the revenue. Content should help people discover the product, help people understand why they need it, and help people get value out of it once they commit in. Sound familiar?
- Traffic and lead generation
- Sales
- Retention
If your content isn’t helping with one of these three categories, question why you are writing it in the first place.
Revenue Is King, But How Can Blog Content Grow Revenue?
Now we’re asking the real questions. Now that we agree that content supports the product that brings in revenue, we can get into strategies to best utilize content. Here are three ways you can use blog posts to generate more leads, turn those leads into sales, and make sure those customers stay for a while.
Use Blogging To Bring In More Traffic
One aspect that we talk a lot about at PubLoft is SEO. Many companies don’t realize that SEO could make or break a startup. If a startup can’t figure out a way to get customers without paying for Facebook ads, it’s not a sustainable model.
Why is that? It’s because if you get SEO right, you bring in a slew of new visitors every day who are potential buyers, FOR FREE. FREEEEE!
That sounds cool and all, but how does one accomplish this? Many people approach it the wrong way by thinking its all about just optimizing a home page. In our opinion, it’s all about optimizing for blog content that ranks on Google for long-form keywords. SO when people search those terms, your blog is right there to educate them!
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See, when I search “How To Create Blog Content”, blog articles come up…. Not websites home pages.
So, writing blog articles that rank is a great way to get more traffic to your site, that you can then convert to paying customers.
Use Blogging In Your Sales Campaigns
If you are already bringing in inbound traffic through forms on your website, use your blog content in your drip campaigns for people in your funnel. If you plan to send out a 5 email sequence over a period of a few weeks, the only way to gauge interest is if someone responds to an email, as an open doesn’t mean much these days. Including a link to a blog post does two things for you.
- It helps you find the people who are interested enough to click on a link. These people are innately a little more interested than people who didn’t click on the link, so you can proceed accordingly.
- It establishes variety in your sales emails. If all your follows ups are just 2–3 sentences reframing the question of “just following up”, you’re not trying hard enough. Include links to your blog in there. Throw in a gif or two. (Or seven) Change it up, or your results will never change either.
- It educates the people you’re trying to sell to, which is never a bad thing
Write content, and deploy it to move people along in the funnel to get them closer to being paying customers!
Use Blogging To Delight Current Customers
What’s more important: Finding new customers or keeping your old ones? You can answer that one, but if you do want to keep your customers, you need to delight them every chance you get. Using blog posts can educate them on topics in their industry, keep them updated on best practices, and make sure they are in the loop with happenings in your company. You can even use blog posts to highlight some of your best customers, which will keep them around for even longer.
Your goal is to make them SO happy, they will travel to a beach and take a jumping picture during sunset, FOR YOU (Pictured above). Once you reach that level, you deserve a break.
All joking aside, it’s no secret that happy customers are a good thing. Take care of them and they will take care of you.
Wrapping It Up
Blog posts can have so many benefits but many time, they just are stuck collecting dust on a webpage somewhere online. Content isn’t king…using the content to generate an ROI is king! You invested in the creation of this great content. It’s time to use the content to get you the ROI you were always looking for…visits that turn into leads, that turn into customers, and customers that turn into advocates.
Just promise me one thing. Every time you write a blog post, it’s tied back to a specific goal. Whether it be lead generation, sales material, or customer retention, don’t write for the hell of it. Another way to put it…write to help people. If what you’re writing isn’t helping someone… in some way, shape or form, maybe it shouldn’t be written. Live like that and at the end of the day, no one can fault you for that.
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