Why do you need to have a blog for your business? If you are not a blogger and you have a physical product or service that you sell, perhaps you think that having a blog is unnecessary and would add to your already busy workload. But that’s where you are wrong!
Having a blog on your website is an integral part of your marketing strategy to get new customers to find your product or service. A blog offers you an opportunity to get visitors to your website who may not yet know that they need your product or service, it offers an opportunity to connect with your community, and it offers an opportunity to convert visitors to your website into customers for your business!
In this article, I share 10 reasons why having a blog is essential for your business and how you can use it to boost your product or service sales!
1) A Blog Will Bring New Visitors To Your Business Website
Unless someone is specifically searching for the product or service that you are providing chances are they may not come across your website. In fact, they may not even know that they even need your product or service to begin with. But if you can get someone to visit your website before they are searching specifically for what you offer you have the opportunity to connect with them, adding value for free before you try to get them to buy from you.
You should create a blog that provides value on a topic related to what you are selling. For example, if you are a wedding photographer, you could create a blog with articles about specific photography tips, or more get even more specific with titles that someone planning their wedding might be searching for such as “how to find a great wedding photographer” or “10 questions to ask a photographer before you hire them for your wedding”.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is key for this. You need to know exactly what your target customer might be searching for on a search engine so that you can optimise your blog posts (and your website pages) for the keywords and phrases they are searching.
2) A Blog Will Help To Build Your Email List
As mentioned in the first reason why having a blog for your business is important, the blog will bring visitors to your website that are searching for specific topics. Once they are on your website you have an opportunity to convert that visitor into an email subscriber. Email subscribers are important because these are people who have found your content interesting enough to sign up and be notified when new content is posted, plus they are primed to become future customers if you manage the emails you send to them in the right way.
Once someone is on your email list you can continue to add value for them. Giving them free advice and tips on your area of expertise. In addition, you can provide incentives for them to remain on your list. This could be product discounts, entries in a giveaway or free printable / downloadable eBooks. Anything that gives the subscriber a reason to stay subscribed!
Then once you have built a connection, and added value you can begin selling to them. Think about it like this, you wouldn’t ask someone to marry you as soon as you meet, you would take some time to get to know them, build trust, date for a while and then get married. The same goes for sales! You want to get your potential customers to build a relationship with you first!
3) A Blog Is A Way For Your Customers To Connect With You Personally
Once you have started the blog on your website you can publish a mix of informative content together with some more personal articles that allow you to connect with your reader on a deeper level. These articles could be about your travels or home life, they could be a day in the life of, or they could go deeper sharing personal struggles, heartaches, business mishaps or failures.
Sharing both the good and the bad will allow your reader to connect with you – oftentimes this is because they can relate to what you are saying since they been through the same thing.
4) A Blog Helps Your Customers To Learn Your Values
Not only can having a blog be an opportunity to share some more personality and personal stories about you and your business, but it can also be an opportunity for you to share your values. For example, your business may give a percentage of profits to charitable organisations that are important to you. You can put a note about this donation somewhere on your website pages and perhaps in the footer section but you can’t really explain in detail the reasons why you are donating a percentage of profits.
A blog gives you an opportunity to do this. When you are writing for your blog, remember not every article needs to be a highly informative read packed with useful tips and information that will appear at the top of search results. Some articles serve a different purpose to provide more insight into your business and importantly your values. These articles may not be the ones that get the most views but that does not mean they are not extremely valuable to building your brand.
5) You Can Embed Your Products & Services In Your Articles
If someone lands on your blog via a search engine you have several opportunities to let them know about the products and services you are selling in a relatively subtle way.
Let’s go back to the wedding photographer example. A reader has landed on your article “Do You Need To Hire A Photographer and A Videographer For Your Wedding?”. Well, the answer to this is most likely yes, if you are a photographer you will know that its best to have two separate people do these jobs. In your blog post, you will present several reasons why someone should hire both. Then with your article, you could have a section on Recommended Videographers where you list top 5 wedding videographers you have worked with. Then since you are sharing advice that doesn’t directly benefit you, you can also recommend your own services as a photographer to the reader.
There are a couple of different ways to do this:
- In Content: This is where you naturally integrate mentions of your business and your products in relevant sentences with some links over to the sales pages for those services.
- Banner Ads: Create your own graphics that explain your service that you insert in the article and link to the sales page. (see example below!)
- Sidebar Ads: In addition to your in content mentions you can have a sidebar feature of your services. Your sidebar appears site-wide so no matter which article someone lands on they will see this. You can go a step further and create more than one sidebar to appear on different pages and posts, but for most people, one sidebar is enough.
- Notification Bar: A bar that appears at the top (or bottom) of your website that can be used to mention promotions or discounts you are offering for your services.
- In eBooks & Printables: If you give away some helpful eBooks to subscribers, why not add related products or services at the end of the eBooks? This is a great place to promote your products because if someone liked your content chances are they might like your services too!
Think of all the work that you are doing to market your business to potential customers. Imagine if someone was doing some of that marketing for you – wouldn’t that be great?! Essentially this is what the blog will do. If a visitor reaches your website, not because they are looking for your product but they are looking for information and answers on a specific topic – then they land on your article which perfectly answers what they were looking for they might share it on their own social media channels.
Even though they are not actually sharing the details of your product and service, they are sharing content from your website increasing the reach and potential views. This could introduce you to a whole new audience of potential customers who may not otherwise have found you!
7) Offers You A Creative Outlet
Having a blog on your website can be a creative outlet. Perhaps your product or service is something that you have the skills to offer, and is actually making you money but does not necessarily give you an opportunity to be creative. Having a blog can provide this creative outlet and bring some of the fun back to running your business.
As I mentioned earlier not every post has to be super informative, some can be much more personal or even sharing your own views and opinions on a topic. So it can be both a creative outlet and give you a place to share your voice.
8) A Blog Keeps You Up To Date On Latest Trends
When writing blog posts you are likely to do some research on the topic you are writing about. In doing so you will learn new things about this topic, thus helping you to stay on top of trends, updates to your industry and your competitors.
It is important to always stay ahead of curve or at the very least keep up with the curve, so having a regularly updated blog will force you to ensure you are in the know about your industry. The second benefit to this is that you will be well informed when you go to any business or networking events related to your industry or talk to new clients and customers.
9) Brand Awareness
As I have explained throughout this article the blog will bring people to your site that may not have originally been looking for your product. By having this blog you have an opportunity to zone in on your ideal customer and create blog posts that you think they will be searching for. Once they land on your website they will then discover not only do you have the answers to their questions but you sell related products and services they are likely interested in!
To help you visualise how this could work for your business here are a few businesses, and related blog post titles you could write about if you run this type of company. This list is not extensive, so feel free to reach out to me if you want me to help you come up with some blog titles and topics that would relate to your business.
Subscription Box Company
- 10 Gifts To Buy Your Loved One This Valentines
- 10 Ways To Get A Last Minute Gift For The Holidays
- 5 Easy Ways To Discover New Exciting Beauty Products
Personal Shopper In NYC
- 20 Ways To Take Inspiration From The Met To Your Wardrobe
- 10 Hidden Reclaim Clothing Stores In NYC
- Top Stores To Buy Vintage Prada in NYC
Eco-Friendly Towel Company
- 5 Simple Steps You Can Take To Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly
- 8 Products That Can Reduce Your Water Consumption
- 10 Items You Need To Pack For The Beach This Summer
- 20 Ways To Convert Facebook Followers To Blog Readers
- How To Plan A Month of Social Content In 4 hrs
- How I Instagram To Double My Monthly Sales
Event Planner
- 25 Beautiful Bouquets For A Boho Party
- How To Style Your Garden For 4th July
- 15 Ways To Save Money On Your Engagement Party
10) Your Blog Will Turn Readers Into Customers!
Overall the top reason for having a blog on your business website is to get traffic to your site, let people know that your business exists, explain why they need to use it and add enough value that eventually means these readers into customers.
But you might get lucky and the person who stumbles onto your website via a blog article decides right then and there to purchase your product. Whether it happens immediately or it takes more time for you to build trust, either way, your blog has the potential to turn readers into customers!
I hope that this article helped you to understand why having a blog is integral for any business, whether it’s online, service or physical product. If you have any questions about this topic leave them in the comments!
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