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Five Simple Reasons to Start a B-2-B Blog
Marketing teams have been singing the praises of content for years. Its becoming more and more important to search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) to have educational and informative content on your website and in any type of content you are sharing.
Content is still king.
What’s that you say…you’re a b2b company providing professional services so you think
informative content only works for b2c? Hmmm. Let’s look at the facts.
b2b Marketing Stats
Source: http://socialmediab2b.com/2012/10/b2b-content-marketing-trends/
50% of B2B Marketers use content marketing for thought leadership and education
88% of B2B Marketers cite case studies as the most effective content marketing
85% of B2B Marketers say LinkedIn is the most effective social network in delivering content
Reasons for B2B Companies to Blog5
1. Your prospects are engaging and learning online
2. Cost effective3. Drives traffic on an ongoing basis4. Industry thought leader positioning5. Search engine optimization
1Your prospects are using search engines to research professional
services and products
57% of the buying process is completed by your prospect before you ever speak to them. If you’re NOT blogging and providing valuable insight, they’ll find it from your competitors.
Blogs are a cost effective tactic, requiring significantly
less of your budget than traditional tactics
2
Blogs are a cost effective tactic allowing your company to effectively drive leads at a significantly lower cost then traditional tactics. Your prospects are also become quite good at blocking out the intrusive tactics of traditional, costly methods.
Drives search traffic to your site
3Writing blog posts answering the questions most frequently asked by prospects and customers lends credibility and gives Google good reason to drive your target audience to your site. Unlike an ad that disappears when the ad buy is over, blogs stick around and keep driving traffic because they're already optimized and just waiting for a long-tail keyword to be typed in to a search engine so they can: 1.) pop up on page one of Google, Bing, or Yahoo, 2.)convert to a lead, 3.) then become a customer, and boost sales. Isn't ROI and increased sales the goal here?
Blogs position your company as an industry
thought leader
4
Provide valuable information that informs and educates, and you'll begin to collect a following. People want to read open and informative content, not content focused around your products and services and why YOU think they're so great. If you provide the valuable info, then the prospects who have done their homework (70% of them to be exact) will be looking to you for more information so they can make an informed decision.
Search engine optimization (SEO) benefits
5
As the engines search the web for relevant content to serve up to its users, having a blog with relevant messaging can improve your ranking and increase your relevancy. Spend the time to incorporate your target keywords into the blogs for Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl.
Incorporating great content onto your company website is becoming less a trial
tactic and more of an expected educational resource for your customers. So, be their
trusted voice when they're looking to educate themselves and you'll come out on
top with increased sales and more loyal customers.
alignment-group.com
About the author:Lindsay Kelley is the CMO and co-founder of Alignment Group, a sales and marketing company focused on growth through sales and marketing collaboration offorts. She’s focused on lead generation for sales teams through inbound marketing strategies. She can be reached at [email protected]
240-397-8652