In order to make sales in a business, you need to have customers. But customers aren’t going to just find your business, or your products, by accident. You have to put yourself in front of them.
And while you can get in front of your ideal customer through paid marketing, content marketing through blogging is not only a more effective way to make sales, but it won’t cost you anything!
Creating an audience through blogging has had a massive impact on my total sales as well as conversions.
For example, I am currently running a paid Facebook ad to a sales page, while simultaneously driving my blog traffic to an identical sales page. Through the paid marketing I am getting a 6% conversion. Meaning, 6% of the people who visit that page made a purchase. However, the customers that land on the sales page from my blog, at no cost to me, have a conversion rate of 14% — more than double the paid ad! That has a huge impact on sales.
In an effort to get more eyeballs through blogging, in the last three years I’ve been able to go from zero to over 4 million pageviews. That’s 4 MILLION people interested in the topics I’m writing about and the products I’m selling. Four million people who care about a problem enough to search for answers in a search engine, and who are willing to read about solutions, and sometimes, if you position it properly, even pay for those solutions.
But backing up, how does a person go from zero eyeballs on their products to 4 million? I’ve broken my steps up into five things that have worked in my business, that can work in yours as well.
1. Create
As I started building my ecommerce website Health Beet, I was researching different ways to get traffic. I knew Pinterest would be a good source and search engines like Google. At the same time, I realized having only one or two articles to attract Pinterest users or Google queries wasn’t enough to create an impact.
For me, it came down to math. The more articles you have on your site, the more pins you can make, and the more keywords you can rank for.
As a result, when I had 100 articles, I had 100,000 page views. When I had 200 articles, I had 200,000 page views, etc. More articles directly corresponded with more page views. Spending time creating is the number one, most important step. Without creation, there will be no traffic. I spent two full years in creation.
2. Community
Once you have content on your site, creating a community is the second step. A community helps your customers find people that they can relate to, and in turn, builds loyal followers that will visit your blog and buy your products.
To create a community, know and be where your ideal customer hangs out. Is it on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc? Then once you show up there, start conversations that your community wants to participate in, and share your expert advice, links, and solutions. This will bring a group of people together that appreciate and value what you offer because they know, like, and trust you.
3. Connection
Connecting with your ideal customer is more important today than it ever has been, and it’s step three in building your business through blogging. In the past decade, buying decisions have changed and people want to connect with business owners, rather than a corporate entity.
There is no better way to connect than through blogging. Building connections requires sharing content that your customers can connect to. Your audience will identify with parts of your story that remind them of themselves. You can share these stories through your blog.
If you’re a mom, and have solutions for moms, talk about motherhood with them. If you are a fitness professional, and sell fitness gear, talk about your fitness journey. Making a connection creates loyal followers that are interested in your content and products.,
4. Promotion
While it is possible to get attention from search engines to your blog, promoting each and every article you write will accelerate your reach and signal to search engines the article is worth ranking. The fourth step is promotion.
Every blog post I write gets promoted on Facebook, Instagram, web stories, in Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and in my newsletter. It only takes a few extra minutes to promote your content. After it’s promoted the first time, I schedule them to be reshared in one to six month intervals on social media to get more mileage from promoting.
5. Nurture
The final step in building your business through blogging is to use a newsletter to nurture your audience. Collecting emails isn’t enough. Reaching out to your customers through a weekly email will help nurture the relationship. Being top of mind for the solutions your customers are looking for is almost impossible through social media alone. You can’t control which posts your customers see on social media, but getting into their inbox is under your control.
Through your email list you can continue to build your community, connect with your customers, promote your articles and nurture that relationship. It’s the crown jewel of building your business through blogging.
I hope this has inspired you to spend more time in your blogs creating content that will resonate with your customers. At the end of the day, your audience will convert at a much higher rate than any cold traffic ad ever could.
