Content marketing is a softer way to get your product or service in front of your prospects and there is perhaps no easier way to do this than through a company blog.
A blog allows you to share your company story, news, insights and industry relevant opinion pieces. When done well, they can provide an informative platform & wealth of knowledge, that your prospects can dip into and learn from, when in the awareness stage of your sales pipeline and beyond. They allow you to position yourself as the expert who can be relied upon from a distance, this is beneficial as often prospects aren’t committed to having an initial in-depth conversation with you, they are still getting to know you, your business and your offering.
However, there are many traps that companies fall into when they first begin pushing out content. We’ve outlined a few below and given some hints and tips to avoiding making the same mistakes:
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You post irrelevant content
Your prospects have clicked onto your blog for information about your product or service and how it can help them. It is therefore essential that your blog doesn’t ramble off down multiple tangents but provides them with information that is valuable and informative. Prospects don’t want to sift through endless content to find the answers that they need, they should be able to click on a blog and know that it will be relevant to them. The rule of thumb? Whilst you may have insightful opinions about every aspect of life, unless it is directly beneficial to your prospects needs, it’s best to keep them to yourself.
The solution: create a monthly content schedule and align it to the benefits/attributes of your product or service, or new campaigns/products that you are rolling out. For example, if you own a B2B telemarketing company, focus on generating B2B leads one month and then build on this by following on the next month with a blog on Inside Sales to manage the leads generated.
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Your personality falls flat
When writing a blog post it is vital that some personality from your business shines through and, importantly, that this personality is one which is relevant to and appeals to your prospects and clients. By this we don’t mean that you should have a joke a minute to make them laugh, but that the language, form and style you use is reflective for your organisation and its goals and values. Is your brand quirky, funny, informative or formal, for example? Understanding this is key to ensuring your personality resonates with prospects and helps you to sell your product or service.
The solution: There is a two-pronged approach for ensuring that your blog reflects a personality that sells your business. Step one is to ensure that you understand your business. This may sound obvious, but many organisations end up finding that their team don’t have a cohesive idea of the goals and values of the company, in turn having to re-evaluate these further down the line. Step two is to fully understand your target audience – how do they want to be spoken to, what appeals to them and what will make them want to get in touch and find out more?
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You don’t do your homework
If a prospect is looking at your blog, it is more than likely they have a need for your service/product, e.g. they are a new manager who is looking for a performance management tool to improve the engagement of their staff. With this in mind, they probably don’t have much more than a high-level awareness of what it is they need and are looking for someone to help them understand. If you want your prospects to take your brand seriously and value what you have to offer them, it is vital that you demonstrate that you know your industry and position yourself as an expert – a guiding hand there to help them reach their goals.
The Solution: Do your research. Make sure that you know the ins and outs of your industry and can point them towards various surveys, results or articles that highlight the importance and success of your product or service. If you don’t have any research material of your own, align your blog to industry leaders, sourcing their statistics in your blogs to back up your offering and demonstrate its value.
