Inbound Marketing is a technique that attracts B2B customers to your website through the creation of content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), user experience, branding and social media marketing.
Content creation and development is the driving force of any inbound marketing strategy. Valuable content attracts customers to your website, encourages them to engage with your brand and creates memorable experiences that they share with their friends and family.
Your inbound marketing content strategy should include everything from website page content, social media content, video content, but perhaps the most important aspect is your company’s blog.
Blogging is crucial to your B2B inbound marketing program, but to be successful you need to be doing it right.
Not quite sure how? In this guide, The Brit Agency takes a look at the importance of blogging and how your company can create the perfect blog that not only attracts customers to your website, but converts them as well.
Why is blogging important for your B2B marketing strategy?
Consistent blogging is one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness, while at the same time providing valuable, relevant and useful content to your target audience.
Blogging drives traffic to your website, positions your business as an industry thought leader, improves your SEO initiatives, strengthens the relationship between your brand and its customers, and, when done correctly, converts new leads.
Here are just a few statistics, as published by Hubspot, that show just how important blogging is for your company’s B2B marketing strategy:
- 70 percent of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements.
- Marketers who prioritized blogging received 13 times more return on investment (ROI) than companies that did not in 2019.
- Blogs can result in a 434 percent increase in indexed pages and a 97 percent increase in indexed links.
- Companies with blogs produce an average of 67 percent more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog.
- 80 percent of internet users interact with both social media sites and blogs.
How to create a blog that converts readers into customers
Now we know exactly why blogging is so important for your organization, how exactly do you write successful blogs that not only attract visitors to your website - but convert those visitors into customers?
We’ve created a five-step guide to blogging that will get your organization well on its way to achieving its content creation goals.
Step #1 - Understand your audience
The majority of B2B businesses are still only posting press releases, event announcements, sales pitches and product launches on their blog. Unfortunately, while these posts can still be added to your blog, they add no real value to your audience.
The first real step to successful blog content creation is to understand your audience, what interests them, what problems they need to solve and how your business does that.
To create blog content that truly attracts, engages and delights your audience, you need to first understand your audience through the creation of buyer personas. Once you have done that, you will have clear insights into the content you need to create and which buyers in your audience to position it to.
Want to learn more about buyer personas? Read our blog - ‘Why Buyer Personas are Important for Your B2B Marketing Strategy’ - to learn what buyer personas are and how they are important for your B2B inbound marketing strategy.
Once you understand your audience, the value of your blogs will increase tremendously. The result? Increased website traffic, higher qualified leads and conversions and, ultimately, increased sales and higher profits.
Step #2 - Plan your blog post
Blog writing is a long process. It’s not a case of spending 30 minutes typing as many words as possible and then hitting the publish button. Bloggers spend hours, days or even weeks thinking about and working on a blog to make sure it’s perfectly created for the audience that they are trying to reach. Before you start writing, it’s important that you plan and research exactly what you want to say.
Your planning should involve coming up with an idea that answers a particular question your audience has, researching statistics and other thought leadership pieces that will backup your points and analyzing what keywords you will need to include. Once you have planned what will be included in your blog post, you’re finally ready to start writing it.
Step #3 - Write your blog post, and include a captivating headline and intro
There are a few things to keep in mind when writing your blog post. First is the title. Make sure your title includes keywords and keyphrases that will help you rank better on search engines and that appeal to the needs of your target audience.
Your title will depend on how you write your blog, but there are generally three styles of headline:
- Lists: ‘Five Ways to Improve Blog Conversion’
- Curated collections: ‘10 Successful Blogs Your Business Should Learn From’
- News Pieces: ‘New Study Shows Companies That Blog Are X% More likely to Convert Visitors
Your introduction is also a crucial part of your blog. Write a good intro and visitors will keep reading your content, write a bad introduction and it’s likely they will leave before they even get down to the second paragraph. Your aim is to create content that’s valuable enough to lead to visitors clicking on a call-to-action (CTA).
Your introduction should be short and captivating. Grab your reader’s attention, and explain the purpose of your post and exactly how their life could be improved if they are to continue reading it.
Step #4 - Design your blog within your CMS
Blog posts with an overwhelming amount of information will likely scare away visitors. Your blog content needs to be easily digestible and simple for visitors to scroll through in a way that empowers them to stop at the parts that are most valuable to them.
That’s where the design of your blog comes in. In fact, the design of your blog is a powerful user experience and SEO tool that will help you convert readers. You can organize your blog so that it doesn’t intimidate readers by using sections, lists, tips, bullet points, subheadings and images throughout the text. Choose a relevant featured image that will help readers understand what they will be reading about in the blog.
Don’t forget to add a clear CTA into your blog, this is how you will capture leads and convert website visitors into customers.
Step #5 - Edit, proofread, optimize and publish your blog post!
Your finger is now probably itching to publish that blog you’ve been working on, but wait - there’s a few more things you need to do! It’s time to edit and proofread your post. Make sure sentences are concise and easy to read, fix up any grammatical errors and ask a coworker to check over it if you want to have a second pair of eyes for quality assurance.
Once you’ve done that, you now need to optimize your blog post so you can maximize your SEO ranking. Ways to optimize on-page SEO for your blog post, include:
- Add a meta title
- Add a meta description
- Use keyword variations throughout your text
- Add alt-text to your images
- Select categories and tags that are relevant
- Embed internal links to related content on your website
- Optimize your headline for focused keywords
Done all of the above? You’re now finally ready to hit that satisfying publish button and watch your blog as it makes its way onto the web. Your blog is now a powerful tool in attracting new visitors to your website, and converting new leads into customers.
Still not quite ready to blog like a pro? Contact the Brit Agency today. Our team of inbound marketing and content experts would love to answer any questions you may have in regards to blogging or digital marketing as a whole.
