The majority of potential customers and clients are now online and that is great news for any business owner, it means reaching in to your target market is a lot easier than it once was. The problem is, do you use this online way of living to your advantage and not only to your advantage but to the advantage of your customers.
The internet has made shopping around easier and personalization of service of huge importance and if your business isn’t using its digital marketing tools properly then the company is likely to fail. In this post I will discuss three ways that I GUARRANTEE will help you generate ‘the right traffic’ and leads for your business.
1. Blogging, but the right content
What, you don’t know how to blog? Do you have an opinion? Well then my friend, you CAN blog and I believe that EVERYONE should be blogging! Blogging is actually a really fun way to get your thoughts out of your head and shared with anyone who is interested and willing to read the content you provide. It is so important that your business ( or as individual ) are blogging and for quite a few reasons.
Firstly it breaks down perceived barriers between being a professional corporation to an approachable professional that cares about its customers and becoming seen as an educator not just an informer. Secondly blogging helps boost organic search results and thirdly if you write the right content then you are being a little bit psychic and answering questions that customers have before they even make enquiries empowering your customers! In this era customer truly is king and being a caring compassionate business that really wants to make a difference to people it does business with are the businesses that are going to thrive in the 21st century and beyond.
Write the right content
People get confused about what blogging is. Blogging is not really a tool for spreading gossip and news or discussing the latest news events ( unless it is really appropriate for your business ), the reason you shouldn’t blog about major events and twist it on to your business is because the person who views the content is interested in the ‘news event’ not your services or product! Comprende!?
Instead take just 10 minutes of your time and ask yourself what is the last 20 questions a potential customer or lead asked? Usually cost is top for most businesses but what else is an issue? When you have the questions you have the greatest content creation tools at your disposal and if you ignore the customers needs you will always be seen as a corporation that are not very approachable.
Remember, its time to be personal and friendly with the customers NOT just provide a service or product. Show the consumers why you are the company to do business with.
2. Getting your employees to blog
If you are small to large-sized employer then this applies to you otherwise one man bands, im sorry ignore this section!
Your employees are the ones who are your point of contact with most of your clients, particularly the sales team so get those guys knowledge and get them putting pen to paper ( or finger to digital ), they are perfect people to try blog content because they know not only the questions that consumers have but usually the answers to their problem too!
Not only the fact they have all the questions and answers of your market but they will also free up your valuable time! A blog post can take anything from 30 minutes to half a day ( should you be interested in creating a good infographic or something else of such liking), if you have 30 sales staff and each one writes just one blog post a week that is 30 pieces of new content for the search engines to feed on and you didn’t have to divert some of your time to writing a post!
Guest blogging both home and away
So your blogging, your workforce is blogging and now your content is mounting but you can add even more content to the fabulous informative blog you are creating for your market! Inviting others in your industry to blog on your website will not only benefit you but it will also benefit the guest by increasing awareness of their ability and creating back links to their own content.
It may not seem a very clever idea, isn’t it like inviting the wolf to the lamb’s dinner? It depends on your viewpoint, personally I believe by building relationships with fellow industry experts you can build mutual respect, share business when your workload is high and also help promote each other; surprisingly you may even learn a few things from the new post too!
Social
Lastly, if you are not on social media then where the heck have you been!?! EVERY and i mean EVERY business has to be on social media, social media is becoming a much more powerful tool for generating traffic than the organic search. I guess the most obvious reason for this is that you will connect to people who you really do have an interest in, particularly on Twitter so getting your message out to the right person is instantly easier.
Every time you create a new piece of content ( not just blog posts, images, infographics, podcasts too) then share it on all social platforms. A lot of marketers might tell you to just use LinkedIn if you are a B2B, others will say to target a few social platforms, I am going to tell you to target as many social media platforms as physically possible! Create networks everywhere, the more you connect to people from every country and continent on the world the easier it is to reach the right people with your product or service but don’t spend all your time on social media and neglect the importance of actually running your business.
How do you drive traffic to your website? What do you feel works best? Please comment in the box below.