A Marketing Case for Blogging

Growing-up in business as a sales person has marked me for life --in a good way of course, because a sales person knows that everything they invest time and energy in must be a simple step or two away from making money—making sales. Small business people can definitely take a page from the play book of the professional sales person, especially since many small business owners are themselves, their company’s primary sales agent.

Referrals from friends, clients, and networking groups have always been one of my most productive Channels of Opportunity™.  Therefore, one of my primary marketing objectives is to make it easy for those collaboration partners to refer me when a business owner in their circle needs the marketing and consulting services I can provide.

This is a common marketing objective for many firms… those providing profession services as well as product-based companies especially when they have a significant value-added service component. People will typically want to get to know you and perhaps even like you before they agree to get into direct conversation with you let alone hire you or buy your products. It’s very useful to provide prospects with an easy way to get acquainted.

Strategic Marketing

When done strategically, blogging can become the perfect conduit for getting acquainted, making blogging a great friend to the strategic marketer. Blogging is a method for sharing who you are with the world.

Blog posts, hosted and archived on your corporate website allow your ideal prospects the opportunity to see the real you and by extension, a bit of themselves and their business situation in your content. Therefore, when appropriate, they make their way to your product and service pages to see just how you might be able to help them with their business.

The all-too-common brochure-type, static, business website is limiting at best and potentially damaging at worst, to your image as a forward looking business that understands the needs and cares of your clients.  I’m personally committed to helping my clients move away from these formats. In fact, going through the transition myself has inspired me to share my journey with you.

Application

Some questions you might want to ask as you prepare to incorporate blogging more strategically into your own Business Development System. Be very specific in your responses as you need to know exactly how it will play out:

• How can the content of our blog posts help referral/collaboration partners serve their existing clients and grow their business?
• How does blogging on any particular topic help you attract ideal target clients? Be very specific in your responses.
• What specific impact will frequency of posting have on the appeal of our ideal targets?
• What impact could a false start or lack of consistency in posting have on our business opportunities?

Check out one of my cool tools to help you evaluate blogging and any other marketing element under consideration. Find it in the Resource section of my website at http://lindasparks.com/resources/43-worksheet-marketing-elements-by-design

I figure that since I am exploring this topic very strategically for my own business development purposes, that you might want to tag along!

Getting into the Conversation

Would you like to hear from a few experts on the topic of blogging as business development strategy?

What have you learned on the topic of strategic blogging that you will share with the small business community?