In an industry that is known for fierce, abundant competition, you would need your brand to stand out and be distinguished by your customers and clients. In this era of digital marketing, one of the best means to do this is through your website. Now, you may argue that you already have a website that already contains everything you need from your company profile, contact information, and even e-commerce functionality. But once your audience is done reading and transacting, are you truly getting enough traffic to increase its value? There are a lot more that you can do with your website, and this is where content marketing, specifically blogging, comes in.
Content Marketing
So, you probably already have an audience who know your brand and have visited your website once or a few times already. You may also be spending on expensive online advertisements regularly, as your marketing dictates brand awareness and recognition. To augment your brand’s value, though, you need to keep your business connected with your target audience, and the best way to do that is through relevant content on your website.
Your retail and hospitality business needs to build trust with your customers. When they read your content, they can develop an opinion on your brand. Anything they read from you that is educational, valuable, and engaging, will earn you their positive sentiment. This, in turn, makes it easier for them to do business with you. Content encourages conversions as they offer your customers the necessary information for them to be able to arrive at an enlightened decision when they make a purchase. In fact, among 72% of companies that were surveyed, they claim that content marketing increased their marketing leads.
A Business Blog
There are several types of content marketing, but the most popular among them is blog-writing. In this case, a business blog. These are topics that are related to your business and the industry that it belongs to. Blogs supplement your overall marketing strategy, more so when you need to get the attention of your target audience on your website and on your social media channels.
You can host your business blogs on a stand-alone website, which is on a separate domain as your main business website, or you can just allot an entire section for your blogs.
So, why blog? How does it affect your business entirely? Here are the 3 best reasons on why your retail and hospitality business can benefit from a blog:
1. More Traffic
Committing to a digital marketing strategy means that you have to keep an active online presence. The more people you have visiting and staying on your website and engaging on your social media channels, the better. Their presence on your platforms is also a way of converting them into potential customers and turning or keeping them into loyal ones.
If you have the typical business website content, it will probably consist of just a few pages. As you write blogs, you produce more content, keywords, and more pages. Producing good content earns you a good rank in search engine results, so you’re assured of a higher probability of showing up on people’s searches. And this isn’t just for the short term, either. Anything you post online remains there forever. Long after you’ve posted your blog article, it can still get searched and be found even years later. So, any effort you put in on any blog post can turn into an article with a thousand or a hundred thousand views in the future.
2. Be Regarded as an Authority
As you create and host more blogs on your website, your readers will eventually look to you for answers to their business-related problems. Your business, as well as anyone associated with it, becomes their trusted source of information, as well as being a reliable brand. You can then be regarded as an industry thought leader or an authority. You can also position yourself to gain more followers on your other online channels such as on social media. This then makes it easier for you to pull in your followers to do business with you.
3. Get More Leads
Once you have substantial traffic to your website, as well as having a considerable number of followers, then it’s time to convert them into leads. The best way to do this is by creating CTAs, or Call-To-Action offerings in your blog posts. These usually consist of free e-books, webinars, or even app trials. Grant these in exchange for having your visitors to fill-up forms so you can get their contact information.
While being able to convert visitors to leads via CTAs may be the most obvious method of monetizing your blog posts, there are also other means. You can also set-up an affiliate marketing program where you can earn through commissions. The biggest business benefit is more strategic: building your brand to be a high-ranking business search result. This nets you more opportunities over a long-term period.
Conclusion
You should consider blogging as a part of your digital marketing strategy, especially if you want to increase your online presence and leave searchable industry leader footprints. It also helps small businesses who are looking for an inexpensive avenue that will help them gain an industry advantage by recruiting new customers, and finding new business partners, as well.
