It’s established now that blogs are a great way to attract attention, to publish your thoughts, even create community, but how well do they do for selling stuff?
I was talking to a client the other night who asked if a blog would help him acquire sales leads. Of course I assured that blogs can and do work well for making sales. All that is required is a different approach to that you might be used to.
The key is to use your blog as a vehicle to attract, inform, and build trust. As I said in my post “The Art of Selling with Your Blog”
Blogs gather you a targeted audience, then drip-drip-drip the necessary benefit-lead, fact-filled, objection-busting content to your prospects – without feeling like they are being sold to.
By all means reference your products and services in your articles, just keep it in the context of reader-friendly content, not a pitch. From your blogs static pages and sidebar you can advertise your services also. Just as I have a footer on this article explaining who I am etc, you can place a footer in your posts and/or feed advertising a particular offer.
A great way to show your services without beating readers over the head with sales letters is to discuss real results as case studies. This demonstrates your expertise, shows your service benefits in the form of a story rather than bullet list, and has the potential to introduce client quotes (testimonials).
Critical to your success will be to keep your prospect top of mind and introduce offers in a conversational way. If you manage this you will both make leads and maintain your readership over the longer term.
