You’re crazy to ask the question, Why Blog because the statistics are overwhelming. Blogging, when done as part of an inbound marketing campaign, produces 4 major results for you and your company.
- Costs less money per lead than usual
- Generates more traffic than NOT blogging
- Generates more leads than NOT blogging
- Helps you close more sales than NOT blogging
If you are responsible for the growth of your company or are integrally involved in this you need to consider the facts. Blogging is the core of any inbound marketing campaign and when done correctly does what we all need it to do.
Create more customers
Every company leader asks me the same question about inbound marketing. Does blogging/inbound marketing generate more customers? The answer is a resounding Yes! Let’s look at the 4 reasons closer.
Why Blog? #1 - Because blogging costs less money per lead than traditional marketing
Blogging costs some of your time or your staff’s time but when it is all said and done research shows that the average cost per lead is less than that of traditional marketing. In fact a 2012 survey showed the average cost of a single lead was $346 dollars. The average cost of an inbound lead that has blogging at the center of the strategy was $135 for a single lead. Pretty good don’t you think?
Why Blog? #2 - Generates more traffic than NOT blogging
If you look at this chart below you’ll see what it looks like to start a blog from the beginning. This is a client of mine that just decided to hire us for inbound marketing this year. We started blogging at the end of January for him. The chart is not all of his traffic but is just his search engine traffic. Notice that as we blogged for him week after week his search traffic grew an average of 23% a month. If you include July it’s over 30% but let’s not for this conversation.
If he were to keep blogging 2 times a week this conservative growth is probable. That would mean my client will go from 15 visits a month from search to over 560 by Christmas this year. We will reach 6,752 organic visits by Christmas next year in 2014. How would you like that kind of growth on your website traffic?
So about now you might be saying to yourself, “If I blog more often than twice a week then what will happen?” Well, the graphic below compares blogging 1 time a week with 4 times a week.
Yes, it does go up. It’s not always this linear but it is significant. Here at Half a Bubble Out we blog 6 days a week. We have seen an astounding increase of over 80% a month until last month when we had a modest middle of summer growth of 10%. I’m predicting an average of 50% growth per month by the end of the year and then next year I would expect between 30% and 40% month after month average.
But, you ask, what kind of leads would that bring in, being the wise businessperson you are? Good question and the answer is good also.
Why Blog #3 - Generates more leads than NOT blogging
We all know that traffic alone is not a good measurement but you have to have traffic to have a fraction of visitors turn into leads. Then you need to warm those leads up and turn them into customers. The short answer is Yes, blogging and inbound marketing convert visitors to your website better than if you don’t have a blog. Look at these two graphics. One is for B2C business and one is for B2B traffic.
Do you want more leads for yout sales people? And what about the customer conversions? Yep, you guessed it.
Why Blog #4 - Helps you close more sales than NOT blogging
In the end blogging needs to convert to customers and it does. Even the worst strategy that involves regularly blogging means that over time that person will still see more customers than if they didn’t blog at all.
If you do it well, and by well I mean follow the industry standards (yes, there is an inbound industry that has been around since Twitter started) then you will see even better conversions. I can’t even begin to tell you in this blog how it can all work together, but it does and my customers and I are living proof.
Below you can see two different charts that show the increase of sales from blogging. Do you get these kinds of conversions from your online marketing efforts?
So that’s it. The next time you ask, “Why Blog” then you will know the answer and I will assume you are testing the person in front of you.
My recommendation is to add a blog to your site and start using it within an inbound strategy.
You won’t regret it! Cheers.
