A blog can be a seriously powerful tool for helping you build customers for your business. But building customers through a blog does, indeed, take a bit of effort. In this post we want to tell you a few ways that blogs can help you to build up a customer base and your reputation. The result of these things is often more customers! We will also tell you specific ways to bring most customers to your blog page in the first place. Having a blog that builds more customers can lead to a bigger bottom line for your business. And who does not love that?
Showcase Your Products or Knowledge
If you have a business, you must have a product or service to sale. A blog can be a perfect spot to highlight new product. Or to simply showcase the ones that you already have. It can even be a place to reveal new products. These sorts of posts make customers feel as if they are having an inside look at your business. It can also give them buy-in to upcoming products. If you own a service business, start a blog that showcases your knowledge in a particular area related to what you do. In this way you can let potential customers know that you do, in fact, have knowledge and experience.
Create a Community
One of the most exciting opportunities for business owners with blogs is the chance to create a community. You do this when you interact with customers who come to your blog. They may email you after visiting or leave a comment on your blog page. You will want to respond to customers who have both praise and concerns. Just remember to deal with concerns before dealing with praise. But deal with both quickly. Building a community make customers feel as if they are valued by a business. It also creates loyalty among already existing customers.
Build Your Brand and Reputation
A blog can help you to build your brand and reputation online. It can be a place where you showcase what your brand is all about. Or it can be a place to simply establish what your brand is all about. Build your reputation as a helpful, customer concerned, quality business. When you post quality articles and videos often, people will assume that your business and/or products are also high quality. Use your blog to target the audience that you need to build, or to grow the customer base that you already have for your business. When you work to build your brand, customers will take note. And you can reach more customers than you ever thought possible.
Get a List Going!
An email list can be a powerful tool for reaching out to customers. You can easily use your blog to create an email list for your business. Include a simple form on your blog page for customers to enter their information for updates. Or give them a place to reach out to you where you also ask for their email. Getting a list going means that you can effectively use email marketing in the future. It also means that you can instantly reach out to your audience each time that you post something new on your blog. This can help to build sales, visits to your blog or webpage, and your customer base.
Find Your Audience
Are you simply searching for an audience for your product or writing? A blog is the perfect way to find these things for your product. If you are wondering if someone is interested in a particular product or service, start a blog about it. Promote your blog just like you would a business. Over the course of a couple months you can figure out if anyone is interested. More importantly, you can find out who is interested. This can help you better target your overall audience. When you successfully target your audience you can better tailor products, marketing schemes, pricing, other businesses that you partner with, and more. Targeting an interested audience is an important first-step in growing your audience.
Connect Your Blog to Your Webpage
One of the most effective tactics for building your customer base is to connect your blog to your webpage. When you do this, blog readers are more likely to head on over to your site. More visitors to your site can mean more sales. If you have a sales or booking page, connect your blog directly to it. If you do not have one of these, then simply think about linking your blog to your webpage where people can learn more about your business. More conversions to this webpage can mean more calls to your offices or visits to your store. Again, these things can mean more sales.
Aim for the Highest Quality
We have already talked about building your brand by using a blog, and therefore building customers. But without quality content your blog is unlikely to be effective. People may visit your blog. But you can expect them to largely ignore it if you have nothing interesting, helpful, or engaging to say. Always aim to produce the highest quality content. You can get this content from a variety of sources. Just be sure that it is great before you post it!
Keep Customers Loyal
Keeping customers loyal can help you build your customer base by leaps and bounds. Customers that love your business and product are more likely to recommend you. A recommendation may convince others to check you out. You can also use your blog to keep customers loyal. Do so by interacting with them. Also do so by giving them more posts like they want. Studies show that maintaining loyal customers is much cheaper for businesses than getting new ones. So you should strive to keep your customers loyal. Encourage them to tell others about your business, too, if they love it.
Showcase Various Uses for Your Products
If customers do not know how to use your product (or the various uses for it) they may not purchase it. So show them what they can do with it! Post videos and how-to articles about your products. This can help customers better understand just why they need your product. Show them what problems your product can solve. Or just things that they may not know that your product can be used for. Being able to do this can make people much more excited about your product. You can even do this for products before they are released.
Get Your Customers Involved
The last way to build customers through your blog is to get them involved in your company. Asking customers to do this can get them excited about your business. In some ways, it gives customers buy=in, and lets them show others just why they love your product. It may also mean that they decide to tell others about the contests that you are offering. Ask them to help you produce content. Doing so can be a gold mine for blog content or marketing for you. You can run photo contests, video contests, design contests, or even essay contests. Offer prizes from your business to the winners.
