5 Ways to Use Your Blog Content as a Sales and Marketing Tool
Depending on how long you’ve been in the sales and marketing game, you may remember a time when every tactic was based on an outbound contact. A business would send its sales message to its audience through advertising, direct mail, outbound calling, or even door-to-door selling.
While many of those strategies are still used (and still valid) today, the growth of digital media, coupled with the amount of time humans have their heads buried in a computer or mobile device, paved the way for content marketing to dethrone “old school marketing.”
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing, or inbound marketing, is the field of dreams concept—if you build it, they will come. Strategically place useful, relevant, and consistent content into the digital world, and your prospects will consume it and take profitable action.
Blogs—the O.G. of content marketing—are the central location to house outbound content. As of 2020, there were over 600 million active blogs globally. And there’s a good reason:
- Businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don't. (HubSpot)
- 70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements. (DemandMetric)
- Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don't blog. (DemandMetric)
Chances are your organization has a blog. If you do, you either produce blogs internally or, even better, you outsource blog management to a premier marketing agency like RED66 Marketing (shameless plug).
However, you may be thinking, “The blog is great, and the articles are well received, but what the heck else can I do with them?” Here’s the good news; blogging can be used in several ways to drive sales and marketing efforts beyond their initial publication.
Here are five things you can do now with all that great blog content.
1. Email Relevant Blog Articles to Prospects
Prospects quickly tune out sales pitches. However, they tend to listen if you reach out with helpful information.
Sales team members should use blog content as a library of reasons to get in touch. It’s as simple as “Dear Prospect, this article may be useful in solving your current challenge of [insert challenge here].”
It’s a great way to start a conversation with a prospect while positioning yourself as a problem solver.
2. Make an eBook
Over time, you’ll likely write various blog posts on similar topics. Gather complimentary posts and create an eBook you can offer for download behind a conversion form. By leveraging your content into a single resource that thoroughly covers a topic for your prospects, you’ve increased the value of your content tenfold.
eBooks, whitepapers, and downloads help move your prospect from the “I like it” to the “I want it” stage of the buying process while, you guessed it—solidifying your business as the expert solution provider.
3. Nurture Leads & Engage Customers
Create an email series utilizing blog content to nurture leads and engage customers. There are a few ways you can approach this depending on the blog content; you can either reformat the blog into an email, summarize the content into a shorter message, or even use snippets of content.
This is a great way to reach prospects that prefer email communication. Like the eBook concept, you can use blog posts that cover a single subject or those that support a timely campaign. And since you already have the content written, it’s a fast and easy way to repurpose content and establish more value to your audience.
4. Mine Blogs for Social Posts
Social posts are like billboards. You have only a second to capture the audience’s attention as they scroll through their feed. So, just because you have the runway to write a lengthy status update, don’t.
According to a BuzzSumo analysis, the ideal Facebook post length in terms of engagement is around 50 characters (or fewer). Blog posts can be broken down into tens, if not hundreds, of informational snippets.
Take this blog you’re reading as an example; we can create at least one post for each of the tips, share a stat, or pull numerous quotes. Get the idea?
5. Repurpose Blog Content into Different Media
Content marketing requires a holistic approach, where your blog, emails, social media, videos, podcasts, and other content pieces support each other. Think of your blog content as the leading resource you can repurpose across multiple platforms to reach more users.
Which of your blog posts are getting the most website hits? Are there specific topic trends you notice? When topics are driving action, capitalize on them. Consider creating a video, an infographic, or a slide deck.
The feedback and activity (or lack of activity) you’re receiving on blog posts and any other marketing derived from those posts should be leading indicators of where your content can go next.
Don’t Forget to Refresh and Reuse!
Lastly, don’t forget to keep your high-performing blog posts current. Like any other part of your website, you want to ensure that blog posts are accurate. When you update an older post, be sure to reshare it.
When done right, blogging drives sales and has a lasting impact on your marketing success. However, it takes a thoughtful strategy to get the most from your blogging efforts. We’d love to start a conversation about your content strategy, and how you can maximize your results. Contact us today!