More than 70% of small businesses actively invest in content marketing, with a majority stating that it is very important or even crucial to their success. Further, almost 90% of companies in the B2B sector create blog posts regularly as a primary part of this strategy. But while these statistics may be impressive, how about a 13 times return on investment? According to industry watchdog Hubspot, business owners who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy a positive ROI from their marketing activity. So if you are thinking about blogging, how can you be sure that it will be a good investment for you?
Lead Generation
If you publish posts regularly and make sure that people are aware of this activity, you will begin to increase the number of visitors to your site. You’ll need to make those posts valuable, of course, and give people a reason to come back for more. But when visitors grace your site, make sure that you include an appropriate call-to-action so that you draw people into your marketing funnel.
A blog post can be a “teaser,” and you may have a separate document that goes into much greater depth (a white paper, perhaps). If your blog post makes your reader thirst for more, offer them access to this white paper through a separate download. They will then need to give you their name and email address in return for the goodie. As your leads have now given you permission to contact them, you have a freshly minted lead.
Website Traffic
Optimise your blog posts carefully. Your aim should be to rank for as many relevant keywords as possible, and while this can be quite an involved process (see here for more information), perseverance is the key.
Once you have determined your keyword ranking strategy, you can create blog posts that service each longtail keyword in the list.
Answer related questions, provide information and ensure that you think through your internal linking strategy.
Provide your visitors with comprehensive information through one or more related blog posts so that your site is the only resource they need for the subject in question.
The search engine robots will reward you, and elevated rankings mean an increase in website traffic.
How do you measure ROI here?
Use an analytics program so that you can track your website traffic carefully. Make sure that you can track visitor behaviour and allocate a value to each individual action.
For example, when a visitor types in a related keyword, the search engine returns your blog post URL as an option within the ranking pages. Once that visitor has read your blog post, they take a specific action. You will need to allocate a dollar value to that action using performance metrics. If a certain number of those people become warm leads or make an eventual purchase, you can determine their average value and, therefore, calculate your ROI from each blog post.
Backlinking
If you make your blog content as valuable as possible or even viral, you can expect other sites to link to your posts. Google (and the other search engines) put great emphasis on backlinks, especially if they come from authority sites. This authority will help to push your posts even higher in those search engine rankings.
Shares and Comments
Try to get people to comment or to share your content within their social networks. Don’t be afraid of controversy – within reason, of course. As time goes by, track those comments and shares so you know that you are extending your reach.
You will engage more customers and build more loyalty and, in doing so, develop your community. While the path may be twisty, some of those shares may lead to a new prospect and, in turn, a sale.
Calculating Your ROI
As you calculate your return on investment from blogging, remember to take into account your costs. You need to consider the money spent on hosting, development and software, together with the cost of actually generating the content itself. While some companies choose to employ somebody in-house for this, it is almost always more cost-effective to outsource.
Blog Post Creation
Get in touch with Car Copy for all your blog creation work. We will help you understand your ROI before we begin developing the content itself so that you can be perfectly happy with your buying decision.
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