Some sales guys crap all over blogging. They don’t see the point and would rather spend their time focused on “touches” and more standard sales plays. This is a big mistake. Blogging matters to sales. But why?
Relationship and Proof
Before a prospect gets on the phone with sales, they are going to check you out. Usually this means:
- Your website
- Your blog
- Your social profiles
- Any reviews or new articles about you
When they check your website or social, what are you sharing? Hopefully some interesting stuff relative to industry. A few years ago one of our colleagues was checking out a cloud security company on their site and on LinkedIn. Every single post was promoting basically the same webinar. That company comes off as “don’t know what they’re doing.” Now, conversely one of their rivals had a blog with lots of cloud topics, network security topics, and general industry overview topics — plus vetted content from that industry shared as well. Who do you think our friend called back first? Right. Show that you know what the heck you’re doing and talking about. Blogging is a great path to that.
Sales collateral and engagement
A lot of “here’s a pain point” articles are great collateral for BDR/SDR role to send out. And, in fact, a lot of people don’t want to hear from you on the phone. They don’t have the time, or you come off as pushy, or whatever the case may be. So if you get a phone meeting and then can follow up twice with relevant articles, that’s a win.
Now, there is a caveat here. If all your blogs are crappy and they read like sales pitches (brief description of a problem and then an invitation to get a demo for the last half of the blog), people will tune that out. So if you don’t have a natural copywriter on the staff somewhere, go get one via a platform (Upwork) or referral. It’s important. No one wants to read one-sheeters turned into blogs all day. If the quality is there, though, then it’s good collateral to move someone down the funnel.
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Good spot to bring traffic
Cold traffic from social media is often sent to a static website or a landing page. The theory on the former is “It has all your info,” which is true, but it’s not specific enough, and oftentimes home pages are organized poorly, and people can’t find what they need and bounce. A landing page makes more sense, but oftentimes they’re pushy, things pop up, there’s too much pricing information, etc. Why not send them to a blog page or a specific blog? It’s your most relevant, newest content (generally speaking). If they like your blog, you can lift them up a level or two into lead magnets eventually. Maybe have an email capture on your blog — but be sure it doesn’t display immediately. It should display after people have had a chance to read half a post or longer. If you consistently bring people value through your blog, those are much-easier converts than some landing page, usually.
What other benefits have you seen to blogging as a sales tactic?