Everything You Need to Know About Using Your Blog to Drive More Sales
You've likely heard many times that starting a blog for your business’s website will help increase traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately cinch more sales.
“Starting a blog” is a bit harder than it sounds, though, isn't it?
More often than not, a visitor will navigate to the blog tab on any given MSP's website only to find one of the following scenarios:
- A single introductory blog from when the website was first created
- A list of blogs that are all at least a year old
- Nothing at all
And hey, if this is the state of your website’s blog, don’t panic. You’re in the same boat as a lot of people.
The bottom line, however, is that getting your blog up and running can (and will certainly) do wonders for your business. Make no mistake: When marketing experts tell you to start a blog and keep it up, they’re giving you one of the best tips in the business.
Want to know more? Here’s why having a blog (and keeping up with it) is so important.
The Importance of Using a Blog for Your MSP
There are two overarching ways to use your blog to generate leads and ultimately, increase sales.
First, you want to drive traffic to your website immediately — starting right now.
Second, you want to increase search engine optimization within each of your blogs so that, over time, you are continuing to drive traffic to your website, creating an ongoing flow of attention and business. We will go over each of the strategies below.
#1 – Getting people (potential clients) to notice you right now.
There are several ways to get potential clients to notice your website right now. The advantage of driving traffic to your website immediately is that you'll start that trickle of attention and begin to generate some responses to your calls to action or CTAs (more on CTAs later).
The way that you get started right away with lead generation and website traffic is through a series of marketing and advertising strategies. First, you want to start cranking out those blogs. There are a multitude of strategies for making your blogs the best that they can be. Essentially, however, you just want to provide great information in an organized fashion, clearly, and concisely.
Now, it's time to post these blogs online. Put them on your social media sites. Advertise them broadly. Write articles for LinkedIn and post them there for all of your connections to see. Start linking your blogs to PPC advertising campaigns. Send out links to your blogs in email newsletter campaigns (you'll need to have a good chunk of email addresses to send the email blasts to). And finally, create videos. Blog posts don't only have to be only in written form. You can create pseudo-blogs in video form and post them on YouTube.
#2 – Boosting your popularity within search engine results.
Now, it's time to create that steady stream of traffic to your website. This is best done by optimizing your search engine results. Basically, when someone uses Google or a similar search engine to search for a keyword or keyword phrase that is linked to your managed service provider business, you want your website to come up first among the search results. The art of achieving this outcome is a strategy called search engine optimization or SEO.
Google defines SEO as: "the process of making your site better for search engines."
Here's what you need to know about SEO.
There are endless articles and videos about the best ways to use search engine optimization to drive traffic to your website. Here are a few basic facts you need to know about utilizing the strategy:
- Select only one keyword to optimize for (or in some cases, two).
- Use these keywords throughout your blog, but not too much (this is called keyword stuffing, and it can actually backfire).
- Use the keyword in headings and in the title. Use it in ordered lists.
- Use ordered lists!
- Use images and videos in your blogs. Attach tags to them, and don’t forget to use the keyword here.
- Use keywords as links, and have these links go to other pages on your website (service pages, for example).
- Provide quality information. Don’t simply ramble on and keyword stuff — Google knows!
- Overall, go for shorter sentences and paragraphs.
- Keep the text at a relatively low comprehension level. In other words, don’t worry about making your content sound high brow and extremely advanced.
- Use location SEO, which attaches locations with keywords and keyword phrases (for example, instead of just using the keyword “best MSP security,” use “best MSP security in Denver.”
#3 - Don’t Forget to Attach a CTA
CTA stands for call to action. You’ll need at least one CTA on each and every one of your blogs. This is the key that cinches the deal. In other words, it’s the blog and the two strategies listed above that got people to go to your website, but now the challenge is to get someone to purchase your services — and this is where the CTA comes in.
The CTA is an “ask”:
- Head here for more information
- Book your consultation appointment today
- Learn more about our MSP services
- Speak to one of our representatives
- Find out more about our tiers of services here
- With each and every CTA, you’ll want to link to your contact page and/or your services page. You want the reader to take action and make a move toward hiring your managed service provider company.
Choose Ulistic as Your Trusted Digital Marketing Firm!
Working with Ulistic is the right choice for managed service providers who are serious about marketing, gaining leads and sales, and increasing their ROIs and bottom line. If your managed services company has an annual revenue of $1M or more, contact us today to learn about our services.
As your marketing partner, we’ll work alongside you to hone your marketing strategy and ensure a healthy flow of new business leads and ultimate sales. Contact us today to schedule your 50-minute consultation!
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