Client Acquisition with Blogging

 Can you do client acquisition with blogs?  Of course you can.  There are multiple ways you can do that but the important thing to remember is that your Business Blog is the home base for your social media strategy.  It is where people will explore and learn more about you.  It is where you can build credibility.  It is where you can drive people with links and rss in your other social media tools.

Here are some ways you can build your client acquisition strategy with blogs.

1. Blog Writing that really helps your prospects succeed.  If you write blog posts that really help people you are more likely to get links and leads.
2. Niche Keywords – Select keywords that your target market is using to search for solutions online.
3. Call to action – don’t just attract prospects.  Also make sure that you have a clear call to action and can capture prospective client information.
4. Relationship building – you can start a relationship with prospects in many ways.  Email, twitter, facebook, rss readers and more.  Let your prospects connect to you the way they like to.

These are just some ideas for Client Acquisition using blogs.  It is not always an overnight thing but you can build relationships and get prospects on a regular basis with minimal effort on your part.

Client Acquisition with Business Blogs

If I said that you could achieve greater client acquisition with business blogs, you might be skeptical.

However, that would probably be because of the word blog.

Forget blog, and think of it this way.  You can greatly increase attraction and acquisition of clients if you produce regular articles and information that your target market is searching for and achieve high search engine ranking for that information.

That should make perfect sense.  In fact, our entire Buzzoodle system is built on a blogging software engine that is optimized for ease of use, automatic search engine optimization and a heavy focus on lead generation and keyword ranking.  And we do some serious client acquisition for our clients.

Then, if you optimize the articles with clear calls to action (offers) then you can get a higher percentage of people to give you their information for later followup.

A business blog can be the perfect vehicle to achieve this strategy, but most people get lost in the idea of a blog.

Content Marketing and Fresh Content

If you are using content marketing, you absolutely must keep adding fresh content into your website or blog.

That does not sound hard, but when content marketing starts getting big results, it is easy to get busy with all your new, fresh, targeted leads and you will become to busy to write on a weekly basis.

That is why it is really important to have a system or even hire a blog writer to keep your content marketing effort fresh and moving forward.

I had a recent client that does not care about leads – he simply writes a horse racing business blog about the industry and has used content to establish himself as an expert in the field.  He took a three week vacation, and was not worried too much about what would happen to his blog as it was only three weeks off.

He came back, looked at Google Analytics and emailed me.  He said he should have scheduled at least a few articles to publish while he was gone because the drop off was dramatic.

Internet Marketing using Content Marketing strategies is very effective, but you have to plan on keeping up with it even when you get busy or go on vacation.

Small Business Speaker on Lead Generation

Did you know that the CEO of Buzzoodle is also an author and small business speaker on how to build lead generation engines online for small businesses?

Ron McDaniel speaks to groups of small business owners all over the United States about how to use business blogging, clear calls to action and search engine optimization to build side websites that just create daily hot, targeted leads for their companies.

If you are interested in discussing having Ron do his business blog speech, contact him to discuss your date and his availability.

Restaurant Marketing Tips

We are running one of our Buzzoodle Blogs for a restaurant and it is really getting great results.

Of course, the biggest challenge is that people in restaurants do not have time to write.  However, with some pushing from us we are seeing the restaurant blog get more and more targeted hits and even better – lots of people are starting to sign up for their restaurant newsletter and restaurant coupon.

While this does not make a huge impact on the bottom line in the first month or two, the long term effect of getting new people to try the restaurant and getting them on the email list will net a nice return over the long haul.

A restaurant business blog is a great way for a restaurant to do internet marketing.

Business Blog Writing

How do you write for a business blog?

Business Blog Writing is not that much different from normal blog writing.

If your business hopes to build on relationships and the personalities of the employees, then your business blog should be written with the same flavor of a more personal blog.

Probably the biggest difference about writing for a business blog is that the business blog should have goals.  These business blog goals are known to the writers of the blog, but are not obvious to the casual reader.

Some of your business blog goals are:

1. Lead Generation – By attracting the right kind of people from search engines, you can greatly increase your warm leads without selling in the blog article.
2. Keyword Ranking – Skilled business blog writing can help you capture more top spots for high value keywords.
3. List building – Not just email anymore.  If you do a good job with your business blog writing, you can grow your lists on various platforms, such as twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and your email list.
4. Website Visitors – Your business blog may be set up at a completely different site, which can drive visitors over to your main business website.

So while the tone and personal aspect of the business blog writing may not change, in the back of the mind of each writer should be the goals of the site and the outcome you desire, without coming across like a salesman.

Business Blogging ROI

Measuring your Business Blogging ROI  is much like measuring the ROI on your business referral efforts.

You give out business referrals, you get business referrals back, and some of those turn into great leads.

With blogging, you link out to people and some people will link into your business blog.  This then results in more traffic, more people on your email list and eventually more sales.

Much like referrals, your business blogging ROI may not be easy to measure because it could take months for that link to actually generate business for you.

What things can you meansure to know if business blogging is working for you?

• Lead Generation
• Inbound Links
• Blog Comments
• Email Subscribers
• RSS Subscribers
• Twitter Followers

Business Blogs are also excellent for SEO with Blogs.  This can be measured by your SERP Ranking in Google for your blog and your organic search traffic.

Keep the metrics simple and understand which numbers actually lead to more money for your business.  While measuring your business blogging ROI may not be an exact science, you can become closer than you thought.

Generation Lead Sales Targeted

How do you generate targeted sales and leads?

Of course, there are many lead generation tools and strategies.  Here is an assessment of how to assess any tool or strategy to get more sales or leads.

Sales Lead Tool Musts

1. Be able to target your target market
2. Must be a predictable system that can be measured
3. Must demonstrate a ROI that justifies its expense after a reasonable trial period

Don’t Buy Excuses

There is nothing wrong with trying something that does not work.  If fact, you should be trying new things that are targeted and measurable to generate sales and targeted leads every month.  However, if someone says you will get results and then it does not happen, stop doing it and move that budget to a new lead generation experiment.  But make sure you give it a reasonable amount of time first.

For example, Google Adwords will work the same on day 1 and day 100 (within the margin of error).  But it will be less an issue with the adwords tool and more an issue with your leanding page and your keywords.  You need to try those and keep experimenting – and moving your adwords budget around to get the best return on your advertising spend.

For an organic lead generation tool like Buzzoodle, you have to look at the competition in the marketplace to assess the results.  It can produce sales in as little as two weeks but it depends on your sales leads target.  Lead generation with blogs does work great for most marketplaces, but only when you commit to a solid strategy and make a clear call to action.  Just having a blog that is not business blog oriented will not produce sales leads.

The Generation of Leads and  Sales that are Targeted is going to increase greatly if you start with your end goal in mind.  For example, you may say you are going to spend $3,000 on advertising in trade publications – but first set a goal of the number of targeted leads you want to get from the advertisement.  How will you track the lead generation and sales from the advertisement?  If it turns out to have a great ROI, you are going to spend $3,000 every month, right?  So you have to know the metrics and goals going into any sales effort or targeted lead generation.

Business Blog Link Building

Setting up an effective Business Blog that generates sales and leads is not just about the Business Blog Software.

The best business blogging software around will not get you results unless you also have some other sites linking into the business blog and also make a clear call to action on the business blog.

Regardless of the business blog software tool you select, the following list will help you get more links and traffic.

1. FaceBook
2. Blog Catalog
3. Tumblr
4. Twitter with Socialtoo
5. WordPress.com – Set up a blog and add your main blog feed on the right in a widget.
6. MyBlogLog
7. Blogger.com – Same strategy as wtih Wordpress.

It is important to keep in mind that these tools have been heavily exploited by people spamming and do not carry much credibility when you first set up accounts on them.  But if you keep using them they eventually gain credibility and will rank steadily higher and generate some steady traffic to your main business blog.

Remember that Buzzoodle does do link generation for corporate blogging clients.

Business Blog SEO

For a small business that is looking for a cheap SEO service, a business blog is just the answer.

While a good SEO specialist is worth every penny of the thousands of dollars a month they charge, they are often out of the reach of the small business.

If you are a small business owner and you like the idea of getting great business SEO results, you really need to consider a business blog software solution.

What you need to know about your business blogging solution is that a normal blog will not get as good of SEO results vs a business blog that has been set up with search engine optimization and lead generation as the primary goals.  SEO with Blogs works best if you are planning that from the beginning.