Blog writing is a great marketing strategy for businesses who want to establish a presence on the internet. Not only will a blog with high-quality content improve brand awareness, it is also a key component in driving traffic to products or services the business offers.
1. Suggest Content
Most online retailers showcase their top selling inventory on their product pages in an effort to improve product visibility, sales and average order values - so why not carry out the same strategy with your blog content?Research is often the initial phase inside the conversion funnel, and those who extend that research process possess a much better opportunity for conversion. Beauty retailer Birchbox, for instance, harnesses content suggestions on each and every blog post. For this reason, it’s easy for individuals to carry on with their research quest. For example, Birchbox’s suggested content box allows consumers who are exploring face creams to check out “The Miracle Cream I can’t Leave Home Without” with only a mouse click after they read “The Multi-Tasking Cream that Our French Editors are Obsessed With.”
To provide suggested content to blog visitors, bloggers can take advantage of a system like AddThis Pro, that provides suggestion widgets which work to maintain visitor engagement on a site. Additionally, retailers have the capacity to modify the widgets to promote specific content.
2. Create a Community
E-Commerce websites are able to use blogs for much more than simply writing lists and delivering details about products. In fact, these bloggers can transform their blogs into a community by means of producing engaging posts. Enter Forever 21 and Nordstrom. Both of these retailers mix engaging posts within their blogs to inspire consumer interaction and further blog visits.
Forever 21, for example, uses its blog to market a contest that shows consumers sporting the retailer’s unique makeup collection. To get involved, customers were required to visit and follow the company on Instagram, upload a selfie along with particular brand-related hashtags and return to the Forever 21 blog to check out the winners. In contrast, Nordstrom, used its blog to advertise their SJP Collection (Sarah Jessica Parker). This post not only showcased various methods of wearing the line, but also gave consumers an opportunity to engage with the brand by uploading a picture to the retailer that showed off various other ways of personalizing the line. Contributors are then asked to revisit the site to find out if their street-style picture is featured in Sarah Jessica’s next guest editor post.
3. Close the Sale
Given that research is normally the initial step on the journey to sales, retailers should use data extracted from their blogs to close the sale.
Among the best methods for businesses to acquire prospects using their blog is simply by presenting a pop-up email subscription box to new users. By doing this, you’re not merely increasing your subsciber list, but you’re also tracking visitors’ browsing habits in order to personalize email promotions. MailChimp, actually provides a function called “Goal” that allows users to send targeted emails determined by website activity. By means of this feature, a clothing retailer could create campaigns to nurture consumers from the sales funnel according to website activity.
In addition to email, merchants might also use visitor data from their blog to reach consumers through remarketing strategies. For instance, if your prospect is known to spend time reading a beauty retailer’s article that provides a guide on “how to create a smoky eye,” the merchant may create a remarketing campaign using a platform like AdRoll that displays a smoky eye makeup kit in an attempt to close the sale.