Does your data center want to attract more ideal buyers? The ideology behind blogging is to convert strangers into visitors. You do not want to attract just anybody through your content; you want your content to appeal to your buyer personas.
To attract your ideal customers, you must create remarkable content that is relevant, educational, and interesting for the people who will potentially buy your services.
You want your blog to catch the attention of strangers and turn them into website visitors who will spark a reaction to your content and want more. These practices will move your visitors further through the sales cycle.
For your inbound marketing efforts to succeed, you must comprehend the buyer’s journey and the full benefits of blogging. Following are the key best practices that will make your inbound voyage successful.
Two-Pronged Emotional Reactions
After creating and socially publishing your blog posts, Jennifer Feinberg, President and Co-founder of SP Home Run, explains that the result you expect from your audience is a two-pronged emotional reaction.
For example, the first reaction would be enthusiastic, “This is helpful!” and the second reaction would be, “What else do they have available to read, watch, or listen to?”
When sparking these reactions from your buyer personas, it tempts a stranger that has never heard of your data center before to notice your calls-to-action or your banners for other content offers or premium content, which goes into much further detail about the topic they just read about.
Premium content could encompass anything from an eBook, white paper, special report, guide, etc. They will download that premium content, allowing you to receive their information and potentially convert them into leads.
How to Obtain Full Value from Blogging
Having the proper conversion paths and basic workflows is highly important to obtain the absolute full value from blogging.
Conversion Paths
Conversion paths are the processes that help convert website visitors into leads. They comprise content offers, calls-to-action, landing pages, and thank-you pages. Blogging without the proper conversion paths will not generate the leads your data center expects.
Jennifer says, “Blogging without calls-to-action, landing pages, or conversion paths is like going out on a blind date, falling in love, and then forgetting to exchange phone numbers. It’s like you hit a dead end, your reader has nowhere to go, and it wastes time.”
Without the proper conversion paths put in place, you leave the table empty-handed.
Joshua Feinberg, Vice President, and Co-founder of SP Home Run, tells us that the biggest mistake marketers make “is assuming that people will land on your website and they are ready to buy on the spot. This is just not the case unless you are selling a commodity. In most cases, a sales cycle can take anywhere from weeks to months, and in some cases years.”
Basic Workflows
For blogging to work, you must have routine work practices in place for you and your team members.
Blogs must be current; for optimal results, two or more blog posts should be created and published weekly.
Rise of Thought Leadership
Jennifer says, “We’re seeing an emergence of product managers and product marketers becoming thought leaders.” With the rise of thought leaders, this means that every year more businesses are adopting inbound lead generation practices.
They are using blog posts and other content that is educational to attract more strangers. If other competing data centers are using this strategy, your data center will no longer be the number one choice in the future.
Lead Generation
Lead generation consists of the three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.
In the awareness stage, marketers use blogging and keywords to attract strangers. In the consideration stage, marketers will use content offers that include downloadable premium content, giving the potential lead more detailed information.
Finally, during the decision stage, the marketer will offer trials, free consultations, coupons, etc. In this stage, the lead is about ready to become a customer.
Businesses are promoting content that meets all stages of the buyer’s journey.
The Use of Education
Your data center must promote educational content; this will help your business build trust in the community. People will want to use the services provided by your data center, being as though you and your team are knowledgeable.
People prefer to do business with people they trust, and distributing content that not only meets all stages of the buyer’s journey; but is informational, helpful, and educational will entice your ideal customers to come to you.
Strategic Blogging
Blogging can be an extremely powerful asset for your data center if executed correctly.
As Jennifer says, “Strategic blogging can be very powerful; it’s a very powerful thought leadership weapon for attracting your website visitors, converting those visitors into qualified leads, nurturing those leads into sales opportunities, and closing your sales opportunities into new revenue sources for your business.”
Does your data center have remarkable content and proper conversion paths in place to move your visitors through the sales cycle? Let us know in the section for Comments below.
Learn more about Colocation Data Center Providers and Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM) for Growth.
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