by Steve Fodor
“Our markets are vertical. We know most of the prospect companies by name. Why should we bother with a blog strategy?”
As a marketing communications firm that specializes in business-to-business marketing, search engine optimization and public relations, we sometimes hear comments like these. Why, if you’re marketing to a well-defined, vertical segment, would you undertake a blog strategy? Three reasons come to mind.
First, for search engine optimization. Just because your market segment(s) may be relatively small does not mean you should discount the importance of search engine page rankings. Blogs help perform the critical function of improving organic page rankings. Blogs in tandem with other mediums and targeted user groups (like those found through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) add even more to search engine optimization.
Second, blogs provide a thought leadership position for your brand. Industrial marketers need to think like publishers and generate content (in written as well as video format) that customers and prospects are seeking. If requests from customers and prospects usually start with “give us a price bid,” you’re probably missing opportunities to explain through a blog strategy the true value you offer: intelligence about your product or category that makes your customers look like heroes.
And third, to become a curator of information for your market segment(s). The Internet continues to be populated with more and more content. So much content, in fact, that finding exactly what’s needed through a simple Google search can sometimes produce an overwhelming amount of information. Wouldn’t it be better for customers and prospects to think of your brand as the only place they need to go to get the answers they’re seeking?
Yet another reason for a implementing a blog strategy crosses over to direct sales. Do your sales efforts consist of continually following up with prospects while nurturing them from prospects to customers? If so, salespeople can e-mail prospects the links to relevant blogs as a way to continue the nurturing process and reinforce a thought leadership position.
If you’re marketing to vertical, business-to-business market segments, a blogging strategy presents a targeted, cost-efficient way to improve search engine optimization, nurture selling efforts and elevate the perceived value of your brand above just a “product offering at a price.” Of course, developing relevant content for a blogging strategy takes time and resources, some research, and an understanding of the unmet information needs of your target audience. And that’s exactly how we are helping business-to-business marketers today.
Flickr Photo Credit:digitalrob70
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