Why Blogging Is Crucial for Your Startup's Growth
Content marketing has established itself as a leading digital marketing technique. And blogging, one of its primary niches, has played a big part in helping businesses advertise their services and products without being too pushy. About three-quarters of people prefer to discover a company through an article or blog post than a direct advert. Nevertheless, businesses with blogs receive more than half the amount of traffic as those that don't.
Startup businesses can benefit significantly from running a blog since they often face the challenge of building a loyal customer base for their services or products. Despite this, startups often view blogging as a secondary activity that isn't worth immediate attention, even when they are more than capable of curating quality and engaging content. The lingering question remains: how do you market to your preferred audience if you ignore a powerful marketing strategy that is both flexible, proven and affordable?
Below are seven crucial reasons that highlight why your startup business needs a blog.
An Affordable Way to Instigate Long-term Growth
Nearly every new startup grapples with the arduous task of allocating a marketing budget. At this stage, you probably know that regardless of the quality of your product or service, it will flop if it doesn't reach its target audience. Typically, a lack of funds is the biggest stumbling block. Fortunately, blogging is one of the cheapest and most effective marketing techniques with the potential for instigating long term growth. A well-optimised and engaging blog used in tandem with social media and other free marketing tools can help generate massive and consistent traffic and ultimately drive growth with little to no paid advertising efforts.
Increase Your Organic Traffic and SEO
Search engines are unarguably the main drivers of organic traffic. As such, you should regard blogging is critical to your startup's marketing plans. Consistently posting relevant and SEO-friendly content on your blog and linking to your other content will increase your chances of making it top of significant search engine rankings like Google. Additionally, by leveraging the knowledge of what your target audience search for, you can create content around their needs and ultimately reach even more potential customers.
For Portland-based startups, mastering Portland local SEO strategies can significantly elevate your visibility to a localized target audience. By integrating local SEO practices within your blog content, you position your startup to appear more prominently in local search queries, effectively reaching those consumers who are most likely to convert into customers.
You can find more details with the secrets of a successful marketing campaigns.
Solidify Your Brand as a Pioneer in Your Industry
Through blogging and the content you create, you can quickly establish your brand as an authority in your niche. Customers tend to pay more attention to trusted voices in a particular industry and are likelier to patronise them because of the value they offer. To become a revered and respected voice in your industry, you must have an endearing brand story, a unique voice, and emphasise your brand's value. But it doesn't end there. To become and remain an established authority, you also need to create engaging and value-packed blog posts that centres around providing answers to your readers' questions.
Educate and Inform Your Audience
Your blog can serve as a primary source of information on your latest business updates, as well as educating your readers about what they stand to gain from using your services or products. Blogging is an effective and direct way to show your target audience exactly how your product/service can help them. In addition, you can announce all sorts of offerings on your blogs, from popular trends in your industry to discounts, funding opportunities, and ambassador programs.
Know Your Audience and Get Feedback
Before most startups can experience real growth and survive through their various life cycles, they need to create a strong connection with their target audience as soon as possible. Using this connection, you can gain feedback and insights into how customers feel about your business. In addition, being able to pivot, make quick changes, improve user experience, and the likes are essential factors that every startup must never ignore. So again, blogging offers the perfect medium to discover what your audience expects and thinks of your brand.
You can organise pools and surveys to solicit your customers' preferences and honest feedback regarding your product/service. While comment sections are a great medium to engage with readers directly, you can also leverage forums, write-ups and social media groups to ask your audience what they like or dislike about your brand.
Increase Awareness and Attract Investors
If you run a startup business looking to get new investors, then forging a proactive long-term strategy of attracting investors is crucial. While directly contacting potential investors may work, running a successful blog can drastically increase your chances of being discovered even before you reach out. Investors are constantly in search of excellent business innovations and stories with tremendous market potential. Similarly, by posting quality blog content, you boost your chances of being heard and noticed.
Grow an Email Subscriber Base
Email marketing has become an extremely popular and effective marketing strategy, regardless of the growth or size of your business. At first, gathering an active and impressive database of emails can feel like an impossible task, especially for startups. Therefore, you need a great strategy to help you grow your email list and subscriber base. One proven way is by posting quality content on your blog and asking readers to subscribe to your newsletters. Apart from helping you gain email subscribers with whom you can forge close relationships, you can also make them an integral part of your email marketing efforts.