Blogging for Lead Generation

It used to be that a consumer would turn to the yellow book or pay attention to a radio or television ad when it came to a purchase decision. Today's consumers are different, especially in the early stages of their purchasing decisions. These prospects have lots of questions and are hungry for answers. So where do they turn? They turn to Google.

For instance, a consumer looking for answers about pest control might begin their quest for a service provider by asking, “Is organic pest control effective?” This question is typically followed by more questions that help with the decision process like, “Is organic pest control effective against cockroaches?” and finally, “Who provides organic cockroach control in my area?” Most corporate websites answer that question, but few will answer any of these early questions.

This is where a blog comes into play.

Unlike the rest of your website, your blog should be continually changing and updated with new information. This creates an opportunity for you to demonstrate your expertise, educate potential customers and ultimately answer objections encountered during the sales process.Unfortunately, people get so lost in the process and the mumbo-jumbo of the online marketing gurus that they simply give up. The good news is that you can do this, and you don't need to be a “tech guy” to be successful. If you commit to your blog, your business will grow.

To start, your website should have its own domain (the stuff that comes after www), and at minimum answer the basic questions of who you are, what you do and where you're located. Your website should also make it easy for prospective customers to contact you. Every page should have your phone number and a contact form on it.

Finally, you need a blog.

Many people think a blog needs to be something written. Guess what? No one ever said you had to write a blog. There are plenty of other ways of delivering your ideas to your audience.

One of the most popular blogs on the web is Gary Vaynerchuk's now-discontinued Wine Library TV. Vaynerchuk uses short videos to review wines. This video blog was one of the key reasons his family's wine company grew from a neighborhood wine store grossing $3 million a year to a national wine seller with more than $45 million in sales less than 10 years later.

Regardless of what medium you use to publish your blog, you need to figure out what to talk about. While many bloggers begin with the greatest of intentions, running out of things to talk about is where they fail. Fortunately, there is an easy answer to this. Think about the questions.

Pull out a sheet of paper, open up an Excel spreadsheet and start typing all the questions that your customers have ever asked you during the sales process. These could be about specific insurance terms, or why something is a certain way. Try to get to 26.

Follow this with the negative or comparative questions about your product or service. Is X better than Y? Common complaints about Z? Try to identify another 26.

With those two lists of questions you have the titles for 52 blog posts.  Your job is to answer each of these questions. At one blog post per week, you have your first year covered.

Now that you know what you are going to do, there's an issue about style. In today's Internet age, where anything about everything is freely available from a variety of sources, consumers have come to expect a couple things when it comes to content. The first of these is a bit of personality. You can see from Gary Vaynerchuk's video blog that he's a bit eccentric; even if you aren't a wine aficionado, you'll remember his videos. Although you don't need to be as idiosyncratic as Vaynerchuck, you should give your readers a sense of who you are. You might weave in anecdotes about your family, a shared experience or the like. Don't be afraid to buck the industry and be different! Ultimately, avoid writing a term paper or coming off like Ben Stein in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off.”

The second demand, and the one where most people struggle, is transparency and honesty. As salespeople, your first inclination might be to sell right out of the gate. Wrong. You should use your blog to satisfy the presales questions and win trust. Look at yourself through the eyes of your potential readers and customers. What are they looking for?  Create the content to satisfy those needs and you'll earn the trust of those viewers and win the sale.

One of the beauties of the strategy outlined above is that if you've truly been listening to your customers and their questions, they will come to your site. Unfortunately, this strategy also takes a bit of time as you build the content. Just be patient and keep going. They'll come.

Besides patience, the other promotional strategy is to integrate your blog into your sales process. As you've written responses to frequently asked questions, there's a good chance future leads will ask the same questions over and over again. Imagine the impact on a prospective customer who, after he fills out a lead form, gets a personalized email from you saying you will be contacting them shortly, but in the meantime, they should read the following articles about the product they are interested in. Assuming the lead reads the articles, this first interaction neutralizes many of the pre-sales questions and objections and puts you closer to closing the sale.