Blogs: An extra way to market

Your business requires marketing.



If there is no marketing of your products and services, your sales slump. That is not healthy for your company's bottom line. A lack of sales does not pay the bills.



Okay, you know that already. It's easier said than done, right?



What exactly can be done, especially if your marketing budget is....well....zero.



A business blog can help you.



To use a blog for marketing purposes, you need to discuss the problems your products and services address, in your regular posts. You must not blatantly advertise them, however.



I know that sounds like a contradiction, but really, it isn't one.



An example of a bad marketing post, in your business blog, would be to simply describe your product. The great features of your product might be entirely fascinating to you. You might enjoy writing and talking about them constantly. Unfortunately, they aren't at all interesting to your readers.



In fact, simply describing your products and services is not really marketing at all. It's an exercise in ego. Yours!



Marketing your product has to be customer based. Your focus has to be on the needs of your clients and shoppers. They don't care one iota whether your revolutionary new widget slices, dices, and tells time on every continent in fourteen languages, all at once.



Customers care about what the product can do for them.



They want to know if it will solve their problems. They desire happier lives, and whether your products can do that for them. It's not all about you. I know that sounds a wee bit harsh, but it's true.



Enter your blog.



In your blog, you can discuss the issues that cause pain to your clients and customers. You can objectively review various solutions to those problems. You can describe how life could be if some of those incoveniences of modern living were removed.



You can tell people about what your company is doing to research those very ideas. You can discuss news that is important in your industry. Without talking about your products directly, you can build a friendly relationship, with customers present and future. People enjoy buying from other people, who they know and trust.



Your clients will know you from your blog entries. Since you provide all sorts of useful information to help them to enrich their lives, your products, by extension, can do the same for them.



By blogging, you are marketing your business as a long term relationship. The last thing you want to do with a business blog, is turn it into a non-stop sales sheet. Should you ever do that, your readers will be long gone. They are assaulted with sales pitches every day.



Don't let your blog become a sales flyer!



Informative posts, written as a friend to a friend, are much more effective for the business blogger. A blog is part of relationship marketing. Since any relationship is built over time, and based on trust, that's what your blog is doing for you and your potential customers.



It's longer term marketing, but is marketing built on a firm foundation.



Best of all, a business blog costs very little in the way of budget.



A business blog can be a great free marketing device for your company.



Start one today!