How Your WordPress Blog Can Drive Sales & Conversions
Many website owners make the mistake of treating their WordPress blogs like static, informational content, completely removed from their sales efforts. But a blog has way more potential than that.
If you’re selling a product or service, your blog can play a powerful role in your sales and marketing strategy.
Here’s how.
A blog’s role in the sales funnel
It doesn’t matter whether you sell items on your website or in a physical shop. In either scenario, your WordPress blog can be used to guide prospects through every stage of the sales funnel.
So, let’s start with a quick refresher of what that funnel looks like. As someone interacts with your business, their role changes at each step of the funnel:
- Prospect: This is a prospective customer who visits your site for the first time or becomes aware of your business.
- Lead: A prospect becomes a lead when they fill out a form or leave their information to be contacted later.
- Customer: The lead becomes a customer when they buy from you or achieve your unique conversion goal.
- Repeat buyer: This is a customer who continues to purchase from you, driven by your sales and marketing efforts.
Some funnels are more complex, but this provides a basic understanding of how customers go through your average sales process.
Now, let’s look at how your blog can play a role at each step.
1) Blogs generate prospects
Blogs can be a powerful driver of organic traffic to your site.
Search engines love websites that frequently post new and interesting content. By posting on a regular basis, you can generate more prospects who are searching for what you offer.
Blog posts can also be used as landing pages for some types of ad campaigns, particularly when you have a long sales cycle (i.e. for high-ticket items).
2) Blogs generate leads
Good content makes prospects want more.
Your blog posts can entice people to request more information and become leads. This can take place in a number of ways:
- Subscriptions to your email newsletter
- Requests for pricing
- Signups for white papers, case studies, downloads, webinars, demos and more
Additionally, you can capture these leads on your blog in a number of ways: with forms directly in the sidebar, popups, links throughout your content and so on.
3) Blogs generate customers
Once you’ve captured a lead, you can continue to stay in touch and guide them through the funnel even further.
If your business uses sales teams or call centers, they reach out to the lead to talk about your products and services. Or, if you’re primarily relying on digital marketing, you can use your newsletters and promotions to drive the lead back to your site to make a purchase.
For longer sales cycles, you may even want to drive leads back to your blog to provide more information that will guide their buying decision. Using a sales team? Even they may want to direct leads to relevant blog posts that help answer questions and build confidence in your business.
4) Blogs generate repeat buyers
Why settle for a one-time purchase?
Your blog and other content can be used to keep customers coming back to your site, buying from you over and over again.
This is where the power of automated digital marketing can really drive your success, especially if you’re tracking your visitors with Google Analytics or other platforms. By tracking what content your customers are interested in, you can continue to remarket to them, serving them more of the content they crave.
At each stage of the cycle, your WordPress blog can guide prospects to the next step and create customers for life.
Need some help?
Our experts can help you get the most of your WordPress blog. Get in touch today to see how we can help.
