How to Plan Your Blog

for Business to Consumer Marketing. The 4 C’s.

A business to consumer marketing approach involves the consumer, the cost of your product, the convenience for customer to purchase your product and service, and your communication to your customer. We discuss incorporating the 4 C’s with setting your goals for developing your content, blogging for your audience,  what topics to focus your content, promoting your blog, and analyzing statistics. Planning your B2C blog works in tandem with your B2C eCommerce website strategy. Let’s get started.

1. Consumer. ( versus Product) Study your consumers’ wants and needs. Create products tailored to these desires and needs.
2. Cost (Versus Price) Reflect the reality of total cost. If you sell a computer, the cost of searching or driving to a retail store to purchase it should be taken into account.
3. Convenience (Versus Place) Understand your customer’s preferred method of purchase – on the Internet, in the store, by phone, or from a catalogue. Maybe there’s another method in your industry. Is social media; Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn where your audience is hanging out?
4. Communication. (versus Promotion) Focus on communications between customers and businesses. It’s broader than just promotion. Communication is as much about listening as it is about talking.

A Content Marketing strategy is about 25% of a successful marketing plan. You need to drive traffic to your engaging content. Learn more about our program to your success in Best Way to Spend $1000 Marketing Your Business.

Goals

Building Your Brand involves building trust with your customers. How do you build trust? Have a reliable customer support team. The task of customer service should then be issued to highly skilled personnel to handle the queries and concerns both online and on calls. On a 24-hour basis.  Yes, having a 24 hours’ customer service means an extra cost. However,  you’re building long-lasting confidence with your consumers.

Attract Prospects. Develop a solid online presence with an eCommerce website that allows the consumer to easily purchase your product online. Drive traffic to your website using social media, paid advertising such as with Google AdWords, and email marketing campaigns. Attend trade shows. Network like crazy.

Support Sales. How to get it just right in 3 steps. One, the quandary of sales support: What level is just right to drive the most sales and growth? McKinsey & Company: Marketing & Sales found that devoting 50 – 60 percent of sales employees to support functions is optimal. Two, what matters most is the levels of operations and administrative support. They are invaluable because they enable frontline and pre-sales employees to spend more time with customers and to focus on sales and growth. Third: Nailing the ratio of non-managers to managers.  The highest-performing companies have a ratio of non-managers to managers of around 8:1. Among lower-performing companies in our analysis, the ratio was greater than 10:1 or lower than 5:1.

Aid SEO. Blogging aids in search engine optimization by establishing your company as an expert in your field. You can lead your customers through your process by the topics you choose to write. Part of the structure of a blog is to link to authoritative sites, link within your site, and create fresh content on a consistent basis. Linking to authoritative sites helps your content rank higher as search engines deliver your content during search results. Linking blogs or content within your site help rank higher the content you want to get noticed.

What really helps move the needle is getting domain authority sites to link back to your website with relevant keyword phrases. This takes a little time and effort but pays back in dividends. Neil Patel is a great resource for this. Neil tells you how to find topics people are searching for what to write in a letter to an owner of a domain authority site. Seek out domain authority sites of 80+. A tool we use is Moz. Signing up is free.

Blog Audience

Blogging for your prospects. We could spend an entire day on the buyers’ journey and be blogging for each stage. In the Awareness Stage, a buyer is trying to solve problems, get an answer, or meet a need. Providing content for making prospects aware of what you offer can be in the form of white papers, ebooks (getting more popular and profitable), Kits, Tip Sheets, Checklists, How-To Videos, and Educational Webinars. When consumers are evaluating your product, providing product webinars, case studies, samples, FAQs, data sheets and demonstration videos prove successful in converting prospects to customers. At the Purchase stage, provide free trials, live demos, consultations, Estimates, and Coupons.

Blogging for your Customers.  Since this audience has purchased a product or service, continue to educate them on how to best use the product or service for the problem your offer solves. Engage them by asking them to share how they have used your product. Ask for Reviews along the sales cycle as well as the product itself. As they encounter questions about your product, use these questions for content for your blog posts.

Blog Content Focus.

Offering. Community. Location.

Offering. Provide limited time offer promotions. Tie content marketing to limited time offers. Due to taxes, laws, regulations, as well as supply and demand, offers or special promotions are usually localized. Contests, drawings, apps, or content downloads and other engaging activities can be used to entice your customers to participate. A contest can be used to encourage users to share your content or create user-generated content to win prices.

Community. You may be local. Know what your local customer needs and wants. Your company may be national or international. Each community buys in different ways, for different reasons, and variations of a product or service because of the community.

Location. Your content focus for each location of your customers. Think locally, nationally, and internationally. Local teams can help provide a local perspective for each area.

Blog Content-Format.

Text. Image or Photo. Video or Audio.  Presentation or eBook. Our blog [The Retail Factor] posts “How to write the Perfect Blog” and “How to Format the Perfect Blog” both go into detail about the format to consider including the header, opening sentence, images and video, strategic call-to-actions. Evoke emotions. Get Leads. eBooks are one of the most

Blogger(s)

Are you interested in becoming one of our guest bloggers? We share our guidelines for your success.

Copy Support

We have a trusted editor Susan Rooks – The Grammar Goddess. She rocks.

Blog Promotion

email. Social Media Platforms. Social Sharing. Third-Party Media Use.

Now that you have inspiring, emotional content to share. How are you going to get the word out? How are you going to get traffic to your blog and website? Ways of driving traffic.

email to promote your Blog. Segment your audiences in lists within your email marketing software. Think about the content you have written. How does it help solve problems for each segment? Don’t overwhelm them with all of your blog posts. Pick 2 or 3.

Social Media Platforms. For business to consumer communication, the traffic drivers that are in the top ten are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google +. Use social media to find content for your curation strategy. Pay attention to what content is shared most. Post multiple times throughout a period of time using different copy. Define which channels, headlines, and copy work best for you. For small- and medium-sized businesses, this is really the engine of content promotion. Pay attention to the sentiment and engagement levels of your audience.

Social Sharing. Social Sharing should always be part of your website content. Shared content increases your credibility.

Blog Metrics

Blog Metrics that matter are visitors Reach, Improved SEO, Brand Awareness, Sales, Expense, and Media Pickup.

The budget for your Blog

The budget you set aside for your blog depends on your company. If you have a zero budget, blog content yourself, and recruit your team to contribute. If you have a relatively small budget – $1000 per month. You can hire an outside firm to assist you.

Hit-the-Web Marketing has been helping companies develop the right content marketing strategy for your company for over ten years. In several industries, we may have your product and service pages ranking on the first page within 6 to 12 months. Ready to Work with us – Join Us Monthly for GET YOUR BLOG DONE WORKSHOPS   

Never mind tomorrow, next week, next month. Get started TODAY with your blogging great relevant educational content! Success is just around the corner!