Five Proven Blogging Tips to Gain Loyal Customers and Higher ROI

Many businesses, from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to multimillion-dollar corporations, tend to put their blogs on the back burner as they spend — and often waste — money on other forms of marketing.
One of the biggest culprits, in my experience, is Google Ads. This is a very valuable service at first, but once your spending is exhausted, this advertisement disappears. You have to keep feeding it for more leads, and I find that doesn’t do much to build brand awareness.

I believe this type of advertising is for a short term mindset. As searchers routinely go against the advertising status quo, they ignore these ads. Organic search results are more reliable and can provide endless lead generation. And that’s where the blog rules. However, creating a successful blog is not that simple.

First, you must have an SEO-optimized website with a solid technical platform – fast speed, mobile-friendly, image optimization, etc. You also need to have a blogging strategy based on target keywords.

The blog helps more than increase SEO value. It’s also what I call ART: the authority, reputation and trust of a company. When a business excels at ART, sustained growth will naturally follow.

I previously provided guidance in “Creating a business blog is essential for success: eight tipsI’m going to take it a step further here and give you some additional tips that will help you get ART, which leads to loyal customers and a higher return on investment (ROI).

Hit a 50/25/25 mix.

I’ve explained this before by telling clients to create a mix of content that speaks to prospects at different stages of the traditional sales funnel. After reading Break the funnel by Eric Kieles and Mike Lieberman, I’m no longer referring to the sales funnel, but rather, as Break the funnel calls it the “cyclonic buyer’s journey”.

This “journey” has eight cyclones, starting with “pre-awareness” and ending with “continuous delivery”. To be successful, you need to create blog content that talks about each stage of the cyclone.

I’ve managed to create blog calendars that feature a 50/25/25 mix of content:

• 50% for newbies looking for training on their problems and solutions.

• 25% for intermediate readers who know the problems but want better solutions

• 25% for experts (think CMOs) who are fully trained and looking for better solutions. This 25% also talks to existing customers to build more loyalty.

It is about attracting and developing ART to a large but targeted audience. Talk to everyone. The reason for half the focus on beginners is simple – you want to be, as John Hall says in his book of the same name, “Top of Mind” for readers throughout their buyer’s journey, from post-client awareness/client status.

Blog from different business perspectives.

Another way to build ART in readers in the different cyclones of the buyer’s journey? Create blogs from different viewpoints across the company: CEO, marketing, sales, tech, finance, and more.

Each prospect will offer a unique perspective that will naturally appeal to those in similar positions. Because of my position, I love reading inspirational articles from fellow CEOs or heads of marketing departments. Long before I started my own business, I spent most of my time reading content from people of similar stature — writers on writing, SEOs on SEO, and so on.

Here’s a quick example of miscellaneous authors from an investment firm:

• CEO blogs to entice prospects and current customers to invest, projecting a long-term global vision.

• CMO blogs on financial project management advice.

• Blogs from the finance team on various tools that facilitate the investment process.

• Tech team blogs on investment techniques. They get super granular on the details.

Create a quarterly calendar loaded with permanent content.

Blogging without a strategy is like riding a motorcycle with bald tires. You will get somewhere, but it will be a horrible and dangerous ride. The same goes for blogging, even if this horrible race equates to a lack of authority, reputation and trust. And that equates to zero readership and zero return on investment.

A plan is needed, and the most successful route I’ve seen is through a blogging schedule that is, at a minimum, a quarter off. This calendar should also feature mostly evergreen content – ​​education that will last for years. Build your timeline using the points above, and also remember the importance of keyword research I talked about in my last post.

Post regularly and frequently.

Posting regularly and frequently is crucial for success, both from a search engine and user perspective. As far as users are concerned, this type of post shows how committed your company is to providing valuable information in an orderly fashion. And if an in-house team can organize it, imagine how organized it will be with customers. This fact will even weigh on some prospects on a subconscious level.

It also shows search engines that you care about constantly creating new content, which helps with SEO.

Quarterly review.

Outdated content is noticed. What if a lead landed on a blog and it was loaded with outdated resources and dead hyperlinks? It will show that the company is not prioritizing quality, even if it is happening on a subconscious level.

My agency recommends quarterly reviews when the team refreshes content (changed titles, new factual information/statistics) and updates the blog with hyperlinks that point to newer blog posts or service pages. This process is relatively easy within 12-18 months, depending on the amount of content created, but can become laborious after that. The results are worth every effort, and your prospects and current customers/clients will put higher levels of ART on your business.

If you use an agency, find out about it. Many agencies release content and forget about it. This is not optimal for long term results.

Blogging for the purpose of establishing authority, reputation, and trust (ART) will help your business succeed in the long run. Again, this is not a short term game. Sometimes it can take up to a year for results to be seen. If you are dedicated to the long-term vision of your business, the return on investment will arrive. And once things start rolling, that ROI adds up over time. Who thought ART could be so cool in business?