If you’ve heard it once – you’ve heard it a hundred times. Blogs are the latest and greatest
But you may have noticed that calling blogs a “marketing tool” doesn’t happen very often on the web. So why in the world do I refer to blogs a “marketing tool”.
To dig deeper into why I call blogs a marketing tool – first you need to understand exactly what marketing is.
Marketing is defined as all of the activities involved in transferring goods from a producer to consumers, esp. including advertising.
Many think of “marketing” as “making money”. While it’s true that great marketing is an essential part of making money – it’s only a part of the money making process.
First, you have to have a GREAT product or service which you need to promote. Then you need to choose a target audience that is in need of your product or service.
The “marketing communication tools” come into play when you need to let your target audience KNOW about the product or service you have to offer.
This is when “advertising” comes into the picture. This is the phase of marketing where you, as a business owner, get to pay various media outlets to deliver your marketing message.
This is where blogs as marketing tools comes into play.
See, it’s the whole check writing aspect of marketing that stands between many small business owners and successful marketing.
With a blog, instead of PAYING a radio station – a television station – or a local newspaper – to run ads with your COMPLETE marketing message – you can use that advertising time to promote YOUR BLOG – where consumers can come to learn everything they need to know in order to purchase your product or service.
Oh, and unlike when you pay to run a radio or television spot – or when you pay to run a newspaper or magazine ad – when you create a blog to carry your marketing message – it’s there 24/7 – available online all the time.
Imagine – having a place where customers can come to learn all they need to know about your product or service. A place where you can communicate with people who are THINKING about buying… a place where people can visit again and again – without any time restrictions…. as they move through the buying process.
So as you go through your day – as you hear the stories of how your customers are using your products and services to solve their problems – you can write about those experiences on your blog. You can change the marketing message as you go along.
For example, your blog post about how your product solved an adult customer’s tooth ache landed with a dull thud. However, a few weeks later, your blog post about how your product quieted a teething baby got the mommy bloggers posting blog posts about your product.
THAT is an example of how blogs can be the EASY marketing tool for your business.
You could spend thousands of dollars testing and split testing these two markets – or you can see how the “public” responds to these two separate blog post.
This is why blogs are truly the EASY marketing tool
