All Entries in the "Blogging As Pre-Sales" Category

Should Salesmen Have Their Own Blogs?

If you’re a sales representative for a company and you are responsible for generating your own leads, you should have your own blog. There is no better online lead generation tool than a personal business blog. Note that I’m talking about a personal business blog. Not a personal blog.

So what’s a personal business blog?

First, it’s a business blog. A blog that you write for business purposes. If you’re a member of a sales organization then your blog can be used to present your product to the public. You don’t necessarily have to “sell” in every blog post. Not all blog posts are sales oriented. The purpose is to generate an interest in what you have to offer. You do that by discussing the benefits and entering into dialogue with your target audience.

I call this type of blog a personal business blog because the blog belongs to you, not your company. Because it your blog and not the company’s blog, you get to decide how the blog is written and make the editorial decisions on a daily basis. Your sales manager doesn’t do that for you. It’s your responsibility. That said, many company’s want to ensure that their image is presented accurately and within the context of their own branding efforts. And that is possible with a personal business blog. I didn’t say you couldn’t consult with your sales manager or corporate headquarters. They do have a stake in the game. But you can use a blog to help you develop your territory and generate leads that you follow up on daily. It is called efficient time management and good use of resources.

To learn more about writing a personal business blog, visit with a blog consultant.

How Real Estate Blogging Should Be Done In A Down Economy

Real estate and mortgage companies are running scared, stopping their blogs, and cutting back on expenses. I understand. Things got rough out there, didn’t it? But why are you cutting your marketing budget when this is when you should be marketing your business the heaviest?

Did you know you can cut your marketing budget and still keep blogging daily? It’s true. And all you have to do is take a few partners.

Let’s say that you’re used to paying $400 per month for blogging (if you are then you probably have the wrong blog service provider). You’d think that by cutting that $400 expense out of your budget you’ll be saving money. In actuality, it will probably cost you money. How many of your phone calls come from people who read your blog? Have you asked? Chances are, if you are getting calls from your efforts online then your blog is playing a part in that. Why stop blogging?

Instead of cutting the expense out of your budget altogether, try partnering with complimentary businesses. You use a title company, right? Don’t you have a preferred mortgage lender? How about furniture rental companies? Moving companies? Real estate attorneys?

Think about all the relationships you have with complimentary services. Ask those companies if they’d be interested in partnering with you on a blog. If you took three partners (say, a title company, a mortgage broker, and a furniture rental company) and shared the expense for your blog then you’d only be paying $100 per month for the same service.

There are a couple of ways a blog partnership can benefit you as a real estate agent or broker. You can establish a mortgage and real estate blog, or something similar, and divide your posts up evenly between you and your partners, but that’s only partially effective. A second way to handle the blog partnership opportunity is to ask your partners to sponsor your blog. You promise then a banner ad on your blog in a highly visible location and one post per week with in-text links to their website to help them promote their service.

By taking sponsors this way you can stay in control of your blog and help out your business partners by having them pay you for their sponsorship, which you then turn and use to pay for your ghostwriting service. But don’t cut your blog out of your real estate marketing plan completely.

Are Blog Carnivals Effective?

As a provider of commercial blog content we’ve never had an interest in blog carnivals. We didn’t need to. Our focus was on SEO and lead generation. But we’ve noticed that Caroline Melberg at Small Business Mavericks is hosting a blog carnival on her blog.

We hope Caroline’s effort goes well. While we’ve never taken an interest in blog carnivals ourselves, perhaps this will open up doors for some of our clients who want to participate in a business blog. The title of Caroline’s blog carnival is Gonzo Business Carnival. You can read the rules on Caroline’s blog, but in a nutshell, if you written any blog posts about business then you quality to enter.

Our thoughts on this is you can’t lose. Even if nothing comes of the blog carnival and you enter, you still get a link back to your website and the possibility of increased traffic. While this is what we’d call untargeted marketing, that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective marketing. We’re open to it until we see the results. Meanwhile, we encourage you to think about participating.

Is Your Blog Outside Of Your Funnel?

When it comes to blog marketing, you’ve got to fit it into your marketing funnel somewhere. One of the biggest challenges to companies just starting out with a company blog is integrating the blog into their current marketing plans. It’s a challenge, but it can be done.

First, a definition of your marketing funnel. If you picture a funnel, with its large mouth at the top and it’s small exit at the bottom, you’ll notice that the entrance is where you meet your customer. You’ve got to have a lead generation plan that draws your customer in. Then, you want to canalize your customer deeper and deeper into your marketing funnel until you filter them out into the closing process. Where does your blog fit in to your funnel?

Here are some possibilities:

• Lead Generation – Many companies successfully integrate their company blog into the marketing funnel by making it their primary online lead generation tool. This is a very successful approach and one I recommend.
• Lead Qualification - Another approach that is success is to use the blog as a lead qualification instrument. It may capture leads as well, but in this approach the marketer usually has another method of marketing that drives leads to the blog (articles, pay-per-click, or something else) and then qualifies the leads with a narrow focus on the blog writing so that potential customers either leave the funnel because you don’t provide what they are looking for or stick around because you have something they want.
• Pre-Sales – Pre-selling must be done somewhere and a blog is a good place to do that. Many affiliate marketers use blogging as a pre-sales tool for the companies and products they want to promote. You can do the same thing with your own products and services, highlighting them and discussing features and benefits in a nonthreatening way so that your customers “warm up” to the idea of doing business with you. You aren’t closing sales on the blog, but you are making the sale possible by keeping your readers informed and driving the qualified leads to the final sales pitch and closing statements.
• Blogging for Sales – I’ve seen a few instances where closing sales on the blog is successful, but by and large that’s not what a blog is for. There are bloggers, however, who make this work and using your blog as a sales tool is something that you can consider as a part of your marketing funnel.
• Customer Service and Feedback – Another successful blog marketing strategy is to use the blog as an after-the-sale tool to communicate with customers. In this scenario you are using the blog to discuss ways the customer can benefit from what they’ve already purchased. You can receive feedback from the customer so that you can refine your product and processes and then regurgitate information back to the customer that is valuable and helps them improve the uses of your product for themselves.

Where in the marketing funnel you place your blog is not as important as deciding where you want to put and then following up on that plan. If you haven’t defined your marketing funnel just yet then I’d encourage you to do so before starting your blog. It will make the blogging more focused and successful.