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Why Blogging Will
Sky-Rocket Your High Street Business Profits
Most high street sellers find reaching new customers difficult, risky,
and very expensive. That's probably because they are paying hundreds of
dollars for offline magazine ads. and spots in telephone advertising
magazines. Little do they know that many free online marketing methods
can attract many more customers to their business, not only cheaper, but
also faster and more efficiently that any offline marketing technique.
One such technique is blogging!
A blog is a kind of social networking tool, a way for people to
communicate with other people, sometimes friends and colleagues or, in
our case, more appropriately to communicate with buyers, actual and
potential, and to turn those people into regular buyers.
Let us consider a couple of ways for offline and Internet marketers to
use blogs to grow their business profits:
* High street sellers are used to targetting customers from a short
catchment area, sometimes just a few miles, often from word-of-mouth
recommendation and local newspaper advertising. Blogging allows
retailers whose products have international appeal to attract customers
from all over the world who can request information or order products
online. So, for example, someone selling craftwork materials offline,
might also sell their products on eBay or from their own Internet site
and use blogging to grow back end sales. They might do this by adding
their blog address to compliments slips and business cards included in
outgoing deliveries and invite customers to sign up for some useful free
gift in exchange for adding their names to the seller's mailing list.
Once on the list customers can be emailed every time the seller has new
products that might interest them.
* A simple blog can be used in place of complicated html squeeze pages
designed to get potential buyers to join a mailing list to learn more
about an online seller's products and services. Some people prefer to
know more about sellers and their products before spending their hard
earned cash on products they don't get to see before buying, from people
they may never meet face to face. Getting people to join a mailing list
for more information allows sellers to develop a relationship with
potential buyers and to send regular promotional emails in expectation
of a high proportion of list members becoming regular buyers in the near
future.
* Sellers in outlying areas or whose location is poorly signposted might
use their blog to direct visitors to their premises and to give
information about opening times and current special offers.
* There are many products people prefer not to buy face-to-face with
sellers, usually potentially embarrassing products like marital aids,
sex toys, cures for baldness and piles. So a blog is the perfect place
to write about and promote potentially embarrassing problems and special
requirements and to grow an ongoing and very confidential relationship
between buyers and sellers.
* Businesses can grow their own customer base by posting comments on
other people’s blogs featuring similar content to their own and inviting
readers to visit the writer's own blog, ostensibly to obtain useful free
information or to download a special report, while in reality the
objective is to sell to those people asap.
* Some buyers hate contacting sellers for product support or to arrange
a refund especially if it also means a long trip back into town. A blog
can benefit customers who prefer not to travel or approach sellers in
person and the fact they can achieve their objective impersonally, via a
blog, can generate customer loyalty and repeat business.
A blog can be created in less than an hour, regular postings take just a
few minutes each, in return for which the seller can grow his business
worldwide and grow a huge and loyal customer list that could send his
profits sky rocketing, even in the short term.
