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Your Blog Should Sell Without Being Salesy
Your business blog may be many things, but above all else, it should be a way to move the needle on your company’s sales. If it’s not improving your bottom line, it’s not really worth having around. Paradoxically, though, this does not mean your blog should be over-the-top in its sales strategy. Indeed, an aggressively hard-selling blog is going to be counterproductive, turning off rather than engaging potential customers.
So here’s the tricky part: Establishing a company blog that sells without coming across as salesy; a blog that earns trust and displays thought leadership in such a way that it makes readers want to pick up the phone or come down to your store to buy something.
It’s not impossible to do, as we’ll illustrate through a few tips and guidelines.
How to Sell Without Being Salesy on Your Business Blog
Always write with a specific audience in mind. If you want to avoid coming across as salesy, you need to write in a way that conveys specific value to your audience—and to make that happen, you first have to know who your audience is. This is where buyer personas come in handy. Know who you’re writing for, and what value you hope them to glean from your blog. Always ask: What’s in it for them?
Avoid writing about yourself. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, of course. You can certainly use your company blog to share updates about your company, about new team members, or about product launches. Generally speaking, though, it’s better to make it about the reader, not about you. Share actionable insights. Provide valuable tips. Give them something they can use to improve their lives right now.
Refrain from mentioning your company in every sentence. We’re not opposed to branded references where appropriate, but you typically won’t need but one or two of them per blog. Include your brand name in a call to action at the end, but beyond that it’s usually not going to be relevant. Again, don’t make it all about you. Make it all about providing value to your readers.
Be conversational in your tone. For the most part, it’s best to avoid writing in a way that it stuffy or needlessly academic, just as it’s wise to go easy on the used car salesman shtick. Just write as if you were speaking to a friend, and be straightforward but approachable.
Include links where relevant. If you see an opportunity to include a link to one of your products, by all means do so. That can be genuinely helpful to your readers. Always keep them relevant, though; shoehorning in a bunch of off-topic links really comes across as shamelessly salesy.
Don’t forget your call to action! Every blog post you write should end with a clear and simple call to action—an invitation for readers to act on the post by connecting with you in some way. It doesn’t have to be much more elaborate than, “Call us today to learn more.” This is the part of the blog post where you can push that sale.
Write Blog Posts That Get Results
Your blog posts shouldn’t be fluff, and neither should they be entirely self-promotional. The goal of any blog post is to foster engagement, and ultimately to lead to a conversion. If your posts aren’t doing that, it’s time to rethink them—and we can help. Reach out to Driven2020 to learn more about our fluff-free, results-oriented approach to digital marketing, and ask how we can help you sell without being too salesy!
