Perform Marketing Magic-Transform your Website into a Blog Site

Is your business feeling the pinch?  Are you looking for ways to cut corners and save money?  What if I told you that you could cut your marketing budget drastically , yet have the potential to bring in more business than your ad in the local newspaper, your yellow pages listing and your in person marketing efforts combined. How? By turning your website into a blog site.

Let’s face it, practically no one uses the phone book or yellow pages anymore, in today’s Internet connected world, we all just punch what we’re looking for into a search engine.

Now think about what prompts you to buy product or purchase services from a company you find online?  I think most people are a lot like me, I want to see a well put together website that gives me as much information as possible. Free information is especially nice.  I want to be able to contact someone via the site, either by e-mail or a contact form.  The site should be up to date and well maintained, meaning no broken links, especially to any images that are on the front page. If I land on one of those old templated Geocities sites from the 80’s, I don’t even bother to look at what they may be offering. How about you?

In order for you website to even begin drawing in potential clients it needs to be fresh and up to date. And before you start seeing dollar signs dancing in front of your eyes thinking of the cost of having a web developer build you a new webpage, stop and read on.

What if you took that domain you’re paying for and turned it into a Blog or Blog site? Don’t glaze over on me, just keep reading.

A blog makes your website interactive for potential clients.  It gives them a reason to keep coming back, rather than visiting one time. They come back to read your posts, perhaps even commenting on them and they build a relationship with your business before they ever contract for your services.

This is exactly what you want, because if they feel they have a relationship with you, when the time comes when they or a friend or colleague need the type of service you offer, they are going to turn to you. Because they trust you, they have a relationship with you, through your blog.

Still seeing dollar signs doing the cha-cha as you think about converting your website into a blog site?  Sure, it’s going to cost something to install a platform like WordPress and customize a great template like Headway,* but probably not as much as that company charged you to build that static website you’ve had in place since you opened your doors. And once you have that blog site in place, it makes it super easy to maintain and update. So if you don’t have the time to blog, your assistant can log in and do it for you. With a blog site, it’s not just about the blog. You are able to add pages that give information about your business, your services, and allow visitors to your site to contact you. In fact, it does what a traditional website does, only better, because you now have the ability to add fresh content and make changes often and easily.

You may be wondering why that is so important.  Fresh content is what the search engines pick up. You can use keywords and tags with each post that will make your site easier to find for potential clients.  In fact, you’ll be able to narrow it down so that the right kind of clients are drawn to your site.  They come to you, rather than you searching for them. And all at a fraction of the cost of that local newspaper advertisement.

And by the way, hows that ad working for you anyway?

* I am a huge fan of the Headway theme for WordPress and it is what I used and customized for this website. And no, I’m not a web designer, so that tells you how easy it must be right?  I highly recommend it to anyone looking to build a Blog site.