4 B2C Marketing Gimmicks Bloggers Can Learn From
Whether you have a business blog or a personal one, the most crucial problem for bloggers seems to be the ever-increasing competition. As of today, about 82.6 million new posts are published each month in WordPress. That means this hosting platform alone accounts for more than 2.7 million blog posts a day. In short, your blog is just one of many and making it stand out from the rest is going to take some efforts and time.
Fortunately, you can apply some of the marketing gimmicks often utilized by B2C marketers to turn your blog into a traffic magnet.
Read on to know more about these marketing tactics.
B2C Marketing Gimmicks Bloggers Can Learn From
Knowing What Your Target Audience Wants
Your blog is like a brand while each blog post is like a new product. So, if you want to attract more traffic, you need to provide only the best product in your market niche. You can’t create the best product without knowing what your audience wants or how this product will solve their problems or how will they use your product. That’s why your post needs to focus on the potential customers.
The OPEN Forum by American Express is one of the best examples of how your content should focus on your target audience. Almost every blog post comes with a specific call to action. OPEN Forum is neither tries to sell the content too hard nor deviates away from the target audience. Both these qualities contribute to higher response and engagement from their readers.
You also need to find out what are the pain points of your potential customers to create a highly-focused blog like OPEN Forum. Find out who has a genuine need for your point of view, services, products, posts and how do they intend to consume those. Find out about their content consumption habits and their social media activities to create user-focused content.
Focusing on the Visual Appeal
Visual appeal is one of the critical aspects of your blog. Most brands focus on using visually stunning content with an equally striking layout. Whether you are using images, infographics, or videos, makes sure to they look fabulous and express your brand just the way you want. Use high-quality content not only on your blog but also on your social media accounts.
Almost all B2C brands are well-known for using the high-quality visual content. However, Bluestone is one of the few that takes it to a whole new level. Whether it is their landing page or their Instagram account, the brand highlights their products using high quality images and graphics, bringing them to life. They certainly have their visual content strategy sorted out from the start.
Apart from the high-quality images and videos, you also need to have a professionally designed theme (avoid using run of the mill website themes), clutter-free content layout, and a unique logo. No need to overuse special effects, animation, and pop-ups as they can be distracting for most readers. Make sure none of the visual elements interfere with your blog’s loading speed and the ease of navigation as well.
Leveraging Social Media
Many leading B2C brands and companies are leveraging social media, however, only a few have managed to sustain unparalleled success. Airbnb is one of those exceptions. Last year, the brand used #WeAccept hashtag to create a social media campaign to show their full support for acceptance of people from different places and ethnicity. The campaign took a stand on the trending topic related to immigration and racism in America and rest of the world at the time.
To leverage social media for your blog, you will need to set up your social media profiles right from the start. You can use different types of social media to promote different aspects of your blog. For example, Twitter is the best platform to connect with potential customers and influencers in your niche, while Instagram is the best to show off aesthetics of your blog. Like Airbnb, you can also use the trending topics to create fresh content and tie it up with your core offerings.
Alternatively, you can also encourage your readers to share your posts on social media. Make sure to add social sharing buttons to all your posts. Social bookmarking your posts on high-profile sites such as Reddit, Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon can also help promote your blog. There are plenty of social media marketing tools which allow you to handle multiple social profiles using a single dashboard. Investing in one of such tools might be a good idea.
Using Advanced Predictive Analytics
The goodwill of your readers can take your blog only so far. To grow your blog strategically, you need to leverage cold hard data with the help of advanced predictive analytics. Predictive analytics uses past data to predict future behaviors. In other words, a careful analysis of keywords used in the past will help you predict the keywords that are likely to take off in near future.
When it comes to customer engagement, predictive analytics allows you to stay a step ahead of your potential customers. It can help you create an ideal customer persona, map predictable landmarks, and identify which content is driving more engagement and loyalty.
Most brands and business use predictive analytics in a similar manner. Arby’s Restaurant Group used point of sale (POS) data to see how renovations affected their business. The data revealed that remodeling generated more business. As a result, Arby’s executed five times the amount of remodels within a year.
You can choose from a wide range of paid and free advanced analytics tools. As you will be able to target customers by creating tailored content for them based on blog user experiences, you will enjoy more web traffic in the long run.
Parting Words
With millions of blogs out there, growing your audience is going to be easier said than done. But, don’t worry. The above tips will help you take your blog to the next level and build a loyal customer base in no time. Read them carefully and get back to work. Keep us posted in the comments below so that we can help you further. Happy blogging!
About The Author: Vivek Patel works with E2M, a content marketing agency based in San Diego. In his free time, he loves to stay updated with the latest photography lessons and enjoy photographing on his cam.