Why B2B Business Blogging Is Still Not Dead

For businesses that think writing blogs is passé, it’s time to reconsider. Enterprise blogs are more than just content pieces. They are a means to an end, the end being leads. Effective blogs with rich content can convert web-traffic into measurable sales inquiries.

Here’s an interesting statistic. According to research by InsideView, a market intelligence provider, B2B marketers who use blogs can generate 67 percent more leads than those who don’t. But unfortunately InsideView’s research also showed that only 33 percent of B2B companies use blogs as an effective marketing tool.

Today, your customers search for product information online. For instance, in Malaysia, according to Google’s Consumer Barometer, 48 percent of customers become aware about products and services through online sources. And even if they do not buy directly from websites, customers will usually do a pre-purchase research online before purchasing a product.

Blogs can help marketers establish their organization as a brand that values customer feedback.

So, the right blog, one that has relevant information, can help your business nurture potential leads. Using blogs, organizations can engage potential customers through call-to-action touch-points to introduce or educate customers about products and offerings. And through prolonged engagements, businesses can enhance customer relationships to a great extent.  

A B2B Content Marketing survey revealed that producing engaging content is a major challenge for content marketers in 2016. So how do you create blogs that can keep your readers glued? There are simple tools like Datawrapper, Pester and Piktochart available online, that can significantly boost engagement.

Also, reading your blogs customers can raise personal queries and suggestions on the comment the section. Your business can respond to such queries instantly. This way you can establish your organization as a brand that values customer feedback.

So, if you are still not buying the idea of creating a blog for your enterprise, here is an interesting case study that can change your mind.

Have you ever heard of a supply chain management company engaging with customers through blogs to grow their business?

Kinaxis is a cloud-based solution provider that enables businesses to enhance analysis and decision-making across their supply chain operations. They have had a blog for a long time. But like many businesses, they were unsure if it was contributing enough to the organization’s growth. Instead of terminating the blog, they partnered with a research firm to better understand the customers they were targeting through their blog.

B2B marketers who use blogs can generate 67 percent more leads than those who don’t.

Interestingly, the research firm indicated that they should continue blogging as a significant aspect of their marketing strategy. Owing to studies, Kinaxis learnt that their blog content cannot afford to be self-promotional, rather it needs to be unbiased and sensitive to readers.

Forget about terminating, Kinaxis doubled their blogging efforts by allowing guests writers to write impartial and informative blogs for them.

So, what were the benefits Kinaxis derived by investing time and money on their blog?  The company reported 2.7 times increase in their website traffic. Their conversion rates increased by 3.2 times and their blog traffic grew by 5.3 than what is used to be.

Now, don’t you want your conversion rates to increase by three times?