If content marketing didn’t drive sales, no one would be doing it.

Most businesses are engaged in content marketing in one form or another. Even small businesses are realizing the value of content. According to one survey, 53% of small businesses are engaged in content marketing and 69% of those businesses are writing blog posts.

Of course, most businesses aren’t hyper-focused on metrics like blog views, comments, shares, or even website traffic. They’re focused on sales and revenue, and it can be difficult to see how content translates into that kind of tangible business value.

But one of the best ways to drive ROI is to increase your blogging. Here’s how it works.

A Blog Post Holds More Value Than You Think

A single blog post is a relatively small piece of your content marketing strategy. It might take an experienced content writer under an hour to create and publish a blog post, depending on the length. And posting it won’t typically lead to much fanfare in the office.

But a single blog post can hold enormous value if it meets certain requirements for your audience. Mainly, it must be:

• Relevant
• Helpful (or interesting)
• Unique
• Easy to digest

In other words, your blog post needs to be written for a specific individual. It needs to provide helpful information that can’t be found anywhere else online. And needs to be easy to digest. Preferably, your audience will be able to read or skim it on their mobile phone.

Once you publish your blog post, it lives on the internet permanently, or at least until you change it. Search engines can index it and users can refer to it years down the road if it’s still relevant to them.

Content also serves as the basis for all your other inbound marketing initiatives.

You can use that blog post in marketing and sales emails. You can post it to your social media pages to drive traffic to your website. Your salespeople can even use it in their prospecting and sales interactions.

Not all your blog posts will drive enormous value. But if you blog often and consistently, a few will stand out. These are called “compounding” blog posts, and statistically, they can drive 38% of your total website traffic.They’ll also continue to drive value. One company even reported that 75% of their blog views and 90% of their blog leads come from older posts.

Traffic is the First Step in the Sales Process

When it comes to measuring the success of blog posts, traffic is the most often-cited statistic. But another important metric is conversions.

You don’t just want visitors to read your blog post. You want them to act. For your blog post to be effective, it needs to be relevant, helpful, unique, and easy to read, but it also needs to encourage your reader to take the next step.

You should first focus on keywords. Include search terms in your blog post that your customers are looking for. This will increase the likelihood that they’ll find your blog post online as well as the likelihood that they’ll find it relevant.

Next, optimize your blog post with calls-to-action (CTA) buttons. Keep these succinct and eye-catching and use your keywords in them to encourage visitors to click.

Your CTA buttons could lead to other content, but make sure they always direct the visitor to a form. Ideally, your form will be on a landing page that has no navigation and features the form front and center.

If your visitor fills out a form on your landing page, that’s a conversion.

This is how you use blog posts to turn visitors into contacts and leads. From there, you can nurture your leads and find those that are sales-qualified. That’s when your salespeople can work their magic.

Some of your leads will drop off without making a purchase. That’s okay, but that’s why it’s important to keep a high volume of leads moving through your marketing funnel. To do that, you need to publish relevant content as often as possible.

Frequency and Consistency Impact Customer Acquisition

If you’ve ever seen a business blog that hasn’t been updated in months, you already know what that might look like to customers. It looks like the business tried content marketing, but then they just gave up.

Posting content frequently isn’t just a way to save face in the eyes of your visitors. It can directly impact your marketing and sales metrics.

A business that published 16 or more blog posts per month received almost 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published between 0 and 4 posts per month.

That’s because blogging keeps your website fresh with new content and provides you with more opportunities to stay in front of your audience. Search engines will be able to index your new content and recognize you as an authoritative source of information.

Most importantly, every blog post is an opportunity to boost your metrics. If you’re converting at a rate of 2%, an increase of 500 new visitors will bring you 10 new leads.

Even if only one of those leads becomes a customer, content marketing is relatively cheap. That one purchase could bring you a substantial ROI for your content investment. If they become a return customer, they could provide you with even more lifetime value.

Next Step: Create a Blogging Calendar

If you want to post consistently and increase your sales, create a blogging calendar. Draft a series of topics and stick to your due dates. Ensure someone or a group of people on your team are responsible for meeting the deadlines.

Then, put your blog posts to work. Create a newsletter and encourage visitors to sign up for it. Publish your blog posts on social media, through email, and on other channels to encourage more traffic and generate more leads.

Content marketing may seem like an indirect way to drive sales but giving it a boost is one of the most effective ways to bring in more revenue.

Let us know what strategies are you targeting to boost your content marketing revenue. Reach out to us for more information on this topic.