Blogging: The MVP of the Marketing Short-Game and Long-Game

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Bringing Customers to You

Blogging has been recognized for years as an important aspect of any marketing campaign. For Launch Team clients, the most immediate impact is in the short-game of lead generation. Blog posts are used as part of an inbound marketing program to direct readers to longer pieces of content like white papers, eBooks, and tip sheets that are form protected and used to generate leads. The blog post is designed to attract leads early in the buying process, those at the top of the sales funnel. Promoting blogs in strategic locations across the web is the most effective means we have of attracting new leads.

However, blogs are incredibly valuable to search engine optimization (SEO) as well. As any marketer will tell you, SEO is a long-game. Apart from a well funded Google AdWords campaign, you cannot buy your way to the top of Google search results. SEO requires ongoing efforts and a great deal of patience.

 

How Launch Team Approaches SEO

We begin SEO by examining keywords and matching them up with target personas. These keywords are used on standard web pages as well as other forms of content. Typically we choose three themes to guide our blog posts, as well as corresponding keywords that we incorporate into the posts. Continual examination of traffic patterns and blog performance provides the data necessary to adjust a client’s blog and keyword strategy and optimize their content for an SEO boost.

Promotion of blogs across social media generates early traffic, but as time goes on, some of the blog posts build momentum and begin to generate organic traffic as well. For example, Launch Team's post on product launch communication was written three years ago but is still one of our most viewed pages. This is where the long-term wins come from.

 

Client Story: Winning the Long-Game

Two years ago we wrote a technical blog post for a precision plastics manufacturer using keywords that matched with both a company differentiator as well as an area of interest to target customers. The initial promotion cycle for this blog in April 2015 generated over 100 visits through social media. In the months that followed, organic traffic for the blog trickled in—around 30 visitors a month initially.

As time went by, the page demonstrated its high quality and relevance with a consistent average time on page of over 5 minutes from organic traffic. Slowly, organic traffic began to increase. Two years later, this blog post generates over 200 organic visits each month and has one of the highest conversation rates for lead generation of any page on the website. It is consistently in the top five visited pages on this client's website.

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Long-Term Investment

Despite all of the keyword suggestion tools available, it can be nearly impossible to predict which blog posts will gain the most organic traction. Keep writing, keep experimenting, and above all, be patient.

 

Read our earlier post for more tips on creating content that converts. Need downloadable content? Check out our white paper writing guide.

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