If you tender your work, what is the point of a blog?
Blogs are a marketing channel, just like advertising, direct mail, or email marketing. In this digital era, a blog can still add value, even if your work is mostly tendered.
Here are 5 reasons why your construction company or engineering consultancy needs a blog.
Prefer to watch? Here's a summary:
1. Increased Visibility
People can’t find you if they don’t know who you are. Blogging increases your online visibility and helps promote your products and services.
In construction, you need your products specifying by engineers and your services wanted by contractors – and if they don’t know you’re out there, they can’t do that.
Even if you have to still tender for the work, that’s a chance you may not have had if your audience hadn’t found you.
2. Increased Website Traffic
Chances are you have a website – it’s 2018, after all (if you don’t have a website, stop reading and do that first.) But similar to visibility, people need to get to your website to see what you can offer.
Continually updating your website with fresh content is considered good by search engines, so you’re more likely to be found first. How often do you look on page 10 of Google? Probably never.
And if you don’t have a blog already, the rest of your website pages are probably not updated that often. That’s where a blog fits in. As well as increasing your search rankings, your blogs can be shared and found on social media, increasing your chances of being found by your ideal customer.
Here's some stats from Hubspot's Marketing Statistics:
B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost 3X more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month.
1 in 10 blog posts are compounding, meaning organic search increases their traffic over time.
Compounding blog posts make up 10% of all blog posts and generate 38% of overall traffic.
3. Builds Trust with your Customers
If you are creating helpful or useful content for your readers – and by that, I mean your posts are about how you can solve their problems – then you start to build trust with your audience.
They’ll realise that you understand what their needs are, and when they need your products or services, they are more likely to think of the person that helped them, instead of ABC Industries who only talk about themselves.
4. Answers Common Questions
Your blog is the perfect place to answer the questions that your customers have about your products and services. After all, you probably already understand the customer problems you are trying to solve, and a blog is a great way to showcase this knowledge.
There’s a statistic that says buyers now have 57% of their purchasing information before they buy – why not give them the information they need and make their lives easier?
Who would you rather buy from, the business who has all the information they need on their website, or the company who forces them to speak to the sales team? Chances are, it’s the latter.
5. Leads to More Sales
Blogging can take time to turn into more sales, so it’s not a quick-win tactic. But like any marketing activity, when it’s done consistently, you’ll start to see results.
People have access to more information than ever before, and chances are they’ve done some research first. Reading your blog is likely to be part of that research - according to Hubspot's Marketing Statistics, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
But if over time you’ve shown that you understand their problems, have the solutions they need, and have built their trust, then you’re more likely to get increased sales.
And Tendering?
What about tendering? Tendering is a part of our industry, and there is no getting away from it. But that doesn’t mean that a business blog won’t help.
A lot of construction companies have products that are designed for niche problems. So, you may actually be the only one on the market with no one to compete against, but that won’t matter if nobody knows about you. A blog post shared on social media and specialist professional groups is the perfect way to get the word out.
And if you do have competitors offering the same products and services, your blog can be a great place to demonstrate the unique selling points of your company and differentiate yourself from your competition.
Interested to Know More?
If you’d like to start your business blog but want some ideas and guidance on how to do it, why not book a call with me to discuss your needs? I’ll give you some ideas you can start with, and you can ask any questions you may have.
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