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HOW TO USE YOUR BLOG TO PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

Having a company blog is one of the key ways to indirectly promote your business online, but what about using your blog to directly promote your products and services?

While it may not be “blogging best practice” to promote your products and services directly on your blog, we are going to show you how it can be done in a tactful and clever way.

There are many advantages to having a company blog, but the two most important things that your blog helps to establish is:

  1. Traffic to your website (which hopefully converts into sales)
  2. Your reputation as an expert and thought-leader in your field.

This means that your blog needs to first and foremost be perceived by your audience as extremely valuable and helpful to supporting their needs. This is truly the first step and if your company blog is not yet here, it may be best to not proceed any further.

While you never want your blogs to simply be about all the cool things your company does or all the products you have for sale, there is some merit in sharing some of the services and products your company provides.

The trick with doing this successfully is to absolutely avoid the 3 No’s which are-

NO to being salesy

NO to being pushy

NO to being obvious

Blogging is very different from advertising, and your company’s sole intention should never be to use blogging as a direct marketing tool.

Establishing a solid blog following and earning the trust of your readers there may be a small window of opportunity to directly promote your products and services.

Here is how to go about it in a clever and tactful way-

Ask Yourself- Is the product or service I am promoting on my blog useful?

If your brand made it or owns it, chances are you are going to think it’s useful, but go a little deeper. Your products and services may cater to a specific audience but chances are there is an even more specific market that is interested in your blog.

Ensure whatever product you choose to promote offers direct and clear cut value to your readers and not just your overall demographic. This is going to help your promotion to be more successful and better accepted by your readers.

What Am I Promoting and Why? 

After you have selected the best product to promote to your readers it is important to establish why you are promoting it. This is going to help you not only formulate a solid blog post but it is also going to help  you set the intention of what you are trying to achieve.

Speaking of intention, mentioning a product or service in your blog posts doesn’t always have to be about getting a sale. It can be about simply educating your customers or learning what your customer’s reaction is to the product or service.

Formulate your intention and then assess the product you have chosen by asking yourself- why?

In order to determine the best product to choose, take a moment to browse through your reader comments or questions. You may find a common theme in what they are asking, or you may discover a product or service that could be most helpful.

Popular or trending topics on your blog may also provide a clue as to what products or services can be seamlessly promoted.

Let the Benefits Become the Pitch

The benefits of your products or services should be the theme of your blog post and not the product or services themselves.

This helps to gently suggest your products or services to your readers rather than pushing it or forcing it on them. It also helps to ensure that your blog post is offering greater value than just a sales pitch.

In order to formulate the pitch or the heart of your promotion, it is important to focus on the benefits that your product or service is going to offer and then use that as your foundation.

Here is a 4 step guide to help you with this process –

  1. Select Your Product or Service (eg. water bottle)
  2. List the Top 3 Benefits (eg. staying hydrated, beautiful design, BPA free)
  3. Pick a Benefit to Write Your Content About (eg. Why It’s So Important Your Water Bottle is BPA free)
  4. Integrate pitching your product as a solution (eg. we offer BPA free water bottles…)

Offer More Than One Solution

It is important to offer more than just your product or service as a solution to the “problem” or “hurdle” raised in your blog post.

When you only provide your product or service as the solution it can cause your readers to become skeptical and can make them feel hesitant in trusting you or taking action.

Offering more than one solution is therefore recommended to avoid your blog post coming across as pushy or salesy.

Set Up Tracking for Analytics 

Once your blog post is written you will want to be sure you can track your audience and how many people click and follow through with purchasing your product or service.

This will help you to determine the effectiveness of your post and whether promoting through your blog is helping or hindering your business.

To do this you can set up a conversion pixel on your post or use a special shortened URL that can be tracked and monitored to see how many people are clicking over to the checkout page.

Promoting the Post 

Stay away from using headlines to promote your post such as- “Check out all the great things our product or service can do for you.” Instead, focus on promoting the benefits without even mentioning your product or service.

Remember, the art with this is to be tactful and to stay away from obvious promotion.

Sticking with the drink bottle example, your headline for your blog promotion can simply be- “Why BPA is dangerous for your health…” or “Why your water bottle may be bad for your health.”

Again, this headline or promotion sticks to dealing with the benefits. This will also make your blog post promotion seem far less salesy which may help to earn you more clicks and conversions.

Measure Your Blog’s Performance 

After publishing and promoting your blog post you have to track the results and see how your blog post is converting into sales, and whether it is having any adverse effects on your readership.

Through analysing you can determine what is working and what may need to be changed or tweaked.

It may also be interesting to compare the performance of promoting in your blog posts with promoting on other mediums or channels.

If you have been tactful enough and truly provide content of value on a regular basis, you may find that your blog promotions earn you a nice handful of sales. Just be sure that you don’t abuse your blog promotion skills however, as readers can very quickly become desensitised.

Conclusion

Your company’s blog is one of the most valuable marketing tools you have. It’s valuable because it is not centered around making sales and instead is centered around offering your readers and potential customers value. This helps your brand to appear worthy and credible and conveys a powerful message- that you care about your customers.

If you abuse your blog, it can have the reverse effects and can make readers see your brand as pushy, unworthy or not to be trusted. It can also cause your readership to go elsewhere, which over time can negatively impact on your conversion rates and sales.

DOWNLOAD THE DUCEHOST BLOGPOST AUDIT HERE to optimize your Blog Performance. This is worth 20000. Try it and experience a boost in your Blog performance and in turn a boost in Sales of your Your products and Services.

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6 E-COMMERCE GROWTH HACKS THAT CAN BOOST YOUR SALES UP TO 300% BEFORE CHRISTMAS

2020 is quickly coming to an end and if you still want to meet or surpass your sales goals for the year, you still have time to make an impact.

Depending on your business, the end of the year may be your busiest or slowest time. But no matter what your projections are for the rest of 2016, there are some fail-proof ways you can drive a huge wave of sales to your business.

Here are 6 e-commerce growth hacks that will help your sales to skyrocket so you can end 2020 with a bang:

Growth Hack #1: Go Big With Branding 

Especially as the holidays approach, companies that can focus on their brand rather than their products and services, often tend to see a huge increase in sales. If you have been working on building your brand throughout the year, now is the time to really drive the message home.

For example, JUMIA has built their brand around the fact that as an Ecommerce store in Nigeria, you can get any product at very affordable prices. As the holidays are approaching, Jumia amps up their marketing message by promoting the “Black Friday” campaign. This campaign helps to drive home the message that Jumia is the more conscious choice when it comes to shopping online.

Growth Hack #2: Go Video for High Impact 

There is a lot of competition around this time of year, which means that if your brand is going to stand out from the crowd you have to think about shifting your marketing to a whole new level.

One of the easiest ways to stand out from the crowd is to create video content. Video content is not only visually appealing but it can help to showcase your brand’s products and services in a whole new light.

Videos also engage the senses, which means that your marketing message automatically drives more impact and allows your audience to see your products and services in a whole new light.

Videos also allow your audience a more personal insight into your brand, which can go along way when it comes to making your brand stand out against another.

Growth Hack #3: Create Package Deals 

One of the best ways to get your customers spending more is to create package deals with complimentary products or services bundled together.

This is not only great for boosting sales, but it also gives context to your products and services and allows your customers to get a richer experience.

When you offer bundle deals, subconsciously they are also perceived as having a higher value, which can also help interested customers to take the plunge and finally purchase.

Bundle deals are also a great way to get rid of excess inventory, so you can go into 2021 with a clean slate.

Growth Hack #4: Look at the Trends

While there are timeless classics when it comes to marketing and promoting your e-commerce store, there are also evolving trends that your brand should always pay attention to.

Keeping ahead of the trends, especially on social media and the news is going to help give you content ideas and new inspiration on ways to market and promote your products or services.

By paying attention to trending news stories, you can ride the wave and capitalise off the number of people searching for that term.

For example, if you are a security e-commerce store and there is a recent hacking in the news, that is the perfect time to release a blog article telling businesses and people how they can protect themselves and what services your company may offer.

Trending news is always changing, but it provides a wonderful opportunity for reaching out to a whole new audience in order to boost sales.

Growth Hack #5: Encourage User Generated Content 

User generated content is huge right now, especially on social media platforms like Instagram.

Lifestyle and fashion brands tend to perform best when it comes to user generated content, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get creative and make it work for your business.

There are many ways that you can use user generated content to increase sales and get people talking about your brand, but one of the best strategies is to run a competition.

Ask your Instagram following for example, to snap a shot of them using your product with a specially curated hashtag. Give them an incentive by offering them some type of reward, prize or experience.

If you offer the right reward and target the right customers, your promotion will soon go viral, helping your product to get on the feeds of thousands of people. Not only will this give you lots of exposure, but it will also help you to increase those last minute holiday sales.

If you are a B2B brand, using the user generated content strategy may be tougher, however you can instead turn your attention to social proof.

Providing social proof such as testimonials and case studies or sharing the number of customers that you have served, can go a long way in  building up trust and getting businesses interested in buying your products.

Growth Hack #6: Offer Gifting Options 

With the holidays fast approaching, offering gifting options is another great strategy to get customers in the mood to buy.

Nowadays, people are always looking for practical and unconventional gifts that stand out from the crowd and are personalised. So even if you sell a product or service that is not mainstream, consider creative ways to market it as the perfect holiday gift.

This includes offering everything from fancy packaging, gift wrapping and even beautiful looking gift certificates. Get creative with what you choose to offer and make it as easy and as accessible as possible.

You may also have to think about extending your refund policy or being more generous with your terms and conditions.

Remember, around this time of year most people are looking to keep purchases as simple and as stress-free as possible. By finding ways to create this vibe on your own ecommerce store, it is going to drastically increase sales and will keep your customers coming back to your store year after year.

Conclusion:
As 2020 draws to a close it is important to think about how you can use all the things that you have learned from the year gone by and apply it to every area of your business so you can end the year on a strong note.

Implementing just some of these easy growth hacks will also help you to boost your sales and will keep your business thriving well into 2021 and beyond.

Are you ready to close out 2020 with a bang, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin for more interesting Updates?

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5 things we must know before building your website

Your website is the foundation of your internet existence. It is the bridge that connects your great products and services to the online community that is your market and audience. In today’s world, it is almost impossible for a business to succeed without a firm web presence.

Even if you already have a website, reviewing these points may shine a light on that one thing you overlooked. Use this guide as your resource to make the process of creating your own website a whole lot easier.

Establish the aim of your website

It’s always important to ask crucial questions about why you’re building the website. Is the aim of your site to inform people that your business exists and encourage them to get in touch? Is it to sell your products online? Or how about to showcase your creative work? Having a clear focus will help you as well as your visitors.

 Know your target market

Make sure you clarify this early on as it will affect your theme, design, content, usability, networking efforts and search engine optimization. In short, everything revolves around your target market.

Choose your domain name wisely

Pick something that’s short, easy to remember, and reflects the nature of your site. It’s not easy to change it at a later date, so now’s the time to get it right. Of course, if your site is for your business, then it only follows that your domain name to it.

Be informed about SEO

Search Engine Optimization is going to play a big part in attracting people to your website. As well as incorporating keywords or search terms that your audience is likely to be typing into Google, you need to provide the search engines with a succinct explanation of what those visitors will find when they get there. In the meantime, Google Adwords is a great tool for researching keywords in your subject area.

Set yourself a deadline

Web design can take more time if you don’t manage your time properly. Set yourself daily or weekly targets of having certain areas of your site done – this way you won’t get tired and frustrated doing too much at once. It is important you build a process that is efficient enough to bring results. If you can answer the first question of establishing the aim of your website, it will provide you with knowledge on what functions you want for the website.

Planning out your content on your website gives you an edge of optimizing the features of your website for your prospective clients. Important questions to ask are how do you want your customers to feel when they come to your website (i.e. User Experience). Another important question to ask is, how easy will it be for users to navigate your website (i.e. User Interface)

Designing a website is more than having a lot of functions, you always want your customers to come back and engage with your website. Planning how your site looks, along with the features will make you reach your target audience at a faster rate and in turn improve on your Sales or leads or any other form of Data you will want.

You still have a chance of getting your website up and running with our team at ducehost. We offer planning strategies that make your website a sales machine for your business. This includes us knowing who your ideal customers, what they like, who they are etc. Which all become data in building your website.

You’re also more than welcome to contact the design experts at Ducehost on Instagram to get a free, completely customized quote about making your site with high performance and Responsive!Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at Ducehost.