Websites With Blogs Get 55% More Traffic

As you’re thinking about next quarter and your new business efforts, I want to issue a challenge to you, and it’s one you’ve heard before:

You need to create content for your new business efforts.

Before you stop reading (because you’ve heard it all before), let me give you a few key stats, followed by two suggestions I truly think will help.

First stat:

Websites with blogs get 55% more traffic.

If that’s not enough impetus to get you on the content train, I don’t know what is. But there’s more!

Second stat, from R2i’s Kelly Kennedy, in our 2018 RSW/US Agency New Business Thought Leader Survey Report:

42% of agencies tell us they either only have a lead gen effort in place and do very little marketing to support it, or don’t do much lead gen or marketing at all.

Yikes.  But not surprising, and we’ve heard all the reasons why.  Time is at a premium and you’re wearing a lot of hats, as are others in the agency or firm.

Our Director of Marketing, Miguel Trejo, has a post coming up specifically on the topic of blogging, so I’ll let him delve deeper, but from a prospecting perspective, it is a mistake not to back up your effort with marketing.

Otherwise, you look like every other agency, and sure you may have good work examples/cases studies (and you should!) but some form of content helps in so many ways.

So I wrote that I would give you two suggestions to help ease that effort:

One: Consider video

This may seem daunting, and it is an initial investment up front for equipment, if that doesn’t exist, but you can do some pretty amazing things with your phone these days, in terms of quality, and post-production software is getting consistently less expensive.

I can speak from experience: it works.  We’re 14 episodes in the can in our video series 3 Takeaways, and I can point directly to two clients who have come on board because of it.

Sure, it takes time, as we do our best to stick to a release every 3 weeks.  I can tell you though, writing a script is easier than a post, at least in my opinion.  We’re still learning a lot, but once you get into a repeatable rhythm, it gets more manageable.

A simple Google search will provide voluminous stats on why you should (here’s one), but another good reason?

Not a lot of your agency peers are doing it.

Two: Simplify your content process

Specifically when it comes to blogging. We had a client who, once a week, would take an article specific to their vertical and the first part of every post would be a paragraph synopsis of the main points.

And the remaining paragraphs would be their take on it, based on their expertise in the sector and specific knowledge of the challenges inherent to the vertical.

Not rocket science, but agencies don’t tend to stick with a content strategy.  It worked for our client and it was, and is, a great way to get started, or restarted, without having to spend time creating original posts ongoing. And it provides a snapshot of your thinking and knowledge-exactly what your prospects want to see.

It also gets you in the habit of writing, where you might eventually create original posts.

Take the plunge.  Start with a post like the above every 2 weeks, or a video once a month.  Get it on the calendar and get your team involved as well.

It will pay off.