The marketing environment is currently in a transition phase in which more and more marketing spending is shifting away from traditional media like print and television and more toward online channels. A widely circulated report by Outsell projected that spending online marketing would outpace print methods in 2010, which would be the first time this has ever happened. Companies are starting to realize that people are spending more time online, browsing sites, interacting on social networks, and reading blogs.
However, it is not easy to break a habit, and many marketing executives are still loyal to the old way of marketing that probably helped them get to where they are today. They may think that traditional marketing methods have been successful for all these years so why should they change. This resistance can be a challenge that you may face as you try to get your boss or client to understand the tremendous value that blogging can create. So I have put together some ideas for selling the marketing value of a blog to non-believers.
Provide examples of blogging success stories
There are numerous business blogs that have become tremendous assets for companies and have generated significant revenue. According to the book Flip the Funnel by Joseph Jaffe, Bill Marriott’s blog has earned more than $5 million for Marriott from people who clicked through to the reservation page after viewing his blog. Company blogs like Nuts About Southwest and the Zappos blog attract thousands of readers who seek out information about these companies. On a local scale, you can probably find a local business who is crushing it with their blog and as a result are outranking all their competitors in Google for the top industry keywords.
Present statistics that support logical arguments
Since many managers are left-brain thinkers who are highly analytical and numbers driven, providing numbers that support your cause can help. Statistics alone may not be very meaningful, so seek out statistics that support a logical conclusion like that blogs tend to increase overall traffic to a company website. A blog adds more pages to a website, which tends to translate into more potential pages that appear in Google search results which leads to more traffic to the site. A stat that will support this logic is that according to a Hubspot survey the average company that blogs has 55% more visitors and 434% more indexed pages.
Ask for a trial run and measure the results
Asking for a trial run may buy you some time to start building traction for your blog. This can be an easier sell that asking for resources for a never ending project. Once you show that the blog is providing positive value for customers and attracting organic traffic from search engines for important keywords, you should be able to extend the project.
Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness
While this may not always be the best approach, you can be like Wendy Harman, the social media manager at American Red Cross. According to the book Open Leadership by Charlene Li, Harman could not get approval to start a blog when she first arrived at American Red Cross. However, she knew that if the senior people could just see the effect they would like it so she used her personal credit card to buy a domain name and started blogging. Fortunately management saw positive results and approved her continued efforts without hesitation.
Related posts:
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Young Truong is a marketing manager at New Horizons Seattle. New Horizons provides Seattle IT Training including courses and certification in both the online or classroom setting.
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I like the post a lot. I will try the same to convince my boss. Thanks. Points are great.
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This is a great way to get an outline down to pitch to your boss. I think it is time that more company’s accept the fact that social media has to be apart of the marketing plan.
That is true, a lot of company’s don’t value a 2 way communication with their audience. Companies want to talk to their audience to sell and promote their products but don’t want to listen to them. Social media, blogging , Web 2.0 is all about two way communication.
Yea most think they have have it right so why change it. it isn’t that they are changing it is that they are evolving.
Nice ZK. Asking for a trial usually works out when it comes to company blogs. Since if you share some good content, the results will always be visible
Personally I don’t agree with the strategy used by Wendy Harman. That is a good way to get fired from a job. Most bosses simply do not understand blogs and what they’re all about. So when selling the idea to your boss, focus less on the technical details and more on the positive benefits.
This is a very good point. Unless the boss is young and caught up on all the latest buzzwords and trends, it’s unlikely that he or she will be too interested in the technical details of these new things like blogs, so it might be advantageous to focus more on the pure benefits of it as opposed to its workings.
Blogs are a great way to market a company and if it brings the company more sales and more publicity, Im sure the boss will be up for making a blog. It would not hurt, it can only help.
I am amazed to see that there are still some bosses who don’t believe in blogs.
Do you really think the average boss is tech savvy enough to even know what a blog is? It just isn’t mainstream terminology yet. So it is no surprise to me that bosses don’t all believe in blogs. With the unknown, some people need extra convincing to believe in something.
Sometimes its easier to continue the old ways, and the old habits, which is why alot of people can’t expect change, I think that’s what happens with some businesses that don’t want to evolve themselves and move forward with technology and embrace blogs, social media and everything. With time though, everything will change, and every business will slowly move forward.
Till then,
Jean
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I’ve been able to telecommute since the late 1990s. The bosses didn’t care as long as it didn’t appear I was taking advantage and was still getting work done.
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Thank you for sharing this. Blog is really a great way to market your products, services, and your company as well.
Kind regards,
Gary
Since I am the boss there is no question on if we can have a blog. In our company, it’s more an issue of the husband staying on top of things!
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I do a lot of web consulting and sometimes it’s even harder. I find that another great way is to work based on a percentage of sales and make yourself an affiliate almost.
I was able to successfully convince my boss to allow us to have a company blog in a previous job using many of these techniques. They work – and the traffic increases to the site are very noticeable.
I think most managers or bosses know what a blog is but they may not understand the reasons it can help a business. Things like increased traffic, more links, more pages in the Google index, and being able to have conversations with customers are all selling points that can help convince the boss that this is worth doing.
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Blog is always a great sign of getting a useful insight regarding the subject or topic on which it is made. I think these tips are enough to convince the boss to let me do this honour.
I was wondering if I could use the ebay logo as a picture in one of my blog posts about ebay. Can I do so with any web site as long as I’m not claiming to be that company?
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