Your blog posts can help you attract new clients by showing them how you can solve their problems. We all know that before someone will buy from us, we have to convince them that we can help them.
If you use them well, your blog posts can do this for you without being salesy or annoying. In your post you won’t be screaming, ‘Come buy my stuff!!’ Instead you’ll confidently and clearly demonstrate that you provide the support or solution they’ve been looking for.
How do blog posts show that you can solve your potential client’s problem?
Blog posts that convince your potential clients you can help them start by doing what I teach my clients to do – they address the questions and concerns their potential clients actually have. If you’ve been listening to your clients and can use Google and a few other free tools, you can do this too.
You start by using their language – not the technical language you, as the expert, use. For example, the technical term for ‘using their language’ would be ‘writing in their register’. If you, like most of my clients and potential clients, don’t use the term register this way, using that language would probably cause you to click away.
So in your potential clients’ language, give them answers to one of their problems – just as I’m doing here in this post that shows you how your blog can help you attract new clients. So far in this subsection, I’ve explained how I can help you
- Find out what problems your potential clients want your help with
- Speak to them in their language
Focus on the problems your clients want to solve
I always encourage my clients to focus on problems their potential clients want to solve – these are the problems they’re aware of. That’s why we use tools like Google to find out what they’re searching for.
Why should you focus on these instead of the deeper one you know is actually causing their pain? Because they’re not aware of the deeper problem, which means they won’t be searching for it and won’t find you.
Let’s look at how this works in my business. People who want to learn to write their books and blogs more easily often say
- I don’t have time to write.
- I don’t know what to say.
- I don’t know how to write.
- I’m not really an expert, or I don’t know enough to write a book/blog.
With very few exceptions (people with complex caring responsibilities, those who are new to their field, etc.), these statements simply aren’t true. They’re really just polite fictions people tell themselves to avoid writing.
Why do they want to avoid writing? Because they
- Believe the hateful thing ‘that’ teacher once said.
- Are afraid of being visible.
- Are afraid of being seen as an expert.
These are the problems I actually solve, but they aren’t the ones people usually look for. That’s why you’ll see that most of my content focuses on the problems they’re aware of – finding time, choosing a topic, having a plan, etc. Once they see I can help with those issues, some of my readers go on to work with me, and that’s where we solve the real problem.
What does this look like in your business? Take a minute to make two lists:
- The problems your potential clients are aware of
- The deeper problem they really need to address by working with you
Can’t you just use your sales page to do all of this?
In a word, no. When people read sales pages, even those of the tasteful, non-aggressive variety, they know you want them to buy something from you. This puts a lot of people on guard.
In that state, they’ll be thinking of you as a salesperson rather than as an expert. However, when they read your blog posts, even the ones that end with an invitation to work with you, they’ll be focused on how you’re helping them in that post.
This happens because while sales pages exist to sell, blog posts exist to inform and serve. To move people through the buyer’s journey with your business, you must inform and serve before you sell.
HubSpot defines the three stages of the buyer’s journey as:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
Your blog posts can help at all three stages. When your potential client is aware of their problem, they’ll start looking for answers, which your posts can provide.
Seeing how you can solve their problem explained in a post will help them through the consideration stage. They may see that they already have the ability to solve it themselves, in which case they won’t buy from you – but you will have helped them, so they may refer others to you. If they see that they need help, your post will help them decide what kind of help and from which source – it may be you!
When they get to the decision stage, your post can both confirm that you are the right person to help and lead them to your sales page. As you can see, you need both sales pages and blog posts because they solve very different problems.
Your blog helps you attract new clients
As I explained above, your blog helps your readers move through the buyer’s journey from problem aware to buying decision. If that were all it did, it would be well worth having on your website. But your blog does so much more.
Below I discuss just three additional ways your blog helps you attract new clients:
- Establishes your credibility
- Extends your reach
- Improves your messaging
Establishes your credibility
When you write well-thought out blog posts based on your experience and expertise in your field, you are demonstrating to your readers that you are a credible expert. When your posts answer questions your potential clients have, you are showing them both that you’ve considered those issues and can help them solve those problems.
Extends your reach
Blogging helps the organic reach of your website by improving your SEO. When you also use the text you write your posts as the foundation for your marketing, it can improve your reach on social media.
Imagine how much more frequently you’d post if you didn’t always have to start from scratch!
Improves your messaging
When you write about what you do and how you help people, you have to communicate in a different way to when you’re in your business helping your clients. Describing the process forces you to put it into words, which, over time, will lead to clearer, more compelling messaging. Your messaging will improve faster if you have a system for capturing and using your (potential) clients’ language.
How can I help?
I have a free mini course called Write Engaging Blog Posts the Easy Way. Click the button below to learn more and sign up.