Can Your Blog Content Really Increase Sales?

We like to think so. When your blog content is engaging, interesting, informative and incredibly targeted, your readers see you as a resource…an expert.

It’s called know, like and trust… and building that rapport and relationship is the holy grail of blogging, listbuilding and ultimately sales.

How Can You Use Blog Content and Niched Lists to Increase Sales

When people first started building email lists back in the mid to late 90’s, you could say you had a newsletter and get people to sign up. Then, we moved into the age of the “freemium” where you offer an “ethical bribe” to get people to subscribe to your list. This might be a downloadable tool, report, ebook, or video course.

Once people got your ethical bribe, they were on your main list. You could send them more information about you and what you were up to.

These days, list building has gotten a lot more niched and specialized. Instead of having one big list that you blast everything to, now we create multiple lists based on people’s interests. Each one of those lists needs its own “freemium” to incentivize people to get on the corresponding list. Each freemium needs its own content to drive people to it.

For example, let’s say you’re a nutritionist and you have two product funnels:

1. Obesity Reduction – You have an ebook about curing obesity with nutrition. The ebook leads into a membership program to hold people accountable.
2. Immune System Boosting – You also have a quick reference ebook that gives the foods you need to eat and the vitamins you need to take to replenish your body after taking antibiotics. This ebook leads into a program that helps people improve their immune system with good nutrition.

Both of these fit within your area of expertise as a nutritionist. While there could be some overlap – meaning some obese people may have immune system problems, there are lots of people who may only fit in one camp or the other.

Rather than lump everyone together in one list, you’d create a freemium for each group that leads into each of the product funnels. With our example, you’d have an Obesity Reduction freemium and an Immune System Boosting freemium.

Then, as you write blogs and social media posts, you would write on these two subjects and point people toward the appropriate freemium for their interest.

As you send your niched audience into the specific areas of their interest, you can then begin showing paid products on your site in a non sales way, in your sidebar on your posts.

This area of your site is a great place to add your own offers or even affiliate offers for related products.

One of the easiest affiliate programs to use is Amazon.com. You can quickly and easily build stores that present related content to your audience. OR if you have a specific product you want to refer readers to you can create an image or graphic that leads directly to that specific product.

We have found an outstanding plug in that quickly builds Amazon stores using related product content and specific product keywords.

These types of product referrals work great for niche businesses especially when you’re just starting out and don’t have a bunch of your own products yet.

Using an Amazon affiliate store is a way for you to earn commissioned sales on products you’re recommending to your list.

Click here to check out InstantAzon – this is a simple inexpensive plug in that will have your Amazon Store up and running in a matter of minutes!

 

 

 

Put Money in the Bank with Your Content!

Everyone knows in the online marketplace, content is king. Yet, creating content for the sake of creating content is a waste of time. You need a goal or objective. For most business people, the ultimate goal is generating revenue.

Within this goal of creating revenues are three primary objectives for content creation:

1) Create Loyal Relationships

Today’s online marketplace is so saturated with similar products and services that the only way to cut through the noise is for people to know that you care about them and that you are taking the time to build rapport with them. As a general rule, prospects need to know, like and trust you before they will spend money with you.

Thus, the fundamental objective of content creation is to create conversations that lead to loyal followers, loyal membership, and loyal customers who like what you have to share and purchase from you.

The content you create should engage your audience in a way that leads to conversations and credibility.

2) Create Conversions

In order to maintain the loyal relationships you’re fostering with your audience, you need some way to stay in touch with them. The most common way to do this is to get people on your email list.

This is usually done by creating some valuable piece of content that answers a pressing concern for your audience. They give you their names and email addresses to receive it. From there, you can follow up with them to continue to build rapport and eventually generate sales.

Besides getting people on your mailing list, there are other ways of staying in contact with your followers.

For example, are you trying to get more subscribers to your Youtube channel? Your new videos will automatically be emailed to the gmail accounts of your subscribers. This is another great way to get into your audiences’ inboxes on a regular basis.

Or maybe you want to build your social media following. Knowing where your audience hangs out is important. If your people primarily engage on Twitter, Facebook may or may not be the place to reach them, and vice versa. Pick a platform your typical buyer uses and create consistent content for that platform.

Eventually, the “ultimate” conversion you want to make is the sale. What is your sales goal for the month? This is important to know, because it guides you in setting your content creation goals

3) Drive Traffic

How many people do you want coming to your site each month? Resist the urge to just make up a number. It shouldn’t be a guess. Did you know there is a clear formula for knowing how many site visitors you need to meet your sales goals?

In the beginning you’ll need to bring some traffic to your optin page so you can calculate what percentage of visitors end up filling out your form. For example, if 100 people visit your site and you get 25 optins, you have a 25% optin rate on your page.

You’ll also need to calculate what percentage of your list end up becoming buyers. For example, if you have 100 people on your list and 10 have bought something, your sales percentage is 10%.

Once you know these percentages, you can easily determine how much traffic you need to make a sale.

An example is the best way to explain. Let’s say your goal this month is to sell $1,000 worth of Widgets.

If you know that 25% of the people who land on your page opt in to your email list; and from there, you know 10% of those people will make a $100 purchase, you can use a little math to determine how much traffic you need each month to reach your monthly sales goals.

Let’s do the math…

Total Revenue Goal: $1000

Widget Price: $100

Sales Needed to Meet Revenue Goal: 10
(Calculated by Total Revenue Goal / Widget Price = $1000/$100)

Sales Rate: 10%
(Let’s say you know 10% of people on your list will buy a $100 widget)

Optins Needed: 100
(Calculated by Sales / Sales Rate = 10 sales /.10)

Optin Rate: 25%
(Let’s say you know 25% of people who hit your optin page will sign up)

Visitors Needed: 400
(Calculated by Optins Needed/Optin Rate = 100/.25)

Now that you know that 400 people visiting your site will create 10 sales for a total of $1,000 in revenue, you can calculate how much you can afford to spend to get a visitor to your site.

 

 

Let’s say your Widget is an information product, and you clear 90% profit on every sale, that would be a profit of $90 per sale.

$90 profit per sale x 10 sales = $900 in profit.

$900 profit / 400 visitors = $2.25 profit per visitor.

This means if you pay $2.25 per visitor, you would break even. Anything under that would mean you made some profit.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account that you may also have other products besides widgets and that people on your list might end up buying more things from you over the course of a lifetime.

Smart marketers who have several products to offer their customers know that it’s worth breaking even on an initial sale to get a customer. They’ll be selling them many more things over a lifetime.

Having this number ($2.25) in mind helps you know what you can spend to create and promote a piece of content. For example, let’s say you create a blog post that has an optin offer inside it. If you promoted that blog post using a Facebook ad and you paid $.50 per visitor, you would spend $200 to get 400 visitors ($.50 x 400 visitors = $200).

If you take your $900 profit and subtract the $200 for advertising, you’re still clearing $700 in profit.

From this example, we see it’s worth creating that blog post and paying a little in advertising to promote it. The more you advertise, the more traffic you send to your optin page and the more sales you make.

Want to learn more about transforming your content into cash? Join us in the MyNAMS Insiders Club. for our 30-Day Content Creation Challenge.

If you’re interested in getting started or just getting better at content creation, now’s the time to jump in and just do it! 

With our $1 – 14 day trial, it’s kind of a no brainer, right?