Blogging is important to lead gen. There’s a reason that my retainer clients all include multiple monthly blogs in our contracts – because regular, consistent blogging works.
This post started from an information-packed post called “52 Incredible Blogging Statistics to Inspire You to Keep Blogging” by Julia McCoy. I encourage you to read it. It’s written as much for solo bloggers as B2B companies, but there is a lot of applicable research for B2B .
Luckily for you I’m not repeating all 52 statistics (read the original post). I will list the following 7 stats and their sources that I can personally attest to.
7 Cool Blogging Stats
- Social Media Examiner says that B2B businesses are more likely to use blogging for lead gen than B2C. It’s true that consistent content marketing can significantly shorten sales cycles, especially in technology marketing. A big reason is that buyers will typically begin their research online, and not reach out to a vendor until they’ve consumed several pieces of good content. (Defining “good” as practical, problem-solving, smart, easy-to-consume, and/or thought leadership stuff.)
- HubSpot says that B2B marketers who use blogs in content marketing get 67% more leads than the ones who don’t. Again, not surprising – if your content is rising in natural search results and it’s attractive to the kind of buyers you want to attract, you’re going to get more leads.
- HubSpot also says that blogging is more cost-effective and takes less time than advertising. Well, yeah. Look — I don’t have anything against advertising. The right ad in the right channel at the right time can bring in good leads and a lot of industry attention. But advertising can be a crap shoot, and consistent blogging will cost a lot less and have better persistent results.
- Back to HubSpot; those guys are nothing if not prolific. Their research shows that an average of 1 in 10 blog posts are compounding, meaning that they get a high proportion of shares, traffic and content. In fact, because they’re so active they’ll generate nearly 40% of overall traffic. The higher quality and quantity that you publish, the likelier more posts will compound. But sometimes a post you thought was a minor piece hits the market sweet spot. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; publish frequent blogs to get more compounding effects.
- Demand Gen Report, 2016 says that B2B buyers highly rate content from industry thought leaders. How do to this can be a puzzler because your thought leaders probably aren’t writing 3 blogs a week; they’re doing their jobs. So, let your writers interview the leader and draft the posts, and the leader finalizes them. Best of all possible worlds.
- Contently makes an excellent point about nearly 60% of marketers repurposing their content 2-5 times. Content repurposing is the most important tactic for feeding the content maw. Put those blogs together into reports; break down that white paper into web pages; take 5 case studies and turn them into a field report.
- Don’t give up on older content. HubSpot reports that 75% of its blog views and 90% of blog leads come from old posts. However, don’t just let them sit there– revise them periodically and republish them. Show evergreen blogs some love, and they’ll love you back.
Takeaway
Writing the occasional blog post when you don’t have anything else to do really will not cut it. You need to consistently produce high quality, interesting posts that your audience wants to read. That’s not incredibly easy to do, and you will need to devote staff time to it. Many companies also have good luck with retainer agreements with freelance writers, who contract to write 2-4 (or more) blog posts a month.
However you do it, just do it – blogs are important to inbound marketing results and healthy lead gen.