How to use your blog to keep people coming back

Putting your blog front and center

Part of what defines today’s economy is an emphasis on luxury – those customers with the most money are the target market for a vast array of products, but the cost of quality is only a small part of what these customers pay for. Rather, the biggest reason that luxury product consumers pay more is because of the level of customer service they receive. Customers pay to be catered to and brands spend big to provide an experience.

Of course, not all brands boast luxury as part of their customer experience, but every brand should boast product expertise for the benefit of their customers. And for brands that are competing for the larger middle-income market, expertise can be the added value that helps sustain customer loyalty. You can demonstrate that expertise in a powerful way on your company’s blog.

Show what you know

Before you jump in and start posting blog content, you need to assess your audience and their background. If you’re speaking to an audience that’s already knowledgeable, they won’t be interested in 101-style posts. Rather, they’ll want something more. This is the strategy Kuhlman Cellars took when building up their winery; knowledgeable customers didn’t want a show, but wanted to know that staff members knew the industry.

On the other hand, if your customers are just looking to get their feet wet, you’ll need to target your content using lay language, rather than industry lingo that might exclude newcomers. You don’t want to be using tech jargon with people who are just learning to send a text message – leverage what you know, but do it for the audience you have, not the one you imagine.

Be a guiding hand

Another way to make your blog work effectively as a forum for your expertise is by offering a guiding hand in the purchasing process. This is one way that a mid-range business can compensate for not being a luxury brand. While a luxury brand might assign a shopper to guide each client through the purchasing process, a mid-range brand can build product guides that serve a similar purpose.

This is how Mattress Clarity uses their blog, taking products beyond their basic specifications and describing them by using shopper-friendly categories, explaining what a mattress feels like rather than just what it’s made from. A blog isn’t a personal shopper, but for most buyers, this guiding hand is enough to make the shopping process easier.

Monetize your content

When we talk about blogs as value added, we mean that brands can charge a little more for a product because there’s more to it – the expertise present on the blog is the added thing they’re paying for. But one alternative to this is to specifically monetize certain types of content that really expand on your industry or product expertise.

Consider, as an example, a brand that sells cookware. Product guides that help buyers choose the right kind of pots for their kitchen might be a value added feature on that site. But what if the brand also produced a cookbook? Publishing an eBook like this is a great way to separately monetize internal expertise. Because the book is a type of product, customers will buy it, with the additional expectation that it adds to their other purchases. The same goes for webinars, music, and other downloadable products.

Be ready

Finally, your expertise has the most value when it’s available at a moment’s notice. Delays can cause you to lose conversions or negatively impact customer relationships. That’s why you need to set up your mobile devices so that they let you post and respond to customers while on the go, sending you alerts when a customer reaches out. Now, more than ever before, customer service is expected to be a 24/7 business – or at least have extended hours.

More than any product, you and your industry expertise are your company’s best asset. Make the most out of this! A product may be a one-time purchase, but expertise will keep your customers coming back.

#blogging