Whether you’re a doctor or a lawyer, you know that marketing is important to grow your business. The internet has changed the way we market our services, but it’s still essential to create content and distribute it across different channels.

The fact remains – you want to grow your brand or increase your revenue, maybe even both. Many medical providers will often say, why should I worry about blog posts when the hospital that employs me doesn’t care? Truth be told, they do…they just won’t tell you. The greater your brand (you!) awareness, the higher compensation you can command…regardless of the compensation being from your employer or client. Blog Marketing is the easiest and fastest way to increase your brand awareness. 

But how do you begin?

First, have a process…

The first step in creating a process for your blog post is defining the “question.” Before you start to answer it, you have to know what exactly the question is. We start each blog article with a set of questions, for example, “How can Blog Marketing help service providers?” 

Once we have a question, we create a set of simple answers then expand those answers into coherent explanations with expanded content. Oftentimes folks will say they want their blogging efforts “to make them money.” But there are two problems here: First, this doesn’t define a goal; second, this isn’t realistic since most blogs don’t turn over profits right away – in fact the blog post has a long term side effect – this being that the blog won’t bring you direct compensation, it will help build your brand awareness which in turn, if done right can funnel the right type of clients to your service based business. 

Imagine this, you are a Bankruptcy lawyer – so you write an article answering this question, “What happens to my student loans in Bankruptcy?” – It’s very likely others are searching for the same information online and with a great article, potential clients will find your website. Now once they visit your blog, it’s your job to get that potential client to convert into a paying client. This is the beauty of blog marketing, it leads an indefinite amount of traffic to your business, your business needs to convert those leads into paying clients. If the content you publish is niche based (for example Bankruptcy) it’s likely those who read your content, are considering Bankruptcy. 

Second, Measure everything…

It’s important to measure the success of your content. Your blog page should have a “call to action,” some sort of action that converts the reader into a potential client. For example, if it took one hour to write a 500 word article and you bill at $250 an hour…well it cost $250 for the 500 word article. Now if 100 people read the article, out of which 10 actually (converted) contacted you based on the article, it cost you $25 per conversion. Of the conversions, if one hired and paid you for a $3000 service…you got it…your gross profit would be calculated by multiplying your conversions by the cost per conversion (so $250) and subtracting that from the total revenue you received sourced from the blog article…$3000 – this gives you a gross profit of $2750. Not bad. 

To do this, you should start by setting up Google Analytics. This is a free tool that allows you to track how many visitors come to your website. You can also use it to see what they’re looking at and when they leave. There are ways to track where people came from (for example, Facebook or Twitter), when they visited and more information about their behavior like what pages they viewed or spent time on (the “funnel”).

Yes, the setup is complicated but the setup only takes a few days and once it’s set…you rarely have to change the “setup.” 

Third, Consistency will lead to more customers…

Your blog is the best place to start with your marketing plan. You can use it to attract new customers and engage with existing ones, but only if you’re consistent and know what works. We suggest two blog posts a month in most cases, in others five per month…it really depends on your service area and niche, for example an CPA should be post more just prior to tax season than during tax season – this way the CPA can maximize his/her client base with “curious,” clients who need help planning their tax strategy.