Blogging has become a primary content marketing strategy for a lot of companies today. Compared to other marketing strategies, blogging is a low-cost high-return solution fit even for small businesses. And not only that, consumers trust blogs. According to a study, 81% of US online consumers consider blogs as a trusted source of information.
But let’s admit that no man is an island. That’s why blogger outreach is quite popular today. Blogger outreach involves requesting bloggers to feature your brand or your product on their website. How exactly does blogger outreach benefit businesses?
1. Expand your market
There are instances when businesses want to explore a new market. It can be a new branch in a new location or perhaps, you are looking to upscale your brand and target a new demographic. Blogger outreach can help you expand to your target market.
If you are looking for a new set of eyeballs in your business, one good strategy is to find a blogger that already attracts this market as its readers. Getting your product or your brand featured on his or her website can have a positive impact on your business. This can pique their curiosity of the right people that can even turn as your next customer.
2. Budget-friendly marketing option
The cost-effectiveness of a campaign is always an issue especially for startups that don’t have the luxury of a large marketing budget. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to conduct blogger outreach. But since it is free, there are some bloggers that are picky which company they collaborate with.
To increase your chances of success, there are a couple of things that you will need to look into before you even send an outreach email to different websites. One, you want to have good content on your website. Two, you also want to make sure that you have a good reputation in your niche. These two things can increase the chances of the influencer/blogger to say yes to your request.
3. Improve Credibility
You should always be worried about your credibility as an online entity. This speaks true for both businesses and individuals. With blogger outreach, it is possible to build your credibility to a specific group of people. Imagine getting featured by a well-respected author in the field? This could easily elevate your status as a brand and can even get more people to follow your brand.
To successfully improve your credibility online, you have to be particular who you email. You want to check the blogger’s ability to showcase products and elevate a brand’s status to a particular market. Keep in mind that not all bloggers are the same. Apart from their followers on social media and the traffic on their site, you need to take a closer look at his or her authenticity in the eyes of the market you are looking to attract.
4. Gain high-quality links for SEO
SEO is another reason to use blogger outreach. Let’s admit that though link building is no longer the most important metric in SEO, it can still be useful in improving your ranking. Good quality backlinks from guest posting or broken link building can still give you the edge when it comes to getting additional traffic and getting on top of the search result page.
There are many providers out there that can help you with the outreach, if you don’t want to do it yourself. For example SEOlutions.biz offers a really good guest posting service, but there are many more.
Keep in mind that not all links are the same. To maximize link building opportunities, you want to analyze the website of the blogger you are planning to email. For instance, do they link to other websites often? How many visitors go to their website on a daily/weekly basis? How old is the website? These are questions that can affect the quality of the backlink.
5. Build long-term relationships
One reason why it is easy to do blogger outreach is the fact that it can build long-term relations online. Bloggers and influencers are willing to have a long-term relationship with businesses simply because they can also elevate their status in their niche, not to mention they can have future content to write about.
Businesses can have an arrangement with a blogger that he or she can be the first one to promote the product on the website in exchange for some freebies or even a small fee. In most instances, bloggers are willing to write for businesses for free simply because they need content to update their website. This can lead to more traffic and more engagement for the website while it’s a promotion on the part of the business.
6. Let others promote your brand or product
It’s always easier if you can have other people promote your product. With blogger outreach, you can let other people do the promotion on your behalf. Here, you can simply just wait for the magic to work. You can focus your attention on other important aspects of your business.
Just imagine if you are looking to reach a new market. It normally takes a lot of resources to effectively capture their attention. But with blogger outreach, you can use the blog’s readership to your advantage. In addition to this, there is even the potential that the content written by the blogger can go viral.
7. Get feedback from your product
Product reviews have become a popular form of content used in blogger outreach. This isn’t surprising. Nowadays, 72% of customers won’t even bother buying a product until they checked an online review about the product. On top of that, 15% of customers don’t trust businesses that don’t have any reviews.
With product reviews written by a blogger you handpicked, it becomes easy to build a solid reputation for your brand and your product. This strategy can even help readers convert into customers. Since the review was done following an outreach email, you can also expect to read the content first before it gets published for everyone to see. Here, you will know if the review is good or not. Of course, bloggers will try their best not to look biased whenever they are doing a review.
You can take this as an opportunity to know areas that you can improve on. It is also possible to gauge how your product fair against other brands out there.
Conclusion
Blogger outreach is an effective online marketing tool today. It can be used not only for promotion but also for improving a company’s SEO. It can also lead to a long-term relationship that can benefit both blogger/influencer and the company.