Invoca is in the call tracking business.
They help businesses track calls, but from looking around their website and watching the videos it’s obvious that what they do goes way beyond call tracking.
They’re helping businesses, all kinds of businesses, use phone calling as a way to bring in new clients. And that’s big. There is one video on their customers page where it’s discussed that calling is still an obvious form of marketing. You have people walking around now with phones on them all the time. There might not be a better time for call marketing.
And Invoca helps with all that and stuff related to call analytics, segmenting and all kinds of things.
So check that part out if you would like, but now I’m going to get into what they’re doing with their blogging strategy.
1. Sliders And Featured Images
I want to touch on the top of the Invoca blog where they have a slider and featured image area.
We’ve touched on featured posts or feature images on blogs before. I’m a fan in certain situations where you want to feature a certain post like you would when you do a pinned tweet on Twitter or something like that.
I’ve had an indifferent eye on sliders over the years. I used to use them on various sites that I have. GBW actually had a slider in the early days, but doesn’t now.
I don’t know how much people really sit and wait to watch what happens in sliders. I don’t really think people wait to see what’s coming next. In my experience, people like fast things online. Fast loading sites, fast loading blog posts and things like that.
It’s difficult, but you have to be efficient with your design so you’re not confusing your visitors.
With that said, I think the featured area on the Inovca blog is a good one. They feature posts. It’s not really a slider unless you choose it to be.
2. Lots Of Marketing Topics
This is an important one that I want to touch on because it comes up with a lot of business blogs.
If you glance at the Invoca blog page you might notice that they list the category on the images for each of the post previews. You’ll see a bunch of marketing categories including:
- Performance Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Marketing Analytics
- B2B Marketing
- Search Marketing
- And more…
It’s really great that Invoca expands out into all areas of marketing. That’s a big challenge for a lot of businesses. They need customers. They need profitable customers so it’s a good situation for everybody and marketing is obviously a big part of bringing on new customers.
A Tendency would be to focus only on call marketing or phone marketing or talk marketing with the blog. And there certainly are posts on that topic. You want that obviously. But you can also help with other topics and that’s what Invoca is doing and it’s great.
One of the reasons is that Invoca’s potential customers or your potential customers might not know that you exist or even that call marketing exists. But you still want to attract those customers because they can benefit from what is offered. So you can write about related topics that they would be searching for.
And Invoca is doing that.
3. Using Expert Input
In this post there are some really good things going on.
First, the post highlights some things that industry experts have discussed regarding pay-per-call marketing. Companies that are looking at call marketing can look at these expert tips and get value out of them.
It’s a great blogging strategy on a couple levels. You get great content that is valuable and you’re also getting the experts invested in the success of the post. Often, those experts or those you include and mention in the post will share the post. They want it to do well.
So you get a little marketing charge to help promote the post.
The post also has some really nice graphics that provide some interest. It’s something that isn’t often done on business blogs so it really stands out on a blog like this one.
And finally the post is part of a larger piece of content that looks like an ebook. I also like that idea of repurposing content as blog content. You could use a snippet on social media to get people to the blog and then the post itself is a bigger snippet of an ebook that people can download as they opt-in to your email (or maybe call) program.
4. Lists And Featured Tools
Now we’re getting into a great post on two levels.
This post is a list post, which is a format really popular with blog readers.
List posts get a bad reputation sometimes in the blogging world and online world. But the reality is that for the most part people really like lists.
Sure we don’t like all the crazy lists that you see around the Web, but lists are easy to read. They’re something we can save and come back to and lists also often provide some valuable information.
And I think this one provides some really good information. CMOs and marketers are always looking for something that can help with what they’re doing so seeing a list of tools provides a good starting point for research.
And that’s the second great thing about this post. You have a list of tools and the people behind those tools are going to like that they’re included. They’re invested in the success of the post like I mentioned in the last post. They might see this and share it on social media or even on their own blog.
That will contribute to the success of this post and over time to the success of the Invoca blog.
5. Stats, Studies And Surveys
Maybe I should call these the Three S’s or something. I realize I keep talking about them with these Blog Analysis posts.
These kinds of posts just about always seem to do well. Marketers and business folks love to look at trends and results from studies. They need to stay on top of what people are thinking and doing. This allows the CMOs to make better decisions.
So what Invoca did was all this research on call tracking and they created a report and from that they created this post. It’s a little snippet, but it has some really great and actionable information.
It’s crazy to think how search and mobile calling are connected. And that those callers on mobile are incredibly valuable to companies.
Some really great insight in this post and if you can do something similar with your company you’ll probably have some great information you can use in various ways including in blog posts.
Final Thoughts
Invoca is doing some really great things with their business blog. It’s one of the best I’ve come across in the series of analyzing blogs. They have a great variety of topics they cover. Those topics are all things that their target readers would be interested in. That’s an important thing.
And the posts themselves are full of great and actionable information. It’s a great example of what can be done with a business blog.