How to Use Your Blog to Attract Customers [Customer Story]

RIDE Adventures is in the motorcycle touring business, a type of adventure travel that many avid motorcycle enthusiasts don’t even know exists. When we recognized that few potential customers would be searching for “guided motorcycle tours in South America,” it became obvious that we’d have to find another way to draw people to our website. If motorcycle riders weren’t searching for “motorcycle tours,” what were they searching for? Hubspot’s Keywords and Blog Analytics tools made this easy to discover, and we’ve been blogging accordingly ever since.

The Result:  We increased visits from organic searches by almost 300% in 12 months.

Here’s how we’ve achieved such growth:

Step 1: Determine what your target audience is searching for

As motorcycle riders, we knew other riders would be searching for info on upcoming events, riding opportunities, and especially motorcycle product reviews and comparisons. Blogging about these topics and on these keywords gave us the opportunity to become more visible to these potential customers, and to establish a rapport with them before they knew who we were.

" target="_blank">Learn how to create your ideal customer personas >

Step 2: Identify your top-performing posts and topics

Once we were able to see which blog posts were getting the most hits, it was just a matter of taking the time to cover each topic or similar topics from every useful angle possible. Stream Creative, our digital marketing & design agency, reminded us that showing the world that we are an authority on a given subject not only gets that content out there for SEO purposes, it also establishes our credibility on that subject. This is especially true when blog readers make positive and appreciative comments on those posts. Even if potential customers don’t know who the authority is on “motorcycle touring,” we can still show them that we are the authority on those motorcycles and products that are used for motorcycle touring, and while doing so, subtly direct them to our services. 

Before buying a motorcycle, most buyers shop around for bikes online. Now instead of just buying the motorcycle they think that they want, some customers will discover one of our product reviews and then buy one of our motorcycle tours to help confirm that it’s the right bike for them.

" target="_blank">Learn how to use HubSpot's Blog Analytics >

Step 3:  Use CTAs to drive readers to further content

While there’s certainly some SEO value in using hyperlinks that involve keywords relevant to your business, the real value is when potential customers actually check out what you’re selling of their own volition. Somewhere within each blog post, we typically have a CTA that gives them this opportunity -- unobtrusively and without getting too salesy about it.

" target="_self">Learn how to create internal blog links using HubSpot >

HubSpot Tools We Used: 

The Keywords tool allowed us to confirm early on that people would not be searching much for “motorcycle tours.”  So instead of just creating content based on those keywords, we used the Blog Analytics tool to get the attention of people who might be interested in motorcycle tours, but they just didn't know it yet.

As a side note: A prominent South African motorcycle magazine recently asked permission to use our most popular blog post, one that compares two popular adventure touring motorcycles. They cited RIDE Adventures at the front of the article, which gave us both terrific inbound link support, as well as valuable name visibility in front of one of our most desired audiences.

RIDE Adventures, LLC is a motorcycle tour operator that helps adventure-minded travelers enjoy the ultimate opportunities to RIDE. Now with travel opportunities throughout North and South America, we’ll help you explore places you might have never thought possible -- all by motorcycle.