Is newsletter marketing or blogging more effective for small businesses? It depends on what you mean by “more effective.”
There are pros and cons to both blog marketing and e-mail newsletter marketing. To be most effective, you should use them together. A blog is the best tool for audience engagement while your e-mail newsletter is the best tool for cultivating a warm list that you can mine for great direct selling.
Your blog should be your hub. That’s your home on the web. You want everything you do to drive traffic and engagement to your blog. Your blog can also be used to invite e-mail subscribers to your list. Then, you use your e-mail newsletter to drive traffic to your important landing pages and close more sales. That could be sales of merchandise such as books or webinars as well as services.
Social media plays a part in your marketing strategy too. By posting to social media on behalf of your brand, you can draw more potential readers to your blog.
Think of it as like a funnel. Anything you do off-site is at the wide end of the funnel. Your blog is the narrow end of the funnel. Your e-mail newsletter is the tip of the funnel where your most engaged customers are.
If you think of it in those terms, it’s not an either/or question. You should have a blog and a newsletter.