How to Build Your Content Marketing Strategy
Your website content is part of your SEO and search engine marketing strategies that pull future customers to your site. Once they arrive, this content is also how marketers build your prospects’ trust.
They want to see who you are before they contact you. They want to learn what you can do. They want evidence that you’ll stand by your work. And they want to gather this information from your content rather than your paid ads.
Stats support this idea, especially the research showing that 78 percent of consumers prefer to get to know a company through articles instead of advertisements.
“What will this do for me?” is the marketer’s natural question when investing time and resources in any marketing platform. Content that incorporates keyword strategies can help bring visitors to your site through their organic search (non-paid). This can also be enhanced with paid search marketing that integrates your paid results with the organic ones. Furthermore, your shares on social media platforms can link back to your site.
Building your strategy to deliver this content includes:
Define the problems you will solve. As good as your writing may be, people aren’t looking for contractor resources because they’re hoping for a little light reading. They have a problem they need solving. Your content can identify those problems and the pain they’re experiencing, and point to your solutions and how you will end their pain.
Publish content regularly. Prospects want to visit a site that looks active, and they can see signs of this activity in regular updates. Blog posts and other content updates continue to feed the keyword pipeline and demonstrate activity that search engines favor. Creating an editorial calendar that follows the seasons of the year and corresponds to your marketing campaigns and promotions will help you develop topic ideas and plan out your content.
Be consistent in who you are. Along with publishing content regularly, you should maintain consistency in your brand and your messaging. Speak with a company voice – in a style and tone that holds up over time. Even if you go from lighthearted topics to serious topics (we all do), maintain a consistent personality in your voice. Also, speak on areas of your authority instead of jumping off topic or following tangents where you don’t have expertise. At the same time…
Be different from everyone else. Contractors serving a market where other companies sell similar products and services need a way to set yourself apart from your competitors. Often this is a higher level of service and expertise. The low-price leader may get appointments, but not usually loyal customers.
Create content for different audiences/situations. Identify all of the services you provide and let these different areas lead to a variety of topics. Asthma and allergy sufferers may be searching for indoor air quality information. Weather events provide the opportunity to give safety tips or preventive steps. You can use different formats too. Incorporate video blogs as well as text blogs to appeal to a different type of prospect. Speaking of…
Decide which channels you will use. These may include your website and social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or LinkedIn. You can share content on one or several. Or repurpose content (such as turning a blog into a video or a series of tweets).
Get a proofreader. Typos do happen from time to time but try to avoid them. Get a proofreader or let a second set of eyes read over your content before you hit publish. Otherwise, all your hard work comes across as unprofessional.