7 Content Marketing Tips For Construction Contractors
Contractors, like any business owners, need to generate leads to grow their businesses. And one of the most effective ways to do that is through an online content marketing strategy. Content marketing is creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience–and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
If you’re a contractor who is ready to start using content marketing to generate leads but aren’t sure where to start, this blog post is for you. Keep reading to learn 7 key tips to take your content marketing strategy to the next level.
1. Know Your Audience
Nowadays, content marketing is a critical element of any successful contracting business, as it facilitates engagement with current and potential customers. However, content is only effective if it is tailored to the interests of its desired target audience.
Knowing your target audience is key to content marketing success since content that misses the mark can easily be ignored by users and fail to achieve the desired outcome. So it’s crucial that you take the time to understand your target audience before you start creating content.
For example, if your target audience is people considering adding a sunroom to their home, then you need to tailor content that attracts and engages those people.
Not surprisingly, one of the best ways to know what your audience wants is to talk to your current customers who fit the target audience profile. Ask customers who had a sunroom installed by your company what their biggest questions and concerns were when they were looking into getting a sunroom.
Knowing your target audience allows you to create content that interests and engages them–creating an informed potential customer base that views you as a trustworthy authority in your field.
2. Answer Your Readers’ Questions
A crucial part of content marketing that can often be overlooked is the need to answer readers’ questions directly. Creating content that provides answers to your audiences’ questions establishes content credibility but also establishes your business as a source of trustworthy information.
Actively meeting you audiences’ needs by responding to them in content gives readers the emotional connection they seek in a brand. Furthermore, this gives readers the confidence to opt-in for other marketing initiatives–such as newsletters.
For example, if your contracting business focuses on remodeling kitchens, you should create content that revolves around kitchen design. Provide information on everything from the latest kitchen design trends to the average cost of a kitchen remodel project in their area. Once you have their trust as an authority on this topic, they will be more likely to choose you for your kitchen remodeling services.
3. Understand Your Customer’s Journey
Effective content marketing addresses your customers’ needs at every stage of their journey–from becoming aware of a problem or need all the way to making a purchase. Check out the graphic at the top of this SEO for Contractors blog post to get a better sense of what the typical customer journey looks like in the contracting world.
Understanding the customers’ journey means you should answer basic questions for prospects who are doing initial research as well as provide granular answers about cost and timeline expectations for potential customers who are almost ready to buy.
For example, someone who is just beginning their buyer’s journey as a potential sunroom customer may research the question, “What are the different types of sunrooms?”
On the other hand, a potential customer who is close to the purchasing stage of their journey may want to know the answers to questions such as “How long does it take to build a sunroom?” or “How much does it cost to install a sunroom?”
By creating content that answers your client base’s questions from start to finish, you can build trust and authority, making it more likely that they will choose you as their ultimate destination for whatever service they are seeking.
4. Target Keywords With Traffic Potential
Create content around topics in your wheelhouse that people regularly search for on Google. This step will require you to use some basic SEO tools that can help you research and select the right keywords for your business.
Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Moz are a few of the most popular SEO tools that people use to do keyword research. These tools can help you analyze various metrics around keywords, including competition level, keyword difficulty, searcher intent, and more.
Creating content around targeted keywords allows you to answer the most popular queries in your field and also creates a source of steady organic traffic to your website.
5. Don’t Be Afraid To Be Contrary
When researching topics and keywords that will help your content rank higher on Google, it can be easy to fall into the trap of producing content that is too similar to content that is already out there. If a bathroom remodeling competitor who ranks high on Google writes about how walk-in tubs are, it can be tempting to copycat their opinions.
However, getting your content to rank higher on Google is just one aspect of effective content marketing. If everyone in the bathroom remodeling business raves about how great walk-in tubs are, potential customers will probably not bother to click the third or fourth-ranking post with the exact same take.
On the other hand, if you create content with a contrary opinion (for example, “10 Problems With Walk-In Tubs No One Talks About”), you will be more likely to garner a click from a potential customer who wants to get a different opinion. Obviously, you don’t want to take a stand on something just for the sake of being different; make sure whatever position you take is one that aligns with your values as a company. But if you can find an opportunity to make waves, don’t hesitate to do so.
6. In-Depth Content Trumps Long Content
While there are definitely benefits to publishing long-form content, such as the RLL strategy advocated by SEO expert Brian Dean, you should not create longer content just to reach a higher word count. Instead, you should focus on in-depth content that addresses your potential customer’s questions.
Sometimes this will lead to longer content, but other times a simple 1 or 2-page post is enough to thoroughly answer a potential customer’s question. Yes, people like to get as much information about a topic as possible, but they also don’t want to wade through paragraphs of fluff to get the answer they are looking for (looking at you, online recipe writers).
So don’t feel like you need to write 5,000-word blog posts just for the sake of SEO; focus on creating quality, in-depth content that will resonate with your audience.
7. Create Content Hubs
Also known as the pillar-cluster model, this marketing strategy uses a broad topic as a starting point and then builds out more granular but related topics to support the central hub. An example of a broad topic would be “the ultimate guide to kitchen remodeling,” while related but more specific topics would be “cost of a kitchen remodel” and “trends in kitchen remodeling.”
The idea behind this content marketing strategy is to develop a comprehensive guide around a broad topic that is connected to other content pages related to the topic via internal linking. Not only does this structure signal to Google that your various content pages are related, but it also allows your readers to explore your content in an organized and methodical way.
Get Your Content Marketing Done Right By The Experts At Contractor Growth Network
Are you ready to implement these content marketing tips but unsure if you have the time? Let the experts at Contractor Growth Network handle it for you. We specialize in digital marketing for contractors and have a proven track record of success in generating results. Fill out our contact form or give us a call today to start taking your content marketing strategies to the next level.
