Content marketing is a strategy that has been adopted by many types of small businesses, but painting company owners often don’t feel they have the time to develop content.
While content marketing takes planning and execution, you can create great pieces of content in less time than you think. A well-planned content marketing strategy can help you increase lead generation and SEO rank while educating your ideal customers about your products or services
Why is content marketing important for painting companies?
Content marketing for a painting company is a great way to stay relevant and top of mind for potential customers and give you more exposure. Plus, it’s effective: Content marketing trumps traditional forms of advertising by increasing the number of visitors to your website while helping you develop trust with potential consumers. Unlike paid advertising, content marketing creates a human element to your painting company and creates a connection between your brand and customers. The quality content that you create will speak to your customers, answering their questions and building trust.
Content marketing is also critical for SEO (search engine optimization) and getting your company ranked. Since many people use Google, Bing, and other search engines to find information about different brands and products, content marketing for your painting company helps ensure your website ranks. Content that is engaging, unique, and shareable will lead your company to the first page of search results, driving more leads into your marketing funnel.
Why a content marketing strategy should be part of your digital marketing plans:
You can show your expertise on specific topics
If you create quality content for your audience, you’ll have the chance to show your expertise in areas related to your core business, products, or services.
Content marketing establishes you as the local authority for your services and builds trust among customers. With quality content, your website will become a resource for any local customer looking for a trusted source of knowledge about painting. Besides building trust and encouraging leads to make a purchase, it also feeds positive word-of-mouth among your target audience.
Like your broader digital marketing strategy, your content marketing strategy should center around your target market and be consistent with the prospective customers you’re trying to reach. You can perform keyword research to determine what your audience is searching for and how they phrase their searches. This will help inform the direction you should take for your content marketing strategy.
Surpass your competition by providing value-added content for your leads
Content marketing allows you to flip the typical business-customer dynamic to your advantage by transforming your business into a helping force in the buyer’s journey. You become the thought leader who delivers valuable and actionable content, as opposed to simply trying to “push” your products and services as your competition does.
Your audience will feel personally invested in your business because of the value they receive from it. Small businesses can often surpass larger competitors by doing this because they build trust with leads via relevant content.
If the content, you create provides value for your customer base you’ll have an advantage over the competition. Not only will this useful content drive traffic to your site instead of the competition, but it will also help you outrank the completion on search engine results pages. Whether you are utilizing blog posts or social media posts as part of your content marketing strategy, your consistent visibility among your ideal customer will help drive long-term sales.
Convert traffic into leads
By incorporating search engine optimization into your content marketing strategy, you’ll be able to generate leads for your business in a cost-effective manner. With high-value traffic coming to your blog and social media profiles, your funnel will be primed for sales. Follow these marketing funnel steps to optimize your marketing efforts even further:
For every blog post you publish, have a clear call to action (CTA) for your customer. For example, if you write a blog post on current interior paint color trends, you should include a CTA for a free consultation at the bottom of the article. A customer would then be taken to a landing page where they could enter their email information to receive the free offer. With the right content marketing strategy, you could then move that potential customer into one of your email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing campaigns are part of content marketing strategies but take place outside of the business’s website. This type of digital marketing channel allows you to advertise your company directly to leads that already trust your brand. Because of the trust established through your content marketing efforts, these leads are more likely to buy from you than they would if they had not interacted with your company previously. This is a great long-term strategy for converting visitors into sales.
How do I build a content marketing strategy for my painting company?
There are a few steps that every painting company should take when creating a content strategy:
1. Define your target audience and buyer personas.
Who is your ideal customer? What are their interests and needs? Develop one persona or defined target market for your products/services.
2. Develop your content strategy.
What topics will you cover as part of your content strategy? What is your voice and tone, i.e., formal, or informal? How often will blog posts be published?
Make sure your content is relevant. Content that isn’t helpful or engaging to potential customers will fall flat, so make sure each piece of content you create is valuable.
3. Implement your strategy.
Develop a schedule for creating or curating content to publish on your blog, social media, etc. Create a content calendar with relevant topics and key dates for publishing content.
4. Measure the success of your content marketing strategy
Great content marketing for a painting company is all about creating quality content for your audience so it’s critical you have a way to see who has been engaging with it. Tools like Google Analytics will provide insight into the traffic visiting your site, where it’s coming from, and how sales are affected.
Content marketing is a must-have for any painting company looking to grow and maintain its customer base. The key to success with content marketing strategies boils down to these three steps: 1) Define your target audience, 2) Develop your strategy, 3) Implement it. If all this seems daunting, feel free to email us so we can partner up and develop an SEO or Marketing plan tailored specifically for your needs!