As a home service provider, you know what a quality job looks like; after all, you’re the expert. But when it comes to marketing and advertising, can you tell the same? There is no shame in feeling stuck in marketing funnels. However, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to improve your business success with the help of online advertising strategies. You’re undoubtedly aware of at least a few ways a website contributes to business efforts but did you know you can grow your home service business with content marketing? That’s right, you can, and here’s how.
Understanding Content Marketing
What is content marketing anyway, and why is it so important? It has emerged as an inexpensive but potent way to attract clients. All you have to do is create and strategically distribute valuable content and, thus, strengthen your online presence. Every home service provider has excellent potential for successful content marketing. Tapping into this potential requires that you, as the business owner:
- understand the benefits of content marketing for your business
- learn how to create and apply your content marketing strategy
- know how to measure your success by determining the right KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
While there isn’t a specific formula for a 100% successful content marketing strategy, it is to be expected. A strategy tailored to your home service business requires time, patience, and practice, and most often, tweaking and adjusting your approach over time.
What Does Content Marketing Do to Help You?
If you’re still waiting to see what the new normal would look like, you’ve missed the obvious – we’re already living it. The ongoing situation has only augmented the common seasonal fluctuations in business operations. Online businesses and small home service providers should be ready on time for each season and its challenges amid the pandemic. All business owners are expected to adapt along the way, and most of them have already recognized the benefits of a solid online presence. So, what can content marketing do for a home service provider?
- It can save you a significant amount of money, as it costs less than conventional marketing methods.
- Hand in hand with SEO, it improves your online visibility and strengthens your online presence and reputation.
- It creates and develops a unique, recognizable brand for your home service business.
- Establishes and grows your list of email subscribers, that is, people who may not be your clients yet but have expressed interest in connecting with you.
- Regularly attracts new, unique visitors to your website and, hence, provides a steady flux of potential clients.
- Increases your revenues, especially with the help of compelling CTAs (Calls to Action), placed strategically within your content.
To successfully grow your home service business with content marketing, you first need to get familiar with the elements forming your content marketing strategy.
The Key Elements of Your Content Marketing Strategy
There is no successful project without a detailed plan and a well-developed strategy. To have any chance at winning the game against your competitors and emerging as the most reputable and reliable home service provider in the area, you need to plan all your steps. When it comes to your content marketing strategy, you should focus on its most vital parts:
- Defining your goals and how to measure your progress and success.
- Determining who’s the audience you’re addressing, that is, who’s your ideal client.
- Estimating and allocating all your resources, both human and material.
- Relying on your expertise to differentiate from others.
- Investing in the creation of quality, helpful, and well-structured content for your website.
- Outlining your content production and create a sharing schedule.
- Tracking your progress and evaluate it, making changes and upgrades along the way.
It is essential to understand that there is no single most effective content marketing strategy. Although the elements are usually the same, there are as many good strategies as there are home service providers.
1. Determine Your Goals and KPIs
The first and most vital step you need to make to grow your home service business with content marketing is to establish measurable goals. This is done through careful consideration and then the selection of key performance indicators or KPIs. There are so many KPIs out there that tracking and measuring all of them is simply not time and cost-effective.
The good news is if you have clearly defined your goals, you will easily discover an associated metric. For instance, if your goal is to generate leads, you can measure the number of email and blog subscriptions. If you aim to raise awareness of your home service business, you can track the number of views your pages, videos, and other types of content get and also measure your website traffic in general. Should you intend to engage your visitors, you can measure your success by the number of blog comments and likes or shares on your social media pages.
2. Who’s Your Ideal Client?
It doesn’t matter how good your content is if you haven’t aimed it at the right audience. Knowing your ideal client and their needs will significantly help you fulfill those needs. But firstly, it will help you convince them your home services will solve their issue. The first step in defining your audience is creating a clear demographic profile of your client. Then, move on to the pain points and how you can ease them.
By using content marketing and its tools to address common issues, you are doing an important thing for your business. With your carefully designed content, you’re not solving the dilemma just for one client but for all of your intended customers – at once.
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3. Nothing Good Comes (Entirely) For Free
Perhaps the inexpensive was a bit of a stretch. Truth be told, you do not have to pay much to create and post content and promote your home service business. But you do need to assess your resources and proportionally invest your time and energy. Sometimes, it is difficult to find both after long hours at work, and it perfectly fine to let professionals design your site and take care of content marketing for you. However, if you’re determined to learn and make your content marketing strategy a success without significant financial investment, it will still cost you your time.
Also, bear in mind that you need to regularly create and share quality content to notice any return. If this sounds overwhelming, remember how much you love talking about things you know and do, and everything will fall into place. You can grow your home service business with content marketing through writing (or talking) about your projects, your calling, and most importantly – your mission. Content marketing gives you an opportunity and a channel to earn from it.
4. The More You Know, The Better Content You Create
As a home service provider, it is assumed that you know most, if not everything there is to know, about your area of expertise. Content marketing requires that you (or an employee as knowledgeable as you) invest your time in creating quality pieces of written, audio, and/or visual content. This is an extremely important part as it is vital to set your home service business apart from the competition. That’s what differentiates you from the rest and brings you ahead of your competitors in your clients’ eyes.
This content should bring your services closer to a viewer, attract and capture their attention, and lead them toward becoming a client. Then, it should ensure they become a loyal client, and eventually, the one who will spread the word about your business through a form of word-of-mouth marketing and bring you more clients. This is why your expertise and experience are essential in content marketing. There is no valuable content without relevant, up-to-date, helpful information.
This makes a huge difference between content marketing and traditional marketing practice. You get the power to create and direct your content marketing strategy. There is also another good thing in traditional marketing passing the baton to content marketing. Research shows that the importance of B2C content marketing in 2021 became greater than ever as more and more customers rely on search engines to discover local home service providers. Therein lies your chance.
5. What Kind of Content You Should Create and Share?
When deciding on the appropriate content type, you can choose from many different options and select the ones that best suit your profession. Depending on what and how you wish to engage your potential clients, you can opt for how-to blog articles, podcasts, or videos; you can send newsletters to keep your subscribers updated and organize webinars for a more personal touch. The optimal content length of about two thousand words is most easily provided through tutorials and frequently asked questions. Well-structured content that goes into detail is appreciated both by web crawlers and curious site visitors.
By arranging meet-ups and events with other business owners in the industry and then sharing this content on your website, you provide helpful insight into your expertise and reputation and build trustworthiness. Finally, organize a competition or a contest for your visitors to bring attention to your services. Not only will it engage your audience and bring your home services into the spotlight, but it will keep your clients on the constant lookout for new contests from which they can benefit.
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6. Plan and Schedule Your Content Marketing Tasks
It is not only the tasks related to your content marketing strategy that you should outline and schedule but also the creation of the content itself. Research always comes first. As you have determined your focus audience, take time to discover what they like the most and search for. You should offer a range of interesting content and analyze later what gets the most views over time.
The most valuable types of content are how-to posts, guides, tutorials, and practical explanations of products or services. However, the most engaging ones are more related to you, your team, and your company history. The planning and designing phase also includes building and updating an attractive About Us page, as well as Our Team and Our Mission pages. They help visitors relate and feel more connected with you and your home service business.
Website analytics tools will give you information on the amount of traffic, time, and frequency of visits so that you can define the best possible schedule for your posts and other types of content. If your posts were read mostly during lunchtime, videos seen in the evening, and DIY tutorials over weekends, you get the idea of when to create and share such content. However, do not swamp your audience with excess content, as it will most likely prove counterproductive.
7. Measure and Evaluate Your Progress
Regardless of how much you have invested in your content marketing, you should take time to analyze your data. With the help of Google Analytics, you can discover:
- which type of content brought you the highest number of new visitors and led to the highest conversion rate
- the best ways to adapt and/or redirect your content marketing strategy.
In other words, it is vital to track all metrics you have set up as essential for achieving your initial goal. The goals will change over time as your business and your marketing needs evolve, and so will the metrics. But the most important part is to get into the habit of defining, measuring, evaluating, and adjusting your approach. It will ensure that you get the highest possible return on your investment in content marketing, whether you invest your profit, skills, time, or all three.
Bottom Line
You should use every opportunity to grow your home service business with content marketing and all other tools at your disposal. This is simply because it was never enough just to do your job well but to let the world know about how great your service offerings are. With your competition getting stronger and more numerous as we speak, your online marketing efforts must match your offline services. To prove that you’re the best in the home service business, you first need to attract enough visitors. That is what content marketing is for. Over time, some of your audience will become leads and then customers, and hopefully even raving fans!
