It’s all about the content
Julaine Speight, director at First Internet, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Manchester, says that authentic content is key for installation companies if they are to realise their full marketing potential.
The first thing to consider with any marketing programme is the audience. Your customers could be based anywhere, so they will find you online as well as walking past.
It’s therefore vital that you have an up-to-date website along with local and trade press, direct mail and email marketing. Digital marketing – and the content used in it – is just one part of a wider mix of strategies including PR, advertising, sales and in-store activities. These activities should all work together and promote the same messages.
As well as providing a sales operation, your website can promote products, increase brand awareness and loyalty and of course, drive offline footfall if you have a good bricks and mortar operation.
Your site cannot be part of this without good search engine optimisation (SEO). Good websites need effective SEO otherwise they will not show on search engines such as Google and this could limit your awareness amongst new potential customers.
Content
That good SEO is achieved through the right content: a complex mix of ‘back end’ strategies and then online media articles, blog posts, longer features, social posts and press releases. Put very simply, external (earned) content on other websites can help drive traffic to your site with links, and internal (owned) content can attract traffic to your site through the correct use of search terms.
Your expertise can earn you business. Use your site to answer potential questions and work with other complementary businesses and external media titles to provide that expertise.
The content needs to be relevant to the specific audience, which of course can differ according to your product, your service, the time of year, your wider marketing strategies and the needs of your customers business partners. What drives your customer to buy, where they are based, how do they shop. Are you targeting homeowners or specific business sectors such as hotels?
Your copy then needs to target that audience, while incorporating product or marketing messages and fitting in with your own overall brand voice. And it needs to be interesting to read. AND it needs to be approved by Google. There’s so much content already out there, that if it doesn’t do all of the above, content might just not work in the long-term.
AI
15 years ago, a lot of SEO content was clumsy and formulaic, crammed with key words and quickly shot down by Google. You can use AI tools like CHAT GPT to produce content but tread carefully – not only does it have no human nuance, it will still ultimately follow formulas that will keep being spotted by search engines, and this will prevent it working as effectively.
Good content is creative, it is authentic and it must be approved and supported by search engines, so that it can talk to the audience in the right way and in the right space, at the right time – fitting in and complementing any other marketing plans you have.
When planning on how to market your fabricating service or your glass installation team, your content needs to be clean and clear – just like your products and services!