Blogging. Video. Email. There’s plenty of ways to create content and share it.
But creating the right content for your audience is the key to unlocking its potential.
Read on, as I explain how to build impactful content for your building products company, that will resonate with your Barbour ABI or Glenigan audience and position your business as the ‘go-to’ in your industry.
Creating useful and relevant content should be at the centre of any lead generation strategy.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a fundamental inbound marketing technique and is essential to lead generation. Forbes writes that content is the foundation of your inbound marketing efforts, it’s the fuel in all your construction marketing campaigns.
Content should be helpful and memorable. In order to drive successful lead generation, you should be seeking to put your content in front of as many people as possible; this could be through email marketing or online and social media shares. But first, it’s important to understand the types of content available to you. When considering where to start you must take into account the time and budget you can afford to spend on this and ensure you choose the best type for your audience and what they’re looking for.
Different types of content include:
- Blog posts
- Newsletters
- Video
- BIM Objects
- Technical Drawings
- Datasheets
- Digital CPD
- Product samples
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- And many more
Whitepapers and eBooks are more substantial pieces of content. They are longer reads and have higher volumes of information.
Whitepapers are more technical than eBooks. While eBooks are designed to be skim-read, whitepapers are intended to be more linear, formal pieces that require more focused reading.
Consider Your Audience
When you begin a lead generation campaign, content marketing should always be an integral part. According to HubSpot, experimenting with new types of content is the way to work out what’s best for you and your audience. Different audiences will engage with certain types of content differently from others.
For example; if you’ve found an experienced architect with over 25 years of experience in the industry on Barbour ABI, they may prefer to consume their content in the form of a printed brochure.
A university graduate that Glenigan has highlighted, whose working on their first project as a junior contractor might prefer a podcast or an emailed newsletter with access to your content in one place that arrives in their inbox weekly.
This means your content marketing must be diverse and reach all of your audiences rather than just one. You shouldn’t only create blog posts if people in your audience are pro-actively look for eBooks or videos.
Listen To Feedback
Once you’ve published some content, it’s easy to relax and forgot about it. But with this mindsight, your content will never fulfil its potential and your strategy won’t grow.
Monitoring the feedback to your content, allows you to understand the topics and channels your audience prefers. You can then continue to create similar content or move on to another topic area.
Read the comments or replies and then write a blog that answers the most common questions or concerns. If a ‘how-to’ guide is the most popular resource on your website, perhaps you could create a video with step-by-step instructions showing how it’s done.
The feedback and data can be used continuously to position you and your building products company as a helpful guide and expert in your sector: this is the essence of inbound marketing.
Conclusion
Content marketing is a huge part of your lead generation efforts as it embodies the way in which you will attract people to your company through a variety of different formats.
With a thorough content library of blogs, eBooks, podcasts, etc, you can attract the ideal target audience for your company and begin the process of qualifying them and transforming them into customers.
Would you like to find out more? Click on the banner below to find out how Project Prospecta can work alongside your content strategy to generate more leads.
