How Southwest Exteriors Is Killing It with Content Marketing
Marketing is hard. It comes down to picking the “hard” that works best for you.
At Southwest Exteriors, we stopped doing home shows, events, and canvassing. We’ve replaced these traditional face-to-face marketing efforts with online content marketing.
The Results of Our Efforts
Eighteen months into our content marketing commitment, our web traffic has increased from 3,300 to 35,000 monthly visitors and our YouTube videos have been viewed an average of 7,000 times per week. Our closing rate increased by four points and our average sale increased by about $4,000.
The Evolution of Content Marketing
In the past, content marketing consisted of writing one or two articles every month that mentioned your products and service area as many times as possible for SEO purposes.
Three years ago, I read a book written by Marcus Sheridan called “They Ask, You Answer.” It dramatically changed how we approach content marketing.
Our job as contractors is to educate consumers and trust them enough to decide to buy from us.
“They Ask, You Answer” helped me realize that homeowners want their questions answered. Rather than write content exclusively about our business for SEO rankings, we now write unbiased content to captivate the audience and address their concerns.
Educate Customers Through Content
Instead of doing hard one-call closes, I feel that our job as contractors is to educate consumers and trust them enough to decide to buy from us.
We have a full-time writer on staff who writes three industry-related articles per week and produces another five articles written by artificial intelligence. We also have a videographer who creates two to three videos each week that mimic those articles.
Best Topics for Articles and Videos
The big five categories we focus on most are cost, problems homeowners are having with the types of products we sell, brand comparisons, product reviews, and best-of lists, such as top window contractors in San Antonio.
Specific topics are determined by the keywords prospects search for on Google and by the questions homeowners ask our salespeople.
How We Distribute Content
We want to reach the customers where they are. So, we share our content on our website, YouTube, social media, and in email newsletters.
The most impactful way that we deliver this content is through pre-appointment texts and personalized videos from our call center.
Every lead set to an appointment receives a “thank you” video with links to three to four pieces of content. This includes information on how much their project will cost, how to select a contractor, and other items relevant to their project.
