Five Tips For Home Ser­vice Busi­nesses To Ef­fec­tively Con­tent Market

Con­tent mar­ket­ing is rapidly emerg­ing as the sta­tus quo for many busi­nesses who are re­vamp­ing their on­line presences.

Not only does con­tent mar­ket­ing help you out in search en­gine re­sults, but like­wise, con­tent mar­ket­ing is ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing as an ef­fec­tive means of high­light­ing the ex­per­tise and knowl­edge of your com­pany in the in­dus­try as well as of­fer­ing high qual­ity con­tent that will en­cour­age re­turn vis­i­tors to your site.

How­ever, many home ser­vice busi­nesses strug­gle with con­tent mar­ket­ing, and it’s very true that con­tent mar­ket­ing when your muse is car­pet clean­ing, land­scap­ing, or in our case, sod grass, isn’t al­ways easy.

That be­ing said, there are sev­eral things you can do to get to build­ing a great con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paign for your home ser­vice business.

1. Don’t As­sume It’s “Not For Me”

The num­ber one mis­take that home ser­vice busi­nesses make when it comes to con­tent mar­ket­ing is not get­ting in­volved in the first place.

We rec­og­nize your con­cerns, and we were def­i­nitely con­cerned at first when we started our blog on some­thing as mun­dane as sod grass. We thought, “who would want to read that?” How­ever, con­tent mar­ket­ing is quickly be­com­ing the norm in many in­dus­tries — in­clud­ing home services.

Just be­cause your busi­ness doesn’t seem apt for the cre­ation of in­ter­est­ing or in­for­ma­tional con­tent, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t.

More than ever, peo­ple are turn­ing to the web for in­for­ma­tion, and of­ten times that in­for­ma­tion isn’t out there. You’d be sur­prised what kind of traf­fic we draw in just from run­ning a blog on grass and yard care, be­cause a lot of the re­sources that ex­ist for that in­for­ma­tion have failed to adopt to the rise of the in­ter­net. Many of that in­for­ma­tion is still cir­cu­lated in gar­den­ing and land­scap­ing mag­a­zines, which is quickly be­com­ing an out­dated medium.

If you can of­fer spe­cial ex­per­tise on a topic, why not use that to your advantage?

2. Make Some Videos!

Blogs are a great tool, but let’s be hon­est: they’re not al­ways the most stim­u­lat­ing or in­ter­est­ing pieces of con­tent you can cre­ate for your website.

Whether they don’t have the time, don’t want to read, or sim­ply, to put it bluntly, are a lit­tle lazy, not every­one will want to read a blog on your website.

Rather, it is im­por­tant to pro­duce var­ied, in­ter­est­ing con­tent that doesn’t just in­clude blogs. As a medium, video can be much more lib­er­at­ing and of­ten are more en­gag­ing than even a very well-writ­ten blog.

That be­ing said, don’t rely on videos as your sole source of con­tent mar­ket­ing. They can be a great re­source for those get­ting into con­tent mar­ket­ing, but search en­gines aren’t as adept at “an­a­lyz­ing” videos (search en­gines can­not “watch” videos, and in­stead must rely on in­for­ma­tion you pro­vide such as ti­tles, meta tags and other key in­for­ma­tion). There­fore, mak­ing a video for your site has ben­e­fits, but blogs are of­ten a much eas­ier and suc­cess­ful tool for SEO purposes.

Con­sider a bal­ance be­tween sev­eral dif­fer­ent types of con­tent and ex­per­i­ment to find out what works best for your business.

3. Of­fer Valu­able Information

The rea­son that con­tent mar­ket­ing works for many busi­nesses is sim­ple. Con­tent mar­ket­ing is a way of of­fer­ing valu­able in­for­ma­tion to cus­tomers that make them want to re­turn to your com­pany or company’s website.

Since con­tent marketing’s ini­ti­a­tion with John Deere’s launch of The Fur­row, a mag­a­zine that pro­vided farm­ers who used John Deere prod­ucts with in­for­ma­tion on how to max­i­mize the prof­its of their farms, con­tent mar­ket­ing has been a strat­egy based upon use­ful and valu­able in­for­ma­tion. If the in­for­ma­tion you of­fer to po­ten­tial cus­tomers is use­less or sim­ply just filler ma­te­r­ial, you sim­ply won’t reap the same ben­e­fits as if you are pro­vid­ing high qual­ity, worth­while information.

The goal of a con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paign is to be­come a source of in­for­ma­tion and to es­tab­lish your ex­per­tise in an area. If your busi­ness’ web­site fails to do this, then any con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paign may be for naught.

4. Set Rea­son­able Expectations

Chances are, you’re not go­ing to set the world on fire with your blog on home ser­vices. Af­ter all, even you prob­a­bly aren’t all that in­ter­ested in spend­ing your free hours of the day read­ing up on car­pet clean­ing, land­scap­ing, pa­tio de­sign, or what­ever it is your com­pany offers.

It’s im­por­tant to rec­og­nize con­tent mar­ket­ing for what it is. It’s a chance to bring in users who are look­ing for in­for­ma­tion in a very niche topic and es­tab­lish your­self as an ex­pert on that niche topic. While this can of­ten drive ex­tra traf­fic to your site, and bring in new cus­tomers if done well, by no means is con­tent mar­ket­ing a sim­ple way to get your­self #1 on Google and sit­ting in fat stacks of cash. There­fore, it’s im­por­tant to set the bar at a rea­son­able height for the suc­cess of your home ser­vice busi­ness’ con­tent mar­ket­ing campaign.

5. Be En­ter­tain­ing and Interesting

You don’t know how many con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paigns out there that are bor­ing, lame and wholly un­in­ter­est­ing, but I as­sure you it’s many.

Again, most home ser­vice in­dus­tries do not have a gold mine of en­gag­ing top­ics to write or talk about, and when you have an au­thor or mar­ket­ing team with no cre­ativ­ity and no per­son­al­ity, then you only make read­ing those guides or watch­ing those videos a mas­sive bore.

Though you may not ini­tially be­lieve it to be im­por­tant, ac­tu­ally ded­i­cat­ing some time and ef­fort to make the con­tent you cre­ate in­ter­est­ing and en­joy­able for read­ers is a key part of run­ning an ef­fec­tive con­tent mar­ket­ing campaign.

Think out­side of the box, and cre­ate con­tent that en­gages and en­cour­ages view­ers to re­turn and share with friends. While in the past, home ser­vice in­dus­tries might have been as­so­ci­ated with the mun­dane and re­ceived a lot of yawns from a reader, that doesn’t mean it has to be that way in the fu­ture. Make your con­tent in­ter­est­ing, en­ter­tain­ing and some­thing you would want to read or watch.