Author: Chris Heiler
Most green industry companies follow a predictable sales cycle each and every year, season after season. Whether you run a garden center in Tucson, Arizona or operate a lawn care company in upstate New York, your product and service offering is typically dependent on the season.
This shift in your sales cycle aligns with buyer behavior. For example, there's no sense in focusing on selling snow removal services in April when your clients are anticipating the opening of their swimming pool in June. That said, you also wouldn't wait until the first of January to begin focusing on snow removal sales--you would lag behind the sales cycle.
The sales cycle and your content marketing strategy
You need to be deliberate and intentional when it comes to your content marketing strategy. Your content must be purposeful and results-driven. Therefore, your editorial calendar must support your company's unique sales cycle.
Also, when planning your editorial calendar, you must stay ahead of your sales cycle!
For example, the sales cycle for Neave Group Outdoor Solutions, a full-service landscaping company in Wappingers Falls, New York, will begin to shift from irrigation and swimming pool sales to Holiday decorating sales and commercial snow removal sales in mid-August and early-September.
Neave Group's content marketing strategy will reflect this shift in their sales cycle. Come September, whether by e-newsletter, status updates, news releases and/or blogging, Neave Group will begin pushing content to support their holiday decorating division.
Do you want your content to resonate with more people? Then focus on being more timely in how you deliver it.
Aligning your editorial calendar with your sales cycle
At Landscape Leadership, when we begin working with a client and start to develop a content marketing strategy and editorial plan, we kickoff the process by identifying the company's unique sales cycle.
We then put this information into a simple spreadsheet that will guide us as we make decisions regarding their editorial calendar.
We recommend you take this same approach and create a spreadsheet detailing your own unique sales cycle.
This does not need to be a difficult process. Putting this information onto paper will sharpen your focus. And, it will actually make the content creation process much easier because you will know exactly which topics you need to be covering depending on the time of year.
This screenshot illustrates what your sales cycle spreadsheet could look like.
image source: Keith Ellwood
If you need more ideas like this to help your business build a killer content marketing strategy, download our FREE workbook, "Create a Compelling Content Plan & Editorial Calendar". Download this special workbook and learn how you can better organize and execute your content marketing plan.
