Author: Chris Heiler
"The last couple of leads we got through our website were interesting. I've noticed the blog posts on a specific topic do more to generate leads than do any of our main landscaping service-related pages. A homeowner has a drainage problem, they find our blog post on the topic and they contact us. It sounds simple, but it works. I can see how this content marketing picks up steam as you continue to do it."
So explained a client of ours in an email just two weeks ago. I gave myself a fist bump after reading it and thought, "Hell yes! Another business owner who gets it!"And how about this from last Friday (start at the bottom of the timeline):
This is what we call "lead intelligence" – how a visitor interacts on your website. This anonymous visitor found our website by searching for "b2b marketing landscaping" using Bing's search engine.
On the search engine results page (SERP) he clicked through to our recent blog post titled, B2B Marketing Strategy and Best Practices for the Lawn & Landscape Industry. This was at 10:09am Friday morning, after which he spent the next 17 minutes visiting eight different pages on our website.
Just nine minutes after first discovering our website this anonymous visitor reached out to us – introducing himself – via our Contact Us page requesting a time to chat about his landscaping company's marketing.
This is the power of content marketing, my friends. Your content works for you and your business 24/7 educating your prospects and customers.
Do you invest in marketing or spend on marketing?
When you look at how we allocate our marketing resources at Landscape Leadership, what you won't see is a lot of spending on things like:
- Trade shows
- Banner ads
- Print advertising
- Pay per click (PPC) advertising
- Direct mail
- Full-color brochures
Personally, I'm an investor not a spender. I want my time and money working for me long into the future. I want the work that I do today to still impact my bottom line five or even 10 years from now. Those tactics I mentioned above don't provide this long term impact. Once you stop spending on PPC advertising this paid source of website traffic dries up. After a month that fancy $4,000 advertisement in your local lifestyle magazine is no longer reaching anybody.
This is why we prefer to invest our time and dollars in content marketing – it provides a lifetime of value as opposed to one-time value.
Consider the example I shared previously of the visitor-turned-lead who found our website via a search for "b2b marketing landscaping". I guarantee this won't be the only visitor and potential customer we attract with this blog post that I invested only about three to four hours into. If it performs like many of our other past articles it should have a positive impact on our sales pipeline for years to come.
A blog post we first published in June of 2010, The 10 Rules of Advertising, illustrates this lifetime value perfectly.
As you can see in the screenshot below, this blog post is the second most viewed page on our entire website, only trailing the Landscape Leadership home page. It ranks in the top 10 of search results for hundreds of search queries related to "advertising landscaping services". Written over four years ago, this blog post is still attracting new visitors and potential customers to our website every single month.
Of course, we don't only care about traffic to our website – ultimately we're looking for new leads that we can convert into opportunities and customers. Our content delivers this as well. An "Attribution Report" is shown in the screenshot below. This illustrates which pages (including blog posts) on our website were most often viewed by visitors before converting into leads. As you can see, two blog posts have played a key role in converting over 80 visitors into new leads that we can follow up with. The "10 Rules of Advertising" blog post has contributed to about 50 new leads on its own.
Here's a key point: Do not underestimate the important role a blog can play in the conversion process. If you are a lawn care operator or landscaping company I'm sure you have the basic service-related pages, "about us" pages, etc. on your website, but if you don't have a blog where you can educate and help visitors then you're missing out on a huge opportunity to generate new business around the clock.
I hope you can see how this investment in content continues to pay off for us at Landscape Leadership.
Marketing snow removal services and swimming pool construction in New York
Now I want to share with you two examples of how our friends (and client) at Neave Group Outdoor Solutions has invested in content that continues to payoff in the form of new leads for their sales team.
Two years ago Neave Group's snow division, Neave Snow, published a blog post titled Commercial Snow Removal Contracts and Pricing Methods. As you can see in the attribution report below, this blog post has contributed significantly to their lead generation efforts, with currently 39 new leads having viewed this specific blog post to date.
Neave Group's swimming pool division, Neave Pools, has been even more successful using content to generate leads and new customers. Published early-summer of 2013, Neave's Swimming Pool Design Guide and Swimming Pool Design Infographic have combined to generate nearly 5,000 views and over 350 new contacts to date from their website. The screenshot below shows Neave Group's top performing landing pages and offers.
This is an investment in content marketing that will continue to pay off for Neave Group down the road.
Helpful trumps sexy in Hot-lanta
You know what topics are not sexy? Detention pond maintenance and snow and ice removal.
Fortunately for commercial landscape contractors like HighGrove Partners in Atlanta (client), cute and creative doesn't matter – it's all about being helpful.
As proof, I point to HighGrove's top 10 most viewed blog posts over the past two years, four of which are about detention ponds or bioswales on commercial properties.
Believe it or not property managers and HOA-related folks search for information on how to better manage the detention ponds on their properties. They often find the information on HighGrove's website and reach out to them for assistance. This is a "foot in the door" for HighGrove that can lead to adding a new property to their book of business.
It's the same story with their snow and ice removal services. Yes, even in Atlanta, there can be an occasional epic snow and ice event. When there is HighGrove is ready to spring into action.
When a commercial property manager or owner heads to Google to track down a contractor who can handle their snow and ice removal needs, they can't help but find HighGrove Partners: They rank in the top 10 of search results for almost every relevant search query related to snow and ice removal in the Atlanta area.
This is the long term value of content marketing. It can add to your bottom line 24/7, year over year.
So, are you spending on marketing, or investing in marketing? I hope you now see the difference. If you're ready to make the shift to content marketing and the Inbound way, get in touch with us. Reach us through our handy contact form, via email or call (800) 681-9169.
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