Most home builders and remodelers pay very little attention to content when it comes to marketing their business through a website, blog, e-book, or any other online platform. It is probably because we have a common perception that good content is all about having a good design to attract more audiences. Although a good design and a picture gallery are essential for marketing the business of home building and remodeling. Did you know that you also need good content to rank higher in search engine results?
Content Marketing for home builders and remodelers is a tricky task as your field is highly technical and requires knowledge of engineering, architecture, design, and other technical specialties. Due to the inherent technical nature of your field, it becomes difficult to market your content as your target audience may not necessarily have all that technical knowledge. This blog will talk about the lessons we have learned that can make your marketing content attractive enough to help you get more homeowners.
Content Marketing Lessons For Home Builders and Remodelers
In the growing competitive market of home builders and remodelers, it is imperative to understand and learn how to build a long-lasting relationship with prospects and homeowners. All of this can be achieved if you can provide your target audience with the quality and relevant knowledge and research they have been looking for. Higher quality content has been found to increase rankings and result in a better viewer experience. For home builders and remodelers aiming to resonate more with their audience while tackling the technicalities of budget estimations, utilizing tools like a carpentry estimating app can streamline projects and help accurately estimate carpentry costs. Homebuilders and remodelers can market their business through the following channels:
- Websites
- Blogs
- Guest blogs
- Press releases
- Social media platforms
- Videos
- FAQs
- Email newsletters
- E-Books
- White papers
1. Think About the Questions Your Homeowners and Potential Homeowners May Have
Adding content to your marketing platform needs to target your homeowners and prospective homeowners in the best possible manner. Being in the field of new home construction and remodeling, you must be aware of the questions and queries that most homeowners or would-be homeowners have. For example, there may be homeowners who are interested in knowing the procedures involved in the home building or remodeling process. At the same time, some might be more interested in knowing about the rules and regulations in place.
You must identify those commonly asked questions. Once you have identified those questions, use your expertise and knowledge to answer them most simply and understandably. By answering these questions, you have the opportunity to build trust and to provide them with the information they are looking for, rather than stuffing the content with technical features of wooden floors or glazed windows, which they may not be interested in knowing.
2. Use Different Mediums for Content
We all know that a picture is worth 1000 words. Hence, the content that focuses on the visual representation of work attracts more audiences as most audiences are not interested in reading heaps of paragraphs.
Although home builders and remodelers may find text as the easiest form to reach out to homeowners, in many cases, it is more beneficial to use videos, pictures, and infographics to get your message through. Videos and photographs are vital as they allow you to showcase your skills and talent. If your audience sees a video of you remodeling a house or constructing a new one, they will understand the process and get a clear idea of the skills used behind your work.
Another advantage of having visual representation is that it connects you with your homeowner better by promoting the feeling of personal affiliation.
3. Make Sure to Remain Location Specific
Most of the home builders and remodelers operate in a specific geographical area, which requires you to focus on content related to that area. We refer to these as geographical landing pages. With them, you will want to avoid using generic information and provide as much area-specific information as possible such as the rules and regulations, specific building codes, any special construction requirements, the style of construction predominant in that area, etc.
Providing location-specific content will help you attract local audiences that are more likely to turn into homeowners. People browsing the internet to hire someone to build or remodel their homes are only interested in area-specific information. Therefore, if you want to create the audience’s trust and want them to hire you for your services, you need to focus more on area-specific information.
4. Keep Your Website Updated
One of the biggest mistakes that most home builders and remodelers make in marketing their business is not updating their blogs or websites. Often they plan to post once a month, then they get busy, and the next thing you know, it’s a year or more later, and they still have “Welcome to Our Blog” as the only post. Or they post their content only when they think they have something interesting to share with their prospects and homeowners. Unfortunately, this is the primary reason that their rankings are affected on search engines in a negative way.
If you are interested in maintaining good rankings, then you should constantly update your content. Search engines like Google aim at providing their users with the most relevant and updated results which is they give priority to the newest and best content. Constantly updating your content and having an active blog will let Google know that you have the latest and most relevant content on your site that needs to be shared with your prospective homeowners.
Please note that updating content does not always mean updating text. You can also share pictures or videos of your latest work or projects. This is the easiest way to keep your content updated and engage your homeowners.
5. Do Not Forget to Recycle Older Content
Recycling content is important if you have been maintaining a blog for many years. Even if some old content gained popularity and was very successful, you need to update and polish it with the latest content. Alternatively, you can upgrade the information in that blog and post it again.
The latter approach is easier and convenient to create new content that would not only save your time but would help you rank higher on social media and search engines. Most home builders seem to be unwilling to recycle content for various reasons, such as the need to keep a record. They believe keeping old content will add to their reputation. But the truth is that majority of the audiences give more value to the latest content.
6. Write Long-Form Content
Although it may be a little harder to write long-form content, let me tell you that the effort will be worth the return. Long-form content usually consists of 1000-1500 words. While in some cases, you may need to do 1800-2500 words, or you may be able to get away with 1000-1200 words. My best advice is to use as many words as you need to cover the subject. You will also want to look at your competitors and see what kind of word count they have. The search engines tend to rank articles or blogs with better information, which may be the longer articles.
7. List Articles Help Readers Skim
List articles or listicles (such as this one) are easy to read and skim. This makes them highly popular among a variety of audiences. Most people have very short attention spans and may leave your content if there are no subheadings. Audiences prefer listicles as they give them a chance to look at the headings and perhaps read a few sentences under each subheading to understand what it is about. In this way, they can skim the content in less time.
However, make sure that the subheadings are informative and the content is organized well. The whole idea behind list articles is to allow the audience to get the gist of the post just by looking at the subheadings. It is beneficial for prospects who do not have the time to read the whole blog post.
8. Social Media
Social media are the existing platforms where trust is built between the home builder, the remodeler, and the homeowner. They need a platform to contact you conveniently when they are ready to hire you for your services. Social media platforms are great at helping to promote yourself to most prospective homeowners.
A word of caution, don’t build your entire business on social media platforms. They are just a means to an end. You wouldn’t want to build a house on rented land, nor should you build your business on social media (rented land).
9. Emails
Email is a great way to build trust between you and your prospects. Many prospects will reach out and contact you to talk about the possibility of building a custom home or remodeling their kitchen, bathroom, or living area.
Final Thoughts
We at Cube Creative Design are determined to help home builders and remodeling businesses grow with the best marketing content across all online platforms. We can certainly help you with SEO to target and attract maximum traffic. We have vast experience in marketing and have successfully helped businesses grow significantly. If you are interested in marketing your construction-based business in the best possible manner. Feel free to contact us as we would be happy to have a free, no-obligation conversation with you.