I talk with a lot of remodelers from across the country and Canada, and they all recognize that blogging is the “new wave” of marketing a business. But when it comes to actually doing it, they hesitate. They may claim “not enough time to write” or “don’t know what to write about” as reasons, but the truth is they simply haven’t found a good reason why. They hear the marketing experts recommendations, but without a reason (other than someone telling them to do so), they simply won’t do it. They are reluctant to invest the time or money into an activity where they aren’t even sure why they are doing it. In short, they haven’t bought in.
You have to have a reason – a sound, personal reason – to motivate you to take action and for it to be worthwhile.
Let’s look at “whys” from a personal perspective for a moment. Take dieting, for example. Most of us have had to diet at least once in our lifetime, but sometimes looking trimmer simply isn’t a good enough reason why to give up ice cream, bacon cheeseburgers and loaded nachos. But a health scare may just do the trick.
Same is true for blogging or any other content marketing initiative. You need to find your why; however, even though every remodeler’s “why blog” is slightly different, they all start out with a few commonalities.
You like to teach. Are you a contractor that truly enjoys helping homeowners make informed decisions? Whether it is a large kitchen remodel or a smaller winterizing the home project, if you like talking with homeowners so they have a better understand of their home, this may be your “why should I blog” reason.
Blogging isn’t a sales pitch. A good contractor blog answers homeowner questions. It is about teaching people and sharing information.
You wish there was a way to address consumer questions – in bulk. You answer the same questions every time you go on a sales call, and you often think, “Wish there was a way to answer this question once and many people would get it.” There is. It is called a blog.
In a way, this is precisely what I am doing with this blog post. I answer the “Why should I start a blog?” question on a weekly basis. Now that I have written this blog post, I can follow-up up any conversation I have with a remodeler about blogging with an email that links to this post. Genius, right? Keep reading.
You want more visits to your website – without Pay-Per-Click. Google and other search engines love fresh content, so the more you update your website, the more attention it gets – and the higher the rankings it gets organically. This is one of the primary reasons businesses have blogs – to help drive traffic to their website. From there, they can get people in their sales funnel, stay in touch with them and ultimately get more business (because your goal is to make more sales).
But it all begins with consumers finding you on the Internet. It’s called inbound marketing, and it works.
Your business could use a boost. Is your business gasping for breath? Is making sales harder because the consumers are price-shopping? Stop being one of those contractors that allows consumers to base their decision solely on price. Head them off at the pass by providing them with useful information – not glossy sales brochures – but with articles such as “How to pick a remodeler in [your town’s name]” or “5 Ways Homeowners Waste Energy Every Summer.”
Good, useful content elicits trust from prospects – which makes them comes back for more (they are now in your sales funnel). Regular content from your blog will continue to push them further into the sales funnel until they eventually buy. And when they buy, your business gets that boost you need. (If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to read Marcus Sheridan’s story. He’s a pool guy whose business was in trouble in 2009 … until he started blogging. He wrote a post called, “My Blog Made Over 2 Million Dollars in Sales: How’s that for ROI?”).
So I ask you – Why should you blog? What’s your why? Find it, and I promise you once you being using inbound marketing techniques – like blogging – you’ll find even deeper reasons why.