27Mar

9 Ways to Create Awesome Website Content

With all this talk about how content marketing is becoming the most important and effective marketing strategy to attracting customers, you may be asking yourself: Where can I get this awesome content? Who can create it for me? Why don’t I have it already? Wait, what exactly IS website content anyway?

Website content is the textual and/or visual content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. It may include things like: text, images, videos and animations.

But what’s the big deal? Why is content marketing SO important? According to DemandGen, it’s all in the numbers:

  • 75% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago. (DemandGen Report)
  • Where do buyers go to begin the process of researching a B2B purchasing decision? (in order by rank) (#1) General Web Research; (#2) Directly on vendor web sites. (DemandGen Report)
  • 68% of B2B buyers strongly agree that B2B vendors should curb the sales messages to improve the quality of their content. (DemandGen Report)

Here are some ideas for creating great content to win over your dealership’s website visitors in different formats:

HOW TO’S

  • This information will attract customers that are new to the industry or may not know enough about owning or renting equipment. Here is your chance to stand out from the crowd and offer them a quick 300-500 word article on various topics such as: 8 Simple Forklift Rules for Your Safety, 10 Tips for Boosting Mini Excavator Uptime, Tips For Identifying Undercarriage Wear on Compact Excavators, etc. If you’re posting new How-to’s on a regular basis, either on your blog or website, users will have a reason to keep coming back! If you’re looking for a great example of dealers doing it right, check out Apex Material Handling’s blog here or JTI Inc.’s blog here!

CASE STUDIES

  • Take the time to interview your customers to determine what their need is. You will often discover that they are trying to resolve a huge problem with the help of your equipment. Take this scenario and write about it! Share it on your website, social media platforms, and blog so that potential buyers begin to understand the value of doing business with a company that can really help their solve problems.

E-MAIL NEWSLETTERS

  • Promote your newsletter and encourage your customers to sign up to receive more information about your business. According to Bain & Company, it costs a business 6–7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. This is why you should use your newsletters as a way to keep them engaged by making them aware of new offerings, deals/specials, and share quick tips to keeping their equipment in great shape. This is your chance to give them a reason to come back to visit your dealership and/or website! Here are few great email providers out there: MailChimp, Constant Contact, MyEmma, etc.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)

  • Do you have a set of questions that majority of your customers always ask when working with you? Share those questions on your website and answer them. You can also write articles that address FAQs about buying equipment for the first time through a local dealership and what to expect,  what machine to buy based on the type of job a consumer needs it for, or even why a consumer should rent instead of buy equipment.

SURVEYS

  • Ask your customers their opinion of how the construction industry has evolved over the past decade or which excavator model takes the cake in performance and post your results! You can also take it a step further and write about some benefits about that excavator model or the best jobs for using that excavator. Take the time to examine and write about some of the equipment that may not be performing as well and explain why this is happening- ie. consumers may be using it for the wrong job.  There are some really awesome survey tools out there such as Survey Monkey, or if you’d rather send a survey out via text message, use PollEverywhere.

PHOTO COLLAGES

  • Take pictures of the inside of your dealership, the outside, your equipment, your employees and create a collage using photoshop, or if you’re using your phone, download any of these apps: Pic Collage, BeFunky, Pic Jointer, PicStitch,etc. Fun collages not only are fun for your employees working there but they give your potential buyers an idea of what your business is like.

 TESTIMONIALS

  • Ask your customers to write a review about their experience with your business. You can do this via email or phone call. You can make it even easier for them by writing the actual testimonial for them and asking for their approval to use for marketing purposes. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that people actually really enjoy being featured on your social media pages!

VIDEOS

  • Take quick 30-60 second videos with your phone of things going on at your dealership, a walk around of your new equipment, singing happy birthday to an employee, wishing an employee a happy work anniversary, interview a customer on their experience with your business, etc. Use these videos to post on your website and social media pages. This is content that they won’t be able to find elsewhere. If you’re feeling fancy, use video editing apps such as: Magisto or VideoShop.

TIMELINES

  • Does your business have an impressive history? Take the time to share with your customers the evolution of your business through a timeline or an infographic. Other milestones to note would be the dates for when you became an authorized dealer for [fill in the blank with an OEM], hired the company’s first Sales/Parts/Service Manager, sold your 100th snowblower, etc. Don’t have a designer to help you build something like this? No worries, use a free software tool such as Piktochart

I’m hoping at the end of this article, you’re saying “ah ha! THAT’S all content is? I can do this!” but you actually may be asking yourself, why should content be served in all these different formats? The reality is, people absorb content in many different ways. Some people are much more visual than others, some people enjoy lengthy articles and some would rather pick up quick tips with brief explanations. The more quality content you create and serve up through different formats, the more consumers you are likely to attract and engage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Commercial Web Services

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