Do you want to position your website to be in front of people who are already considering hiring architectural services in your area?
Content marketing is the right tool for you.
Continue reading and find out why!
Benefits of content marketing for architects
Content marketing is all about providing value without expectations.
This doesn’t mean one of the goals of publishing content isn’t to earn money.
Quite the opposite.
You SHOULD publish content with the end goal of selling your architectural services.
You’re operating a business, after all.
The difference between content marketing and, say, ads is that helpful content solves people’s problems without appearing salesy in the process.
This dynamic creates many beneficial business-related side effects.
Let’s explore some of the biggest ones!
Build trust and authority
Publishing quality content that informs and educates on topics closely related to your services demonstrates your authority on the subject.
Simply put, it shows that you’re an expert.
And because you’ve provided this helpful content for free, it begins to build relationships and trust between you and your audience.
There’s nothing like a good start of a relationship when someone gives you something valuable for free upfront, right?
That person immediately raises a few notches in your eyes and you’re much more likely to do business with them.
Build your brand and increase brand awareness
A business that builds on trust and authority while providing value through its goods and services inevitably becomes a brand.
Every piece of content you publish will act as your brand ambassador.
Building a brand and content marketing have one important thing in common – they both take time to bear fruit.
That’s why you have to have a content marketing strategy, create content that moves the needle forward, and be patient.
Check out my article on how to use content marketing to build brands and increase brand awareness.
Attract a targeted audience to your site to get leads and sales
Creating content on keywords and topics that will attract an already interested audience to your site greatly increases the chances of them becoming qualified leads or even sales.
For example, when someone types “youngstown ohio architect” or “house design youngstown” into Google, you can bet they’re in need of architectural services.
When someone is already interested in the services you provide visits your site and finds what they needed, they’re much more likely to convert into a client.
Creating relevant content that’s also search engine optimized will make the same search engines, like Google, send free traffic your way.
Who are your ideal clients?
Because content marketing takes time to bear fruit, it’s vitally important to concentrate on your ideal clients first.
Why?
Because they’re going to be the easiest audience to convert into clients and, presumably, you can offer the best service you possibly can to your ideal clients.
How can you tell who your ideal clients are?
You have to do some research to create what’s called a buyer persona (aka customer persona or user persona).
Buyer persona is a fictional character that embodies your ideal client base.
Why are buyer personas important?
A buyer persona is there to help you understand the exact needs and problems your ideal clients might have and then create hyper-relevant content that solves those problems.
The internet is saturated with mediocre content which is why relevancy is the name of the game.
Should you have one or more buyer personas?
As a general rule, it’s best to concentrate on one buyer persona at a time until you’ve fully answered all the questions this buyer persona might have.
This works well to build relevancy in the eyes of both your ideal clients and search engines which reward sites that cover topics or clusters of topics comprehensively.
The right content marketing types and channels for you
There are dozens of content marketing types you could create and dozens of content marketing channels you could publish your content on.
Because the day only has 24 hours and your operation is most likely limited when it comes to content creation and distribution, you should concentrate on the types and channels that offer the best bang for your buck.
Let’s explore some of them!
Images
I’m not going to tell you how important quality images are to your architectural business because you already know this.
However, I see missed opportunities when it comes to the imagery that often isn’t included and those are:
- Plans
- Aerial shots
- Software screenshots
- Models
- Mockups
If you can, post as many original images as you can.
They do a lot better when it comes to SEO than stock images, especially the free ones.
Videos
Video in general has become a great content marketing tool.
Not only does video content get more engagement than text or image content on social media sites, but it also returns great ROI.
Keep in mind that production quality doesn’t always have to be amazing.
If you’re providing value with your content, a simple phone camera is often all you need.
Case studies
The value of case studies is twofold.
One, case studies are often substantial pieces of content that demonstrate expertise and help establish authority on the topic.
And two, they’re often quoted by other people which creates backlinks to your website and improves your website’s authority in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
Podcast
Joe Rogan’s $100 million Spotify deal brought a lot of attention to podcasting.
It might look like everyone and their mother are starting a podcast, but there’s still a lot of real-estate to claim.
A podcast will not only serve as a content channel that will attract potential clients but it will give you a lot of opportunities to connect with other industry professionals.
Blogging
Blogging is still a staple content marketing channel for just about every industry.
A blog will add a lot of content and pages to your site and greatly increase the number of keywords the site will rank for which creates a snowball effect.
The more keywords you rank for, the more chances your site has to be discovered by potential clients and industry peers.
And the more traffic you get, the more beneficial things like sharing and backlinking starts to happen.
This signals Google to share your site even more, and the whole cycle repeats.
Youtube
I’ve already mentioned video as a powerful content marketing type and it’s worth saying a thing or two about Youtube as the most dominant video content marketing channel.
Youtube is a lot more than just another social media platform.
People go to Youtube looking for solutions to their problems which gives you an opportunity to be there when they type in queries relevant to your business.
After all, Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world.
Unlike social media posts, Youtube videos continue raking in engagement for years after they’ve been published.
There are a few reasons why LinkedIn is on this list.
LinkedIn has evolved from a recruiting tool into a social media network hungry for all kinds of content.
Also, LinkedIn’s going through kind of a golden age when it comes to organic reach.
There’s a lot more content consumption than content creation on the platform right now.
And because of that, the organic reach is through the roof.
You could go to LinkedIn right now, create a fresh account, post something, and people would see it.
This is something you can’t expert on, for example, Facebook.
Apart from the organic reach, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with other architects or even join industry-related groups and join the conversations.
4 Parting tips
Employ the 80:20 rule when it comes to SEO.
Don’t obsess over SEO.
Simply concentrate on the most important aspects and move on with your life.
Otherwise, you’ll end up optimizing your content to death and procrastinating on doing what moves the needle – creating more content.
Repurpose your own content whenever possible.
Creating content is hard and that’s why you have to squeeze dry every piece you create.
For example, if you have a podcast you can record it and:
- Upload it to podcasting platforms
- Upload it to Youtube
- Create a transcript and make it a blog article
- Take the most interesting parts and create social media posts around them
Just make sure to learn the subtle differences between the platforms and adjust your content accordingly.
Check out my article on different content types and how to repurpose them.
Create content on keywords that people are searching for.
For example, creating an article titled “Reasons why I don’t like AutoCAD 2021” would never appear on Google because no one will search for “reasons why Jane Doe doesn’t like AutoCAD 2021.”
Instead, use some of the free or paid keyword research tools and be sure you’re writing content on something that has a chance of being discovered.
Create content that matches search intent.
When you Google a keyword, pay attention to the types of content that appear on Page#1.
For example, if you type in “best gifts for dad” you will see that all the results are lists of gift ideas.
Thus, people are looking for gift ideas when they type in this keyword and list ideas are what Google will serve them.
Creating content that doesn’t match search intent means that content doesn’t stand a chance of ranking high.
Conclusion
In one form or another, there’s no reason why content marketing wouldn’t work for your architectural practice.
Being helpful and solving people’s problems always worked and always will work.
If you’re ready to delve deeper into creating a working content marketing strategy, check out my article series on this topic that starts with setting a mission statement for your business.
The series also covers content marketing goals, KPIs, setting a content marketing budget, creating a functional content calendar, and more.