Fill Your Pipeline by Setting Up a Targeted Content Strategy

If you’re a builder, fabricator, materials supplier or engineer, you’ve probably heard that sharing new content regularly is “important for marketing.”

But the truth is that a lot of the content out there is a waste of time. If you’ve been around the building industry for a while you’ve probably seen a lot of posts like these: 

• “Meet Our Employee of the Month” 
• “Learn the History of Henderson & Sons Contractors”
• “A Valentine’s Message from Potpourri Septic, LLC”

Posts like this have all the best intentions. But they ignore the #1 rule in content marketing:

Your content isn’t about you. It’s about solutions to your audience’s problems.

A successful content strategy regularly gives your best prospects valuable insights that help solve their problems. When you get that dialed in, your content becomes a powerful engine of new leads and sales.

‍But I want to warn you right up front: Content marketing doesn’t usually pay off next week or even next month. But if you want to set your business up for long-term success that compounds on itself over time—driving more and more business your way—there are few things more powerful than a solid content strategy.

The Most Important Thing You Need to Know

If you’re going to set out to help your audience solve their problems, first you have to know who it is you’re talking to.

Your first and most important audience is the people who are most likely to become your best clients. The clearer you can get about who those people are, the more prospects and clients your content will send you. So the key question is:

Who is your target customer?

Here’s a simple and effective way to hone in on the target customer you’re making content for. Think about the key decision makers for your best clients. Then answer these questions about who that is:

1. What’s their job title or description? Depending on your business this might be a homeowner, a real estate developer, a purchasing manager, etc. Try to hone in on the one job title or description that’s closest to the center of your client bullseye.
2. What situation has them needing your help? Are they planning a new development? Do they have a leaky roof? Are they auditing their suppliers? Again, try to choose one situation that’s right at the center of the bullseye.
3. What do they need your help with? Another way to ask this question is, what role would you play in their situation? Do they need a contractor? An architect? A fabricator?  

Once you’ve done that, fill in the gaps in this sentence:

Our target customer is a [job title or description] who [situation] and needs [what they need help with].

So a home remodeler, for example, might end up with a sentence like this: Our target customer is a homeowner who wants to remodel their kitchen and needs a design-build contractor. 

That’s it. That’s who that company is writing their content for.

Create a sentence like that for your company. Once you’ve got that squared away you can move on to the next step.

Get Inside Your Customer’s Head

You already know how much you can help your target customer. You know how your particular specialties and processes will give them exactly what they need.

But they don’t know that yet.

Which is why it doesn’t work to start off by talking about yourself and your company. Because they don’t care yet. They have their own goals and deadlines to worry about. To them you’re just another company on the internet.

What does work is to step into your customer’s shoes so you can meet them right where they’re at. The key question here is:

What are your target customer’s burning questions that fall within your area of expertise?

These questions all have one thing in common. They all center around your target customer’s goals, challenges, hopes, and fears. You probably hear questions like this every day. 

Depending on your business they might sound like:

• How can I make an accurate budget for this project?
• What does a realistic timeline look like?
• How do I balance sustainability and cost?
• When do I know my roof needs to be replaced?
• What materials should I be considering?
• Do I need a separate architect, or can a design-build firm do it?

Take a few minutes right now and list out the top five burning questions you hear from your best prospects.

Once you have that done, you’re ready for the final step.

Become Your Customer’s Trusted Expert

Once you’re clear on what your target customer most needs to learn from you, you can do what you do best: answer their questions.

But your goal here isn’t just to post another “how-to” article on the internet and call it a day. Your goal is to use these posts to position yourself as the trusted expert that your client can depend on. That way when they’re ready to buy, you’re the first company they think of. 

So the key question here is:

How can you answer your customer’s questions in a way that positions you as the trusted expert?

Expertise is pretty simple to demonstrate. As long as your instructions work, you’ve shown you have expertise.

But trust is different. Trust is a product of repeated human interactions over time. So in thinking about how to become the trusted expert, it helps to focus on three key questions:

1. What voice and tone will you use? Most companies err on the side of trying to sound too professional and authoritative. But that often comes off as boring, robotic, and full of jargon. Instead, I recommend sounding like a human being. That alone is a huge step up from most content. After that you might aim to sound helpful, friendly, and/or encouraging. Dial in the voice that’s right for your company.
2. What format and platforms will you use? I recommend making your website the home base for all your content. That way, however they initially find you, they always end up back on your site where they can become a customer. Then repost your content wherever your target customer is searching for information, always linking back to your website. Are they searching YouTube for videos? Are they scrolling LinkedIn for helpful articles? To start, choose one platform where your target customer is looking and post there consistently.
3. How often will you share content? Trust is built through repeated human interactions, so consistency is key here. But don’t hold yourself to impossible standards. Social media gurus say you have to post at least 3x per week. But what’s more important is coming up with a consistent schedule you can actually keep, even if that’s just one article or video per month to start. Then once that starts paying off you can invest in posting more often.

Take a few minutes right now and answer each of those questions the best you can. Then you’ll be ready to put it into practice.

Put It All Together and Win the Long Game 

Now you know who your target customer is, exactly what they need to learn from you, and how you’re going to get that information to them.

Those are the pillars of a winning content strategy.

When you execute it consistently you build trust with your best prospects—but also with the platforms you’re posting on, so they’ll show you to more and more prospects over time. The results compound on themselves.

Which is why I recommend committing to at least one year of consistent content before you judge the results. Will you see results sooner than a year? Yeah, most likely. But they won’t be indicative of the full power of what you’re creating. 

Content marketing is a long game. If you’re willing to treat it like one, you’ll win.

But lots of builders, designers, and suppliers get stuck in a tough middle ground. They want to invest in solid content marketing. But it doesn’t make sense for them to hire a dedicated marketing person, who might not understand their business or know how to create effective content anyway.

That’s where a trusted partner like Rusty George Creative comes in. We specialize in helping construction, fabrication, materials and engineering companies generate sales in today’s building industry—and tomorrow’s.

If you’re ready to invest in a marketing strategy that sets your company up for long-term success, get in touch today.

Written by Rusty George with zero help from Artificial Intelligence.

Rusty George leads a branding, website design and marketing agency serving Seattle and Tacoma area construction companies, subcontractors, engineering and architecture firms, material fabricators and suppliers. His goal is to help the building industry become more attractive to the skilled workforce of the future.

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