If you’re going to grow your log homes business today, you’ll have to overcome one main obstacle: information overload. And I’m not just talking about Internet marketing for a log homes business. Today’s consumers are saturated with information from every possible direction and, worse, they’re often annoyed by it. It’s not that your customers don’t want information, they just don’t want to be annoyed.
200 million Americans are on the “do not call list” (the rest probably don’t have a land-line phone). Add to that statistic, there recently has been a 50% drop rate in Internet users who click on display ads. PPC ads are still ads, and ads that can annoy. People are simply saying, “Do not bother me.”
But they really do want to be bothered, if it’s on their terms. So how do you do that?
By giving them what they want.
Your prospects are online and your competitors are gunning for them.
In the graphic above you’ll see that 29% of consumers find paid ads an interuption. Ad blocking grew by 30% in 2016.
A simple search for “log home designs” returns over a quarter million search results. Your customers are searching. What would happen if you were in the top ranking out of all those search results? You would get a lot more business. If you were to do it, you’d do it with Inbound marketing. Let’s see how to start:
1) Research
First it’s important to do a little analysis within the context of marketing for log homes builders. You need to find out where you are, before you decide where you’re going. And the beauty of this process is that you can decide where you want to go.
- First, you’ll need to have a a marketing report run for you. It’s impossible to know where you rank against your competitors without metrics. You’ll be amazed at the results. Everyone is. The analysis is free.
- Write down a profile of your ideal customer. Write it down. Who are you trying to attract?
- What would happen if you started getting more leads, more sales? You need a playbook for this. Your capacity will need to increase and you need to have a viable plan. This could mean adding sales staff, or restructuring, such as promoting current staff to management, and hiring new staff. This is a problem most everyone would love to have!
- Try to see what your competitors are doing on their websites. Few will be doing all they can do. Here’s the place where you can out-gun them.
2) SEO
After you find out where you are ranking, it’s time to get to work to improve your ranking.
Worried about cost? Deduct 61% from your current marketing spend and you’ll have your budget for Inbound.
Here are the basic, best practices for SEO. SEO no longer is complicated. If anyone tries to tell you it is, say, “it’s not.” But SEO is work – it’s just not complicated work:
- Research keywords and include them in header tags, page text, image ALT tags, META tags, site pages, landing pages, blog posts.
- Link keywords between pages, especially blog articles.
- Don’t use any “black hat” tricks to try to fool search engines.
3) Content 101
Sometime when I talk to company owners about content, blogging and the like, they seem to drift off into cyberspace, give you a blank stare, or just turn off. I don’t know how many times it’s been said, but blogging is key to success in any Inbound effort.
Disclaimer: Most blogs you won’t find on the Internet no one else will find either. That’s because those blogs were written with no throught to SEO.
How to fix a blog article that’s not getting traffic (we do this too):
- You’ll need tracking software first, to analyze which blogs are working and which are not.
- Look at the blog content. Ask yourself, “If you were your customer, would you read this?” If your answer is “no,” then revise and republish. Republishing won’t wreck your SEO; it actually will help.
- Do you have at least one image and does it relate to your content?
- Are you using keywords? If not, time to revise again, or change keywords.
- Are there keywords in the title, or is the title boring? If so change it. Here’s where you’ll need to be careful. It’s always a good idea to create a “301” redirect from the old blog title to the new one. This will save any page ranking authority (SEO) you’ve achieved already.
4) Blogging
Why write blog articles? To build traffic to your website. Each time a prospect searches online and finds your content, you have a chance for a future sale, and that means growing your log homes business.
Here’s how to blog with a purpose to get leads:
- Publish content your customers are searching for: Designs, log types, site work, log home energy efficiency, and a host of other keywords that real people are entering into Google’s search field every second.
- Be consistent: The more frequent you can blog, the better. Our accepted minimum is four articles per month. Do more, and you’ll grow faster.
- Some of your competitors are blogging already. Don’t scape content from them. Be different. Find some unique niches they’re not writing about.
- Use calls-to-actions (CTAs) on every blog article. A CTA will prompt for conversions.
Key take a-ways from this article:
- To overcome TMI, you need to supply educational material your leads are searching for.
- A minimum of 50% of your leads are online looking for what you’re selling.
- Before you do anything, you’ll need to know where you stand against your competition.
- SEO and content marketing form the backbone of Inbound marketing.
- To work, Inbound must be done according to proven best practices.
