All construction marketers over the past few years would have repeatedly heard the phrase ‘Content is King’.
This post will cover the value of blogs as an effective strategy for developing content, and how to demonstrate the results to your business.
Content is what drives people from all over the world, including your prospects and customers, to use the web.
Architects and specifiers are constantly searching for product information from a reliable source.
And with so many sources out there ranking highly in search, it is important to maintain a strong online presence amongst all those other savvy construction writers.
Read our post ‘What Does Positioning Mean to a Specification Audience?‘ for more information on how to create an effective web presence.
Blogging will guide your target audience, when they’re searching for content, to choose you over your competitors, resulting in an increase of traffic by raising your online profile.
A corporate blog is yet another marketing technique where you, as the marketer, become the publisher.
What Kind of Blogs Provide Value?
So let’s briefly cover the basics on what content you should be providing to a construction audience.
A corporate blog should provide technical expertise, demonstrate industry leadership and voice your opinions on construction related topics, such as legislations and new regulations.
Blogs must drive conversation and, most importantly, provide solutions for your target audience.
Rather than talking solely about the benefits and features of your own product, blogs should educate your readers on how to solve a common problem.
How can you Measure the Results of Corporate Blogging?
You may reach a point in your content marketing plan where your business starts to ask a few questions, something along the lines of,
“Enough of why blogs are so valuable… how can you prove they directly generate traffic and conversions?”
Colleagues want facts and figures.
Clear-cut, measurable and profitable results.
It’s all very well stating that blogs increase online visibility and convert the unaware… but this needs backing up with solid proof.
This is where Google Analytics comes into play.
Google Analytics enables you to monitor traffic to your website, track links and repurpose further content using search terms.
The following graphs display a range of blogs from a Building Product Manufacturer website that have been found through organic search.
The spikes circled in red are primarily driven by email campaigns, and traffic gained from blogs remains fairly steady.
However from here on, we can see a steady increase showing that blog content is starting to lead traffic as opposed to email.
By 2014 content is driving 25% of traffic, which then rises to 29% in the following year.
This graph demonstrates that email is no longer the main traffic driver; over a three-year period the results indicate that an increase in traffic occurs as a direct result of an increase in the volume of blogs.
The blogs have also created 86.23% new sessions, meaning that new customers are now aware of the brand and potentially on the process to becoming a lead.
Remember, it’s not all about driving traffic but generating leads too.
The second table further demonstrates the success of blog content.
231 goal completions have been generated from users landing on the blog content, meaning that they have completed a business goal such as downloading a datasheet, requesting a product sample or a CPD.
In order to maintain such goal completions, the bounce rate should be fairly low in relation.
However the bounce rate on the previous chart is 71.66%. This is due to customers searching for a particular answer, and once this has been found, leaving the page.
As with all content strategies, lessons are always learnt along the way.
A positive note to take from this is the fact that users have visited the page and established a sense of awareness. Next time they need to purchase a product, the company they visited previously for an answer should be front of mind.
High bounce rates can be avoided by including clear call to actions, such as related blog articles and products, to ensure that users are aware of other relevant areas on the site.
Keeping Content the Main Driver
Such results provide clear evidence that blogging as part of a consistent content strategy does lead to goal completions and lead generation.
Therefore, avoid ‘random acts of marketing’ and generate similar results by establishing a firm marketing plan with your team that provides focused blogs on a regular basis.
And remember that this is just the start. Repurposing, re-using, and re-evaluating blog content will lead to further goal completions and more leads.
Read this great post by Moz on repurposing your online content.
Take advantage of the fact that construction industry blogs are constantly growing in popularity.
For further information on how to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, download our content marketing e-book.
