The Landscaper’s Guide to Effective Content Marketing
—
The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
Originally published on July 14, 2015. Updated on September 3, 2022.
Table of Contents Click Here to Show
What if there was a marketing strategy for landscape contractors that could increase brand awareness, bring more traffic to your website, generate high-quality leads, and increase sales and revenue? When executed correctly, content marketing does all this and more, explaining why 72% of companies plan to increase their content marketing budget this year.
Value-driven original content is key to moving your target customer through the buying process, and the reason leading landscape companies invest in producing quality content regularly. But what is content marketing, and why are so many companies across all industries using it?
But What Exactly Is Content Marketing?
Simply put, content marketing involves creating and sharing videos, blog articles, and social media posts that don’t explicitly promote the brand but do drive interest in a company’s products or services. It’s a form of inbound, or attraction, marketing.
The content should meet a need, be engaging, build trust, and educate. In addition to providing useful information, content marketing entails search engine optimization (SEO) efforts that help bring in more traffic to your website, potentially attracting quality local leads with strong intent, and resulting in increased sales.
Creating Content for the Different Stages in the Customer’s Journey
There are four stages of the customer journey: awareness, interest, consideration, and conversion. Throughout each step, content should be useful and tailored to your priorities, target audience, and location.
Awareness: Get Noticed
You aim to attract target prospects into your marketing funnel at this stage. Tactically, this might be a case study with professional videography showcasing a backyard transformation with the complete package—paver patio, pergola, outdoor kitchen, walkways, planting beds, and a fire feature. You can share this case study throughout your social channels for a wider reach, perhaps with paid social ads. Your work is impressive, so your target prospects are intrigued when they see your content and visit your website. Thanks to your content, they’re aware your company exists.
Interest: Get Their Attention
Leading landscaping firms use content to demonstrate how their products and services solve a problem their target customer might have, to ultimately create interest. Tactically, this may be a blog post titled “7 Pro Tips for Beating Post-Pandemic Budget Challenges,” which addresses ways golf courses can be conservative with their landscaping budget. A property manager who reads the blog may make a mental note about one or two tips, sign up for blog updates on your website, and continue about their normal day-to-day activities—the content has planted a seed and generated a lead.
Consideration: Establish Trust & Convince Them
During the consideration phase, the prospects identify their problem and seek a solution. Establishing trust is essential in this stage because prospects will not convert until they are confident your company is the right fit. Tactically, content with technical details that showcase industry expertise will help establish your company as a leader in the industry. An example is a case study video showing a project from start to finish, touching upon the design process, the craftsmanship involved, and the quality of materials used.
Conversion: Make the Sale
The final stage involves content that compels your target prospect to decide your company is the best one to build that fully equipped outdoor kitchen. Tactically, this could be a video of customers sharing their experience with your company. It would highlight the incredible moments they experience in their new beautiful outdoor space and their satisfaction with your crew’s work quality. Their testimonials serve as powerful social proof.
Basics of Writing Articles for Landscape Contractors
Writing original and value-driven content that appeals to the consumer’s perspective is challenging. It requires skill, expertise, insight, and a strong command of language. As a professional in the outdoor industry, you may be better at sharing key ideas with an experienced writer than you would be at actually doing the writing. Whoever writes the articles should do so with authenticity.
Put Together a Content Marketing Team
If your business has the time and resources, put together a team that can help with content creation. It doesn’t have to take up all their hours, perhaps, but recognition that certain team members will be responsible for content creation and an acknowledgment that a content marketing strategy is of value to the business.
Have an efficient process for writing, reviewing, and editing. Many landscaping contractors find that having someone in charge of the efforts is helpful, while initially the company owner may fill this role before eventually delegating it to someone else. Whatever you do, don't get bogged down by the little details as you can easily find yourself spending more time on this marketing effort than your core job. If it becomes too much, it's time to delegate or consider another approach to how your company produces content.
Many successful lawn and landscape companies outsource their content creation to ensure quality, but it’s not always within the budget initially. A quick review of writing fundamentals will help your team get started if this is the case.
Establish a Content Strategy
Effective content marketing occurs on a consistent, ongoing basis, and requires a content marketing strategy to make it happen. Strategizing involves creating topics and angles for content first and then organizing them in a cadence for distribution. To consistently create content, you’ll need a long list of ideas.
Planning your content one to three months in advance will ensure you have some wiggle room to allow for unforeseen circumstances that may interfere with your consistent content creation efforts. Many content marketing plans include a calendar that lists the angles of articles, emails, and social posts to keep the effort on track and to ensure variety of the type of content used and how it’s distributed.
Generating Content Ideas
Some landscape business owners find it challenging to come up with topics to write about, but you likely have more ideas than you realize. An excellent place to start is addressing some of your most frequently asked questions. An FAQ page on your website allows prospects to prequalify themselves, or you can use it as a tool by sending inquisitive customers a link to the webpage—ultimately saving you time and money by not having to be on the phone answering the questions yourself.
When content marketing is done right, your customers will find the information about your services and products intriguing and helpful. For each of your main service areas, consider what customers need to know, and you can come up with more topic ideas than you ever imagined you could produce. For example, for a lawn care company, you could have articles focused on fertilization, such as “benefits of lawn fertilization,” “signs my lawn needs fertilization,” “what’s included in a fertilization package?”, and so on.
Another helpful method for creating content ideas is to begin a Google search for a topic and review the search results suggestions. These tell you what people may be searching for, giving you insight into potential content topics relevant for your business.
Your team may enjoy getting involved in brainstorming sessions to come up with content ideas and topics. Ask team members to carry around a notebook and jot down any questions that homeowners ask when they’re out on the job—these are great starting points for content creation. This activity will provide a new perspective and lead to even more ideas.
-
STAY FOCUSED
Strong content takes time and effort to produce, and the ultimate goal needs to be clear. When a topic is too broad, it won’t serve the purpose that you intend it to serve. Instead, the article's point will become lost in a compilation of information that may even be helpful but doesn’t serve the overall purpose of your writing.
Keep your reader’s attention by having a laser focus on the topic at hand. Keep in mind that web content includes links to other content so that the reader can click to learn more about a subject rather than you covering all of its minutiae in every article that is somewhat related to it. Hence, links create a web of related information.
Create an Outline for Your Blog or Article
Planning is essential in creating helpful content, so start by putting together an outline that serves as the bare-bones structure of what you plan to cover in the article. Articles need to be at least 500 words for SEO purposes, and the outline needs to reflect the level of detail you’ll need to create content of this length. Logically arrange the topics, and then get writing.
Establish Your Landscape Company’s Brand Voice & Tone
A clear and detailed brand persona helps establish voice and tone. What are your target customer demographics? What are your business values?
Lawn and landscape contractors whose target customers are sophisticated, highly educated, and wealthy individuals will have a different brand and voice than contractors whose target customers are middle-class, blue-collar workers. With all of the varied connotations, word choice is essential in establishing voice and tone in your writing—different words connect with different audiences, and you have to meet your specific audience where they are.
SEO: Writing for Humans First, Algorithms Second
SEO will help people discover your business, so it does matter within the realm of appearing first in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It shouldn’t be the sole focus from a content marketing perspective, however.
It is more important that an article is easy to read, engaging, and has a conversational tone— that it was written for humans rather than algorithms. So, the content must be helpful, relevant, and written for the reader while also keeping the search engines in mind. It requires a balance of the two.
Using keywords and key phrases in strategic places within articles (the title in particular) will help SEO and requires some up-front research and expertise—many lawn and landscape companies recruit the help of an agency because of this. For the most effective results, especially over the long term, you would want to partner with an agency that specifically understands the landscaping industry and knows how to market your niche-specific business.
Readability: Stop the Scroll
Keep paragraphs relatively short, a few sentences or so. Breaking up the text with white space is an excellent practice to help the reader focus. Bullet points also help move the reader along through the article. Strategically placed graphics and images provide a brief break that inspires the reader to keep reading.
The Various Content Delivery & Distribution Methods: Which Is Best for the Lawn, Landscape, & Green Industry?
The most effective method of delivering content is via a blog and social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Your target customer persona will determine which platforms you use.
Identifying Your Target Audience
In the green industry, you’re likely to have two to three target audiences, depending on your niche: B2C, B2B, and potential employees. Is the content you’re working on for commercial decision-makers, residential customers, or top talent? The answer will influence everything—from the word choice to the delivery method.
You would not market to your commercial B2B prospects like your residential B2C customers, nor would you attract top talent by using the same strategies as you would with either of the others. Their priorities are different, so whatever topic you cover in your article needs to be niche specific.
Owned Media Channels: What Are They?
The channels that your company has complete control over are called owned media channels. They’re the channels on which you can freely publish, making it the easiest method of content distribution and delivery.
Your Website
Think of your website as the library where most of your content is housed. You can borrow the content to share on various platforms, but your website is the primary resource hub. You may need to set it up to appeal to both B2B and B2C audiences as the content they’re interested in will differ.
-
BLOGS
Blogs are one of the top content marketing formats, having the third highest ROI. Interest in this medium continues to grow—29% of content marketers plan to leverage blogs for the first time, and 10% are investing more in blogs than other formats. And blogs are getting longer, showing the average word count at over 1,100 words—a 42% increase in five years.
-
CASE STUDIES & TESTIMONIALS
Top landscaping firms feature in-depth case studies on their websites with professional photography and videography. They provide an opportunity for storytelling with details about the customer’s original problem or request, the company’s consultation and design process, the materials used, the crew who worked on the project, and the final product—sharing how the customer benefits from your work. Including customer testimonials within the case studies themselves and throughout your website provides the social proof necessary to move the prospect along the customer journey.
Storytelling is a powerful marketing tool. Stories allow prospects to form an emotional connection, effectively putting themselves in the scenario you’re presenting. They begin to think about how they would feel in a similar situation and start dreaming about life with a beautiful outdoor living area or outdoor kitchen of their own, for example.
From a recruiting perspective, the same concepts can apply. A case study may demonstrate an employee’s career path—where they started, where they’re at in their career, and their goals. For example, you could have a professional video produced that includes interview snippets with your crew. Some of the most impactful stories are where an employee starts as a general laborer and works their way up into management—showing the possibilities for career advancement and development while also highlighting a culture of growth.
Social Media Profiles
You can reach your B2B and B2C audiences on separate social media channels. The most effective platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
-
FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM
Facebook is the top platform for targeting homeowners, with 44% of users admitting Facebook influences their purchasing decisions. It’s a great place to draw traffic to your website by posting links to your blog posts and case studies.
Instagram’s focus on photos and videos makes it an excellent platform to post content throughout every phase of a landscape construction project or to show incredible before and after pictures of transformations with one of your lawn care accounts. It’s a digital “lookbook.”
Recruiting-wise, Facebook and Instagram are likely where you can target potential rockstar crew members. With 81% of adults in the U.S. having a Facebook account, your ideal employee is likely hanging out there.
-
As a social platform for professionals, LinkedIn is ideal for connecting with B2B customers and for recruiting leadership professionals. Sharing engaging content that speaks to professional goals and mindset will help engage this audience.
For example, you could share a blog post about how commercial snow and ice management services can help reduce liability risk. Commercial decision-makers aiming to keep costs low will be intrigued by what you have to say.
Email Marketing
Emails can be one of the most effective content marketing methods—if the content is valuable. Automation using a CRM or ATS makes reaching a targeted audience, whether prospects or recruits, easy. Click-through rates, sales, and unsubscribe rates will be key indicators of the success of an email campaign and direct future email content marketing.
Dynamic, personalized content makes emails more meaningful, and the numbers prove it. Brands that never or rarely use dynamic content see an email marketing ROI of 12:1 compared to 43:1 for brands that often or always include it.
What Are Earned Content Distribution Channels?
When third parties share your content for free, it is considered an earned channel.
Public Relations
Creating relationships with local media can be beneficial, especially if you serve the commercial sector. These relationships could mean free publicity on the new outdoor living area your company built at the local community college or a feature on your business’s seasonal displays for the local hospital. Put together a press release and distribute it, but you won’t have control over whether the media covers it.
Social Shares
When a customer, business partner, or local organization finds your quality content engaging, they may share a link to it with their audience via social media. It can be influential in reaching new people and gaining local followers.
Everything Landscape Contractors Need to Know About Paid Content Distribution Channels
Any time you pay to have your content optimized to reach more people, it’s a paid content distribution channel—essentially paid advertising.
Sponsored Content
When you pay a brand to create and deliver content on its owned distribution channels, it’s considered sponsored content. Often, this brand is regarded as a paid influencer. And while this may not be the first distribution channel that comes to mind in the green industry, it can still have an impact.
For example, if your local TV station has a segment on home improvement or relevant seasonal topics, your business could pay to have them create a piece on one of your projects. You could also provide tips about lawn care in the early spring, ultimately directing customers to your website for information about your services. The content is educational but also serves as marketing, such as what’s done in this sponsored video.
Paid Social Ads
Optimize your social media posts by turning them into paid ads that target a specific segment of your audience. LinkedIn offers numerous paid ad formats, as does Facebook. This method is a great way to repurpose content from your website.
Keeping Your Content Up-to-Date
Content creation never stops, but the great news is you can continue to build on the content you have already created.
People pay attention to when an article was published, and if they come upon your website and notice that your article about current paver patio design styles and trends is from 2002, you’ll see lightning-speed sessions with an increased bounce rate. It may be helpful if you keep the article updated with current trends each year.
Or you may want to avoid bringing up any issues that would date your content. Evergreen content is best because you can repurpose and reuse it to get the most out of every word, photo, or video. You may share it on your website first, link to it on your social media channels, and perhaps include a link in your email newsletter. When carried out strategically, content marketing becomes an investment with returns that grow with time.