The Rise of Content Marketing

By using social media and blogging, solar companies can present themselves as experts in a competitive, wide-spread industry.

By Alyssa Pacaut

Within the past couple of years, content marketing has become an increasingly popular tool for marketers across all industries. Recently, eMarketer, a digital marketing company, ran a survey asking companies about their strategies and tactics. In 2012, 18.9 percent of marketers said that content marketing was their primary marketing tactic. This figure nearly doubled in 2013 to 34.8 percent and is expected to increase again next year.

Content marketing is the process of creating and curating content to educate your customers, which will ultimately convince them to purchase your products and services. “Content” is a fairly broad term that can mean anything from articles and videos to photos, white papers and infographics. For many small businesses, a content marketing strategy results in posting informational blog posts on a regular basis that are valuable to their customers.

A Success Story
A good example of using content marketing comes from Marcus Sheridan, co-founder of River Pools and Spas in Virginia. After watching the sales of his company dwindle to almost nothing, he embraced content marketing in 2009 and started writing informational blog posts that educate people about fiberglass pools.

The articles he writes are simple and straightforward. Most of them merely answer questions that customers typically ask, but other regular topics include pool maintenance how-to’s, reviews of new products and technology and general news about the pool industry.

By the time a potential customer picks up the phone, they are well-informed and already trust the company as a pool expert — making it that much easier for Sheridan’s sales team to close leads. Now four years later, River Pools and Spas sales have increased dramatically and the company’s website is the most trafficked of its kind.

Getting Started
When brainstorming ideas, gather your staff and have each person write down 10 to 15 questions that always come up. Within minutes, you should have enough topics for a year’s worth of blogging. Be sure to include a range from the most basic questions to more complicated or technical questions. This way you can appeal to a variety of consumers.

You may consider asking more than one team member to get involved with the company blog. While it exposes your blog readers to different voices and personality types in your office, it will also help spread the workload of creating content and allow you to post more frequently.

Finally, don’t worry too much about perfect grammar or writing journalist-worthy articles. If you talk to your customers in a casual tone, then write in the same way. If you are known for a great sense of humor or tend to be more formal, let that come through in your writing. A blog is the perfect vehicle to reinforce your brand and share your company’s personality with potential customers.

Build Trust, Build a Customer Base
As consumers become savvier and more people complete extensive online research before contacting a company, content marketing will become increasingly important. By regularly updating a company blog, you allow people to find you through organic online searches and, most importantly, gain their trust by reading through educational articles about your solar company, services and products. Getting started today with your content marketing strategy will generate more sales prospects tomorrow.

Alyssa Pacaut is marketing director at AMECO Solar, a solar installer based in Southern California. You can find her online posting content on AMECO’s blog at solarexpert.com/blog and the company’s social media accounts.

— Solar Builder magazine

[source: http://www.solarbuildermag.com/featured/content-marketing/]