As the whole world has went digital due to COVID-19, more and more law firms and title insurance companies have started to do more content marketing to help them rank better on search engines like Google and market their services on social media.
According to MailChimp: “content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.”
In other words, it helps brands get their “name out there” in a digital world.
This works for many businesses because most Google searches are questions, and articles are often the best way to answer those questions, so Google ranks them higher than, say, your website’s homepage.
However, since content marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy, we often see that companies have no idea how to do it properly.
Here are the top 5 things we’ve seen that will make your content marketing not effective:
1. Not making your content it local
As a service business, you likely have one or more areas that you service near your office locations. In other words, if you are a Title Company located in Missouri, you are likely not servicing Florida.
Now that most computers and mobile devices can be geolocated, Google and other search engines automatically localize search results.
So when you search Google for “Restaurants”, it actually searches for “Restaurants near me.”
This is why it is really important to localize your content on your website. Have pages titles that include the cities, towns, and neighborhoods you commonly service. Include those same locations in your page content.
You don’t have to go crazy with it or be 100% complete and list every neighborhood in your region. But having a few localized keywords will be a huge driver for your overall search engine rankings.
2. Not sharing your content
All too often we see customers write amazing content, publish it to their blog, but never do anything with it. Publishing a blog can help your search engine optimization over the long term, but does nothing for you immediately.
To get the most out of your content and get it in front of your target audience, email the blog to your list and share your unique content in social media. It gives your content the initial push it needs to get going.
Think of a child, learning how to ride a bike. Their parent typically gives them a push and runs alongside them for a few moments. But to have them start themselves and stay balances from being stopped is really difficult.
Similarly, putting your content in front of your audience via highly the consumed channels of email and social media gives your content greater momentum.
3. Not reusing it
The other thing to mention here is that you can and should share it more than once!
It is often a misconception that you write something and share it once and then it is dead.
The fact of the matter is that on social media, the people who see your post this month are not going to be the same people who see it next month.
We have several really popular articles that we wrote 3-6 years ago. Those same articles have been slightly updated, and reshared a couple of times per year, and still bring us prospective customers to this day.
4. Not running ads to your content
One great way to reuse your content to get long-term mileage from it is to run ads to your most popular articles.
For example, on Facebook you can run ads to your blog posts for pennies per click to groups of people in your target markets.
You can also run retargeting ads for small budgets of around $100-200 per month that will show your posts to people who have visited your website at the bottom of news articles across the web.
5. Not making your content unique
This is probably the biggest challenge most businesses have. As a title agent or attorney, your time is best spent working on tasks that pay the bills such as closing files and billable hours with clients, not writing articles.
Why is unique content important?
Although content that isn’t unique can and does often rank well, Google does give priority to unique information. However, unless you really have a passion for writing, making website content unique can seem like a huge mental undertaking.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be difficult. Making unique content can be easily achieved a few different ways:
Hire it out
Find a qualified writer or marketing agency that can produce full-length content in your voice. Often you just need to provide content outlines, and the writer will complete the rest. If you don’t like to write or don’t have time to do it, this is a great way to get it done consistently. Keep in mind, it may take 3 to 6 blogs for the writer to fully learn and represent your voice.
Film or record it in real time
Maybe you hate writing but find that you are better behind a camera. Pull out your iPhone or Android and film a quick video, then post to YouTube and your website (or send it to your webmaster to upload for you)
Even better, take that same content and have it transcribed then posted as blog content to reuse it. Repurposing and reusing content is a great time-saver.
Avoid making these mistakes
Although more title companies and law firms are becoming aware of the benefits of content marketing, we are also seeing these common mistakes.
The nice thing about content marketing is that you don’t need to solve all of these at once. Pick a couple to improve upon and you may start seeing more results sooner than you think. The important thing with content marketing is just consistency.
Title Tap has been developing websites and content to drive client leads for almost a decade. We specialize in building compelling marketing tools and content for professional services organizations including Title Agencies, Underwriters, Attorney offices, and more.
To learn more about how we can grow your leads generation and client attraction, click here to schedule a no-cost consultation with one of our senior team members.