How to Build Trust with Your Content Marketing
In the world of online marketing, content has been king for a while. Since the internet has outpaced traditional media, your online presence has become a critical way for your intended customer base to find and contact you – with the goal being they purchase more of your services. One of the key ways that happens in through search engines like Google, and Google has made it clear that it rewards websites that produce solid, original content.
What do we mean by content? Well, everything that you put on your website is some form of content. No doubt you have a page for news or specials, pages advertising specific services, and pages telling your customer base who you are and what makes your business special. It’s important to keep updating and adding to that content in order to both reach customers and build trust with them. How do you create content that does this? Here are our suggestions:
Define your growth goal – Since we are concerned with the auto shop market, making a profit is the goal, whether this is through greater market penetration, market expansion, product expansion, or something other strategy. Remember: if you do not define it and you do not understand it, you will not be able to achieve it. What you really want to accomplish? That’s your goal.
Identify your audience – Once you know your goal, you can easily figure out who your target audience is. It’s impossible to build trust with your online (or, for that matter, offline) audience if you do not understand them. Different auto shops have different clientele, although they may wish to attract another kind of customer as well. If your shop specializes in servicing hybrid vehicles, you have a different audience than an auto shop in a small town with a broader customer base. Geographically what people will respond to will vary as well. What does your audience want and what do they value?
Determine what kind of content your audience will respond to and what the response is – The second part of this suggestion in the most important part. You can easily troll or rile up your audience by writing something you know will make them angry or agitated. Why would you do that, though? What kind of blog posts or articles will get the attention of your readers and inspire them to call your auto shop or stop in? Write that.
Design your content around what you learn – Once you’ve figured out your goal, your audience, and what they want, give it to them. Make it interesting. Write stories they can relate to or explain common repairs in simpler language. Take photographs of open houses you have at your shop and tag your employees. Do short video tutorials for simple repairs your customer can do themselves. You may find out over time that what you thought your audience would respond to is different from what they did respond to, so pay attention to the feedback you get – either digitally in terms of hits or in person with your customers.
If you follow the above suggestions, you will have created a website that will attract an audience and keep them coming back to check out your updates and sales, and you will have done it in such a way that makes them view you as reliable or trustworthy. That can only help you accomplish your business goals in both the short and long term.
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