 When you're thinking about your site, always thinking about what are the questions my audience has, whether that's about a product or whatever it might be, what about pricing things of that nature, like supplying those answers to the questions that they have is going to improve the experience they have. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, sitting right across from my co-host, Beth Bopiklav, and today we're going to be talking about content. We talk a lot about content here at Vend Meo, but today's show, we're going to be talking about content you need to be thinking about heading into this next year. There's some trends and changes that we're seeing in reference to what the audiences in the Building Products channel are looking for and reference to content from manufacturers, and we want to make sure that we're giving that to you so you can be planning for 2022 and thinking strategically about what type of information you need to present to your audience and, more importantly, how you present that information. It's not just the content information itself, but how that content is delivered. So before we ever talk about content, we usually give you the little speech that I'm going to give you right now, which is content is so much more than what goes on your blog. It's basically any medium that you use to get your product and your marketing out there. So that means content includes, of course, your website, but it also includes what you post on social media. Content includes video. It includes infographics. It includes imagery. Anything that someone looks at and gets more information about your product and your company, that's considered content. And so that's how we're going to be approaching it today. We're not going to talk about the 10 blog article titles that you need, but we are going to talk about the five types of content that you need to be creating in 2022. And, frankly, guys, this could be for any year. Like, this is just content you should be creating, but let's talk about the new year since it's upon us. Well, I think it's important to hear too, Beth. Like, we're not just saying, hey, content is safe content. It's in reference to what we see that's changing in reference to consumer trends, what we see it's changing in reference to our audiences. And frankly, what does the data say that we see on our end from the work we do in the space? The first type of content that we recommend that you really consider having this next year is video. Now, we understand, we talk a lot about video. We just had a great podcast about that. But when you say video, we're really referring to how we create video in a way that people are consuming it differently. If you look at the data, the social media channel that's grown the most over the last two years, more than any other channel out there in terms of usage and time, is actually YouTube. And what YouTube is doing is YouTube, and if you go to Google and you search for something like how to do this or how to do that, which a lot of contractors and pros are doing, YouTube is actually allowing people to view specific sections of videos, not just like the entire video, hey, here's this video about X, Y, Z. They'll show you the portion of the video that you want, like, hey, for minute 108, 2 minute 153. They'll show you the answer to what you're looking for in that space. And so what this is really bringing about is chapters and information within video structure that are giving audiences information they want in a much quicker amount of time. We've all seen those videos before that are super long. Even though the content on the video isn't long. Yes, we've all seen that. It's the big intro, the big outro, the big introductions. Yeah, and I think that's what we're seeing is so when you think about playing that video content, it's not just, hey, we need a about us video or we need an installation video. It's thinking about the specific micro questions that your audience has and either A, breaking those into small little tidbit videos like I always reference Simpson's Strong Tie. They do a great job at this. Like if you're looking for a great example, go check out their YouTube page. Their YouTube page has like two, three minute videos. Like that's it. But like dozens of them, but they're all questions that their audience has. Like that's the type of video content that we need to be thinking about. What else, Beth? What else would you add to that? Yeah, so I think a long lines with that is taking the opportunity of when your product is on a job site. So if you have trusted contractors or trusted builders that you partner with on a regular basis or that your sales person has a really good relationship with, just ask them to get out your phone and talk about what's it like to have your product on the job site. Get the quick video of your product being installed. It's not a fancy studio. It's not a fancy actor or really even an influencer. These are real builders, real contractors having their hands on your product, installing it in a real life project. That is something that's going to resonate, frankly, sometimes even better than a highly produced video because your audience is going to see that like, okay, this is the exact same experience that I would have and you really can build some trust and it doesn't have to be refined. Let your team take care of what the editing is, but just ask for that content and you can get really, really good insights. Beth, who else do you think is doing a good job at video? Yeah, so interestingly, QuickCrete does something very similar to Simpson Strongtide. They're also one that we talk about pretty regularly because they do that exact same thing. They do highly hyper focused content. Here's how to use QuickCrete for installing a post. How to use QuickCrete for a quick sidewalk or pavers or something like that, but they're also just a few minutes. We talked about this recently, but one of the things if you notice that they're on their YouTube channel is those really hyper focused videos, they have tons and tons of views, but then they kind of went off in this very creative trail where they interview the homeowners of today and they only have a couple thousand views. They just didn't resonate because it didn't feel authentic. That's fine. It was probably a great idea and I understand where you're going. You want to be a bit more approachable to homeowners, but that's not why I'm here. One of the strategies here, too, is to be thinking about, and we're talking about video, which we're obviously leaning heavily into YouTube, and you can obviously repurpose this on other platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Yeah, absolutely. But if you're thinking about, hey, what type of video content should I be creating? There's great tools out there that you can use for YouTube. We can link to that in the show notes for this episode that help you understand, well, what are people searching for? So let's say you do sell concrete like QuickCrete, or a product that is in that space, or let's say you sell something in reference to roofing or cladding or something of nature. You can go and use these tools to help you understand what type of topics are people searching for. So you don't spend a bunch of time and resources and go, hey, let's build this video and you don't get any views. That's what we all want to avoid. So coming up with content that's not only relevant to your brand but also people are searching for is going to introduce your product into new potential eyeballs as well as people who are searching for that at the same time. Okay, let's quickly talk about promoting your videos. If you're going to be sharing the content that you're creating, the video content you're creating on social, we would really recommend that you upload the video directly to the social platform. So don't share a link to YouTube on your Facebook but actually upload the video to Facebook because Facebook will recognize the difference between a link to YouTube that's going to take somebody out of the platform and they will deprioritize that in the newsfeed versus a video that they know will keep somebody in the platform because they know videos keep eyeballs on it. So you'll get, first of all, exponentially more reach and more views on your video that way and also it potentially increase future engagement on your organic social because they engaged with the video. Excellent. Beth, what's the next content type that I'm going to be planning for going into 2022? Okay, I said we weren't going to talk about blogs but the next content is blogs. But what's the difference? Like not just blog content, what's the difference between, let's say, a blog that maybe somebody's done in the past and what they need to be thinking about and doing it differently this next year. First of all, you market to different types of audiences even if you are only targeting contractors and you're like, Beth and Zach, the only people I care about as contractors, can I just do one specific type of content? I'm really sorry but the answer is just probably no. While you can group people in and say contractors prefer X type of content, everybody is a little bit different. And so you don't want to pigeonhole all of your resources into a single type of content creation. So that's where blog content comes in and it's often the one that feels just the easiest to tackle and if that's the case for you, do it. Okay, so where do you start? That's always kind of the question. One place that we're starting to recommend and seeing some really good untapped potential is actually in FAQ pages. FAQs are like this catch-all for gold mine questions. I've always kind of had a specific feeling against FAQ pages. I know it's really shocking that I have a strong opinion but the fact that you are taking these questions that you know you always get and then they're just kind of hidden in this random page that's sometimes difficult to find on your website is a bit of a mystery because really what that should tell you is if these are questions your customer has frequently, as the name would imply, you need to be saying them loud and proud and that's where I would start. In 2022, look at your FAQs and let that be your content calendars guide. Get your sales team to give some input. Maybe grab some feedback or testimonials from a recent happily satisfied audience or customer and get that content out there so that you can start speaking to those questions and even potentially ranking in search for those questions because that's the other part. If it's a frequently asked question that means it's potentially a frequently Googled question and your FAQ page may not be showing up but if you have an entire blog post dedicated to it with imagery and external links maybe even video, that's going to show up in search and that's going to get you more traffic and more customers. What we were talking about this morning before the podcast is that people, they use the internet in question form meaning like I go to Google because I have a question I go to Amazon because I want to potentially buy a product I have a question about what's the right product I want to get something to me we use internet in question form when you're thinking about your site always thinking about what are the questions my audience has whether that's about a product or whatever it might be what about pricing things that nature like supplying those answers to the questions that they have is going to improve the experience they have and it also helps you position yourself as somebody who's in their mind if you will that you know what problems they're running into which also aligns with that YouTube strategy as well saying hey what are the questions people have how can I supply that to them how can I get the answers to the questions they want and then tie that into your SEO as well as even let's say you've got a chat or search feature that's going to help people get questions they want answered quickly and position you as that authority in the space because you've got the best information out there right so don't hide from the things people ask put that forefront in the center make sure it gets indexed in Google and see what happens from as soon as you get into it what's next so next on our list is influencers there was definitely a time and space two years ago Zach where the question around influencer marketing was really strongly on the table we have people asking us about it regularly should we even bother is this about to die I love that about digital marketing everybody thinks everything about digital marketing is about to die what we've seen in the last 18 months is a like complete pendulum swing to the other side where basically influencers have solidified themselves as a pivotal piece in marketing across all industries but also significant in the building materials industry so you don't have to put all of your resources here you don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to you know get Joanna gains to use your product and install but it is something to look at as a way to get your product in front of your target audience especially if your audience is hard to target online contractors builders notoriously difficult to get in front of but they follow and are incredibly active on social as we talk about all the time so influencers are an incredible way to leverage and basically offer peer-to-peer reviews and instill trust in an audience that may be a little a little hesitant to give a new product a new try well I like you know one thing I like about the strategy here Beth with influencers is you get a lot of questions that people have about your product that if you were to answer it they probably wouldn't believe you because like it feels self-serving so like a good example this is like hey you know let's say your name of your brand is ACME like ACME product reviews for example so if you have a review of your product on your own website people like okay like of course you're gonna think your product is great and I can believe you but if you have an influencer that does a review on it it's seen as authoritative because they are a third party and the benefit to you is they probably will rank for that particular search term so you can get SEO implications right as well as it's just good promotional content for you to promote your product because they're talking about it so thinking about how you can double dip in terms of hey someone promoting your product talking about it as well as what are the questions people have and then ranking for those things and leveraging that relationship is where you see the biggest impact because you're not just hey someone holding your products and this product is great you're thinking about all the different possible ways you can extend and you know leverage and repurpose that content that review or that influencer content to help you succeed more online next one this is okay so it's a little different and we're starting to see this pop up in other spaces outside of building products which is why we want you to be thinking about it but it's like very short how-to videos and gifts an example of this for example is like I can see your product on your product page so I see a photo of it you know here's my product but like very quick short tidbits of like this is how it's used so examples of this are like you see on Milwaukee drills website as you scroll down the walkie drills website one of the drill product pages you're going to see the drill and use like in this little micro video format where it shows the drill being used not just showing me hey here's this pretty pretty drill you know isn't it great they're showing me an action they're not just telling me information they're giving me a story you're seeing this in other cpg related areas too like Harry's Razors if you go to their product pages they have like a 10 second video loop of some guy shaving his face you know it just quickly loops shows that shows the video it shows me the product in action these kind of little micro bits of content is on micro video or micro imagery gifts are are popping up everywhere because obviously we have more access to broadband and you know our computers are faster our internet's faster and so if you think about it in terms of your content you should be thinking of this on your product pages as well as even another any how-to videos a good example of this in the building product space is Rustoleum they have a lot of great how-to videos like hey here's how you do X Y Z DIY project it's very DIY focused but they don't just show you a picture of their product being used on say a DIY project they're showing you a quick gift on the how-to page of that product being used how it's used so you can get a sense of that oh I feel like I can do that this is helpful to any audience not just DIYers it's helpful to contractors builders who might be very quick how-to videos and gifts that can loop to help educate the audience without a lot of click involved that's the other part of it and the reason why I love it it's non-committal as you go to a page I'm not having to click to commit to watch a video it's already rolling I can already see it and people are digesting the information quickly it's all about speed yeah so one other place that these gifts can come into play is actually being able to more quickly display how your products are made in the literal manufacturing process we've seen a molding manufacturer who they did pre-painted moldings and they wanted to really like drive home the fact that it was triple painted and that was a differentiator for them I think their competitors typically had two ply and there was three ply coating for them so they did a gift of their moldings going through the paint sprayer on the conveyor belt and this is great content because one it's just literally entertaining to watch like it's interesting to watch paint get dry or sprayed onto something not paint dry but sprayed but it really drove home the difference because you could see that when it went in with the second layer how important and crucial that third layer of paint actually was and really made their differentiation a lot more tangible versus just having a bullet point on their product page like you normally would that just says like you know three layers of primer applied during manufacturing or something like that actually show to you yeah exactly you know I saw another video that somebody that did this recently too is a brick company but it's kind of like a stickwood stickwood you can like you know quickly paste on wood veneer on it on a wall this one's a little bit more involved you still are using some sort of you know adhesive material for this brick masonry but they show it as like a DIY product or a very quick install project for a builder as well as a homeowner and they have like looping videos of like looping videos oh look how easy it is like somebody is actually looping you know quickly applying this masonry I can quickly do it you know it's like very it was for me as I was watching going oh like wow I could potentially do that even though I never maybe done masonry because this person is doing it very quickly easily I get the idea much more quickly when you're marketing creeps into actual entertainment you're not buying that product but you watch that video a lot like that's when you know you're really doing something right now the fifth one this is all you this is all me so okay so hear me out so if we think about you know building products we're very focused on like here's my product here's the benefit here's the facts here's the solution right and people will pay attention especially like people in the trade and people in our industry they care about performance things like that but if you really want to be memorable if you really want to do something what you're seeing in advertising is everybody like if you watch the Super Bowl for example everything for the most part is either like deeply emotional like going to make you cry or it's going to make you laugh and I think where there's opportunity for manufacturers is to figure out how they can interject a level of personality more specifically humor into their brand so we've seen things of last year of brands that become widely successful because they have some level of humor around their brand like memes you know we are in like this meme culture like you've you heard that Beth yeah absolutely and like we passed around memes around our office but like why not lean into that a bit and lean into the fact that like hey there's funny aspects of the trade or of architecture it is finding ways to create humor in your in your brand whether it's on your social or in your emails whatever it might be people love that because it adds a level of humanity and personality well it speaks to the community like I am you know it's never funny to explain a joke but like memes are funny because they're speaking to a shared experience and the trades people that the industry targets they have this shared experience in a number of different ways right and there's a huge opportunity to lean into it like you're saying Zach and become become more personable become more approachable you kind of meet them on their level like we get it this is funny this is frustrating this is ridiculous that this still happens but it happens to all of us and let's like talk about it and laugh about it and own it instead of just the facts right because I mean you can't fake you can't fake a laugh you know like and if you make somebody laugh like they're going to remember that moment yeah so although that might make you feel uncomfortable if you can find ways to interject humor watch how your audience responds guarantee you they might bring it up like I gave a talk recently about marketing to a group of people in the building product space and I interjected like I don't know four or five memes in my presentation and like it was like the only thing people wanted to talk about they were exceptionally well chosen well they're like one of them I came up with a few of my own but like it doesn't matter like people like oh my gosh I love that meme you didn't like well what about the content so either maybe my contents bad or like the memes are just that good who knows but like people they resonate with that because it makes them laugh it makes them feel like you understand them and it creates as you said that the creates community right yeah all right let's do a bonus bonus let's hear what's what's your bonus Beth my bonus is content that's not actually in your control but content you should go out and start getting in its reviews the people want it give the people what they want well you talked about this with influencers too like reviews outside your website as well as reviews on your website this has become we've seen this in the data like we did that research recently we did with the farms with group where we did research on architects who you think would look at reviews architects with commercial and residential are searching for reviews across the web on products both on Amazon even if they're not going to buy them on Amazon they want that social validation and one validation from other people and so making that a part of your content strategy is really really important yeah I mean it's I think it just has to be said that we talk about the Amazon effect all of the time and that often relates to speed and let's not forget that's still very real but one of the ways that Amazon has also impacted is just given the assumption it's taken for granted it's assumed reviews are going to be readily available and pretty thorough I mean the reviews on Amazon and the level of just intensity or the level of I should say detail that goes into reviews or that's expected to be into reviews today is pretty high and so we would just encourage you as you go into 2022 reviews don't magically appear you're not going to have 50,000 five-star reviews by the end of the year maybe you are that's awesome but that's not even the expectation what we're telling you is this is the time to start you need to start offering reviews making them easily accessible but also in order for that to happen you've got to ask set up a way for people to give you reviews whether that's through a third party like TrustPilot or turning on your Facebook reviews and then doing a campaign that way but this is the year guys people want it let's give the people what they want that's great so I hope you all found helpful insights in these five plus bonus content ideas for you heading this next year if you've got questions about this if you have questions about content ideas or how you should be doing strategy feel free to drop us a note at podcast at venue.com we respond to all these emails we get I'm Zach Williams alongside that puppy glove thanks everybody