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Are you struggling to get visitors to your detailing business website?
If you are, you’re not alone.
Many detailing professionals and shops are facing the same issue. Like them, you’ve probably built an awesome website and now you’re waiting for people to come.
The harsh reality, however, is that they won’t.
There are so many websites online, including those of your competitors. If you don’t want yours to go unnoticed, you need a clear marketing strategy. A content strategy to be exact.
Traditional vs. Content Marketing
Traditional marketing is basically pitching your services to potential customers through a variety of channels such as TV, print, direct mail, outdoor, etc. - whether they asked for it or not.
Content marketing is an alternative to this interruptive marketing strategy which often annoys, rather than compels consumers to do business with you.
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” - Content Marketing Institute
Put simply, content marketing is providing useful, reliable, and relatable materials that help your prospects and customers find solutions to their real-world problems.
The Benefits Of Content Marketing For Small Businesses
Don’t get us wrong, ads are a great way to reach new audiences, generate more leads and grow your customer base, but they can get expensive. Plus, ads are generally a short-term solution. As soon as you turn them off, leads stop coming in!
On the other hand, content marketing has plenty of long-term benefits for small businesses. To name a few:
1. Boosts SEO and website traffic
2. Builds customer trust
3. Positions you as an authority
4. Consistently generates leads
5. Nurtures customer relationships
6. Drives repeat business
7. Makes you a go-to resource
8. Fuels other online marketing efforts
Oh, and it’s completely free!
If this isn’t enough to convince you that you should consider content marketing, namely blogging, for your detailing business, here are a couple of stats to consider:
businesses that blog can expect a 126% higher lead growth than those that don’t
95% of offline businesses have had some success with content marketing
70% of customers would rather learn about a company through an article than any kind of advertisement
60% of businesses that blog acquire more customers than businesses that don’t
businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t
How To Get Started With Content Marketing
The key to content marketing for small businesses is having a strategy in place.
To create a content marketing strategy, you have to:
set SMART goals & establish KPIs
get to know your target audience
perform competitive research
brainstorm & develop content ideas
research & define target keywords
create an editorial/content calendar
and finally, create & publish your content.
All of this isn’t hard to do, but it does require a substantial amount of time and energy. And since we know these things are a luxury many small business owners like yourself don’t have - we did the legwork for you!
Free Resource: Article Skeletons for Detailers
The Undrdog Marketing Team came up with 24 topics for your detailing blog. Click here to get your own copy!
Each of the headlines is thoughtfully crafted and tested using a headline analyzer to ensure it instantly grabs the attention of your prospects. Each of the topics comes with 3-12 subtitles to include. All you need to do is write a short paragraph for each subtitle and boom - article done!
In case you’re worried that writing a couple of sentences isn’t as easy as it sounds - don’t be. All of the topics are things you, as a detailing professional, probably could (and do) talk about for days. Just relax and pretend you’re explaining something to a friend. Don’t obsess over style, grammar, and punctuation - just write. When you’re done, use a free tool like Grammarly or Quilbot to polish things out.
Let’s write an example article together. Then it’s off to you!
Example Article: 6 Reasons Why Car Washing Is More Important Than You Think
Safety
To ensure the safety of your passengers, other drivers, and yourself, you need good visibility all around. This means regular cleaning of all glass surfaces in your car as well as frequent tire washing because dirty tires reduce traction, which can lead to accidents and breakdowns.
Fuel Efficiency
While you might think it’s impossible that cleaning your car can improve mileage - it’s not. Dirt build-up on vehicles creates resistance which becomes greater the faster you go. However, if you wash your car and especially if you apply a protective coating, your car’s surface will become smoother and easier for air to flow over.
Damage Prevention
Cars on the road are exposed to all sorts of contaminants and weather conditions. And although things like dust, mud, salt, tree sap, UV rays, acid rain, and snow won’t cause immediate damage to your vehicle, they certainly will be an issue later down the line if left unchecked. Apart from your paint fade, you could be looking at chips, scratches, rust, and more!
Resale Value
As we mentioned above, if you neglect your car washing schedule, it’s inevitable that your car will suffer damage. Whatever the extent of this damage may be, it will take away from the resale value of a vehicle. And if your ride is in a really bad condition - you might not be able to find a buyer at all. Yikes!
Appearance
Well, this one is pretty self-explanatory. There’s nothing quite like driving around in a spotless, shiny car - am I right? Especially if you’ve got an important event (or a date!) coming up - a clean ride will help you make the right impression.
Well-Being
This ties in with our previous point. We all feel better about ourselves when our homes, offices, and cars are clean. It’s a natural confidence booster and anxiety reducer. Bonus points if you hand-wash your car at home - you’ll spend time outdoors and get some exercise in!
Call to Action (CTA)
Want to reap all the benefits of frequent car washing without the hassle? Leave it to the professionals. Get in touch with us at (Company name) to schedule an appointment right away!
Tips For Making The Most Out Of Your Blog
1 - Include Media
Break up the text in your articles with media to keep your audience engaged. You can use your own photos or resort to free stock images from sites like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels. Canva also has a decent selection of stock imagery. Apart from images, it’s a good idea to embed Youtube videos into your blog posts.
Pro Tip: Sign up for the free version of Canva to quickly and easily create original visuals for your detailing business using their massive template library.
2 - Focus On Keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines. If you include them in your content, it’s more likely that Google will rank it higher in search results.
We suggest you focus on long-tail keywords, at least in the beginning. Broad keywords like “car detailing”, “ceramic coating”, and “car wash” get searched for a lot, but they’re very hard to rank for due to the fierce competition. Long-tail keywords like “car detailing in Phoenix”, "ceramic coating installer" or "paint correction Arizona" are much easier to rank for and will bring the most relevant traffic to your website.
Pro Tip: Make sure to include keywords in titles & subtitles, image file names & alt text, as well as meta titles & descriptions to maximize SEO impact.
3 - Promote Your Content
When you publish a blog post, you want to get it in front of as many people as possible. The easiest way to do this is by sharing it on your social media profiles. On Facebook and Twitter it’s simple - write a short caption and post the link to your new article. Instagram doesn’t allow links in captions, but there’s a way around it. Share a post related to your new blog in your feed. Then share the post to your stories and add a link sticker to direct traffic to your website.
Pro Tip: Share new blog content as Google Business Profile posts.
4 - Connect With Links
Both inbound and outbound links can help you obtain higher domain authority. Inbound links are links that come to your website from other websites. Outbound links are those that take the reader somewhere else and can be internal or external. External links link to websites outside of your domain, offering another source of information. Internal links help readers find other related content on your site.
Pro Tip: If you want to get one step ahead of the competition, try one of these 10 link-building strategies.
In Conclusion
Writing an article and sharing it on your website won’t get customers running through your door the next day. However, consistently sharing valuable content with your audience will set your business up for success and pay off massively in the long run.
The best way to leverage content marketing is blogging. It helps you demonstrate your industry knowledge & authority, rank in search engines & reach a wider audience, and interact with customers to build trust & loyalty. Apart from all that, blogging regularly gives people a reason to come back to your website over and over again, increasing the chance that they’ll eventually become a customer!
With our free resource, if you commit to writing 2 articles per month, you’re set with content topics for a year. For those of you who are a little more ambitious and want to do 3 or even 4 articles a month, we'll be sure to prepare more article skeletons soon!
