Content Marketing vs Print Advertising for Built Environment Firms

Since it sits between advertising and news, content marketing can be easy to dismiss. But as sure as you don’t know which half of your marketing dollars works, dismissing the value of content marketing will slowly erode your ability to attract customers over time. In a conversation recently where I was discussing annual marketing goals with a client, I was told that the priority was to have the firm featured in an article in Traditional Home. First I was gobsmacked and then, I realized that the motivation for such a request comes from a desire for fame, not sales. It seemed worse to me that the desire is attached to a media platform that’s dying a slow horrible death, but I suppose it’s a good thing he did not want to be in Newsweek. It reminded me of a friend who sells broadcast advertising for CBS. Whenever he’s asked what he does for a living, he always uses the line “I make people famous.” Whenever I hear this, I think that may be true but what I do for a living is attract new clients. I also have a friend who is the owner of a regional business magazine and two years ago, over cocktails, she confessed that really, she was in the event business that happened to have a magazine attached.

Forward-thinking firms are moving their advertising dollars away from dying media outlets. Content marketing is restructuring the ¬media landscape into a place where companies sell services and products by producing educational articles, “How to” videos and info-graphics. Content marketing means becoming your publisher and informing your audience, and it is done at the expense of traditional media and outlets. Big brands have embraced content marketing as well as one-man shops for a few simple reasons, 

• Online results can be proven through tracking software
• It is less expensive than advertising and more effective than Public Relations
• You control the message and can micro-target an audience
• It works

When anyone is researching anything, the first step in the process is to conduct a search online. It is estimated by Google that a person interacts with a firm’s online marketing 30+ times before they ever initiate a personal contact. Gartner Research estimates that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship without ever speaking to a human and according to ComScore, we conduct an average of12 billion searches per month on the web in the United States.

You will find more statistics at Statista

For architects, interior designers, landscape and design-build firms, blogging is where content marketing can quickly demonstrate value and trackable sales results. Just a note on blogging. According to Hubspot, marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. When I say trackable, I don’t mean nebulas statistics touted by media outlets on demographics and distribution. I mean detailed specifics on the actions taken by actual people that resulted in a sale. At the risk of sounding like the Beverly Hillbillies,

Let Me Tell You A Story About A Girl Named Jane

Our fictional character Jane Smith, first found our clients website using the search term “Landscape Design Cape Cod” on Google’s search engine and clicked on our blog titled “Using Sustainable Plants In A Cape Cod Landscape Design.” Once she came to the website, she looked at seven pages for an average of 120 seconds each, at which point she clicked on a landing page where she exchanged her contact information for a list of “Cape Cod Native Plants” and then left the site. Jane then returned to the website three days later because she was automatically sent an email that linked to a new blog article titled “Hardscape Design For Coastal New England Properties”. Upon arriving at the website, she looked at four pages for an average time of 70 seconds per page, and she shared the blog article on her Facebook page. Over the course of nine months, Jane visited the website 15 times, and spent a total of 86 minutes reading articles, clicked upon 11 emails. She shared six pages of content on Facebook, shared eight images on Pinterest, and followed us on Houzz where she added three images to an Ideabook and asked a question. The result is that after conducting her research she picked up the phone and requested a meeting. An online portfolio of work was shared with Jane - we saw that she view the images. She then shared three portfolio images on social media, and she contacted us through email with where additional questions were answered and references were provided. One week later, following a second phone discussion on her project, she asked for a proposal from only one firm. This was done because of her trust in the firm demonstrated by the professionalism conveyed through the use of content marketing.

The above, in a nutshell, is the online portion of a basic content marketing strategy and to reiterate, it begins with frequent blogging. Now, I often hear from potential built environment clients that their competitors have portfolio driven websites that have limited content, and they do not blog. It is frequently used as a “proof” as a motive not to use content marketing as part of a sales strategy. The problem is that at best this is anecdotal, and often the examples used are for firms that have already attained a level of marketing awareness that places them on top of the list of large regional firms. These firms often advertise in three or more of the regional print magazines – in my area that would be, Boston Design Guide, Boston Home, New Hampshire Home, New England Home and about a half dozen more. I estimate an average cost of $3000 per issue for a half page ad 6X a year per magazine times three magazines for an annual total of $54,000. Now this does not include events, banner ads, magazine specific online portfolios and sponsorships which make the cost of a single marketing channel, print advertising, extremely expensive when you start to look into the effectiveness and a trackable return on investment.

So, How is a firm Without a $100K Budget Supposed to Compete?

Take out a second mortgage? Rob your 401k? Borrow from the kids college fund? Well, maybe but an investment in content marketing with an emphasis on blogging and email outreach would be less risky, less expensive and has the ongoing benefit of attracting prospects beyond the initial cost. Here’s why. Blog articles are evergreen. They will continue to generate leads long after the initial investment because they will forever live online. If your blog article provides the best answers to questions posed in a search query three years after publication, it will be featured in search results and clicked on. And yes, this is trackable. Print advertising, on the other hand, stops working a month or two following the release of an issue. Your brand awareness dissipates once you stop giving your hard earned cash to the media outlet. 

The second objection I hear most frequently is that it takes to much time to write the amount of content required for it to work and that no one can speak about my firm in the way that I can. Both are true but to use this as an excuse to keep feeding the advertising east is missing the point. Blogging is not about you. It’s about the prospect and the questions they have about your services. If you are writing “Post & Boast” blogs about your recent win, new hire or just how great your work is, you’re not getting found online, and no one is coming to your website to read what you have to say. I see the blogs falling under two categories, brand blogs, and educational blogs.

Brand Driven Blogs

Brand blogs provide information that helps people understand the personality of you and your company. They are about your approach to design and convey the influences on how you solve client’s problems. In the past, I’ve written articles on JB Jackson and the vernacular landscape, how perceptions of New York City have been influenced by Busby Berkeley movies like 42nd Street, and the difficulties of acquiring rights to the song Home by the Talking Heads. No one searches these blogs, but they help prospective clients better understand our approach to marketing using a sense of place. They add to your curricula vitae, but they’re not a good vehicle for traffic back to your website. This type of blog is best when it comes from a stakeholder at the firm. Jotting down ideas and source materials and then working with a professional copywriter is an effective way of accomplishing the goal but doing so will also require you to add personality to the article before it is published.

Educational Blogs

Educational blogs answer specific questions a client has when looking for your services online. These are topics where the source material is readily available. Let’s take our Jane Smith example. She want’s to know all that she can before dropping $150,000 on the landscape design for her vacation home on Cape Cod. She has an aesthetic in mind, modern, simple and she is looking for instructions on hiring a landscape architect. Blog articles and your online portfolio that help her with the answers to these questions will make her comfortable with your firm and encourage her to consider strongly hiring you. Here are a few article ideas off the top of my head. 

"What Do I Need To Know About Permitting For a Coastal Landscape Design?"
"Is Stone or Board Formed Concrete Retaining Walls Best For A Contemporary Home?"
"Is Reclaimed Granite Cobblestone Better Than Pea Stone for a Permeable Driveway?"
"How Long Does It Take a Landscape Architect To Create a Residential Design?"
"What To Know Before Embarking on a Landscape Design for a Waterfront Home"
The answers to these questions may be obvious to a landscape architect but to a homeowner that may embark on a design two or three times in a lifetime, they’re not. Educational blogs are our bread and butter. We can research source materials on the topics using ASLA, AIA, NAHB, and the rest of the alphabet soup. It makes blog articles lower in cost and allows for frequent publishing.

What Does Content Marketing Cost?

Educational blogs can be written for $100 per article when purchased in blocks of 52. Ideally, two articles a week should be published for you to get any traction. Having an email sign up so that people can receive your blogs in their inbox is a must. The cost to do this is just under $1,000. So for $11,400 a year you can jumpstart a blogging campaign that gets your content marketing efforts off the ground. Once you start to see traffic to your website increase, a marketing software program should be implemented. SharpSpring is a good choice because it’s lean, effective and inexpensive. The cost of the software is $500 per month and the initial implementation costs an additional $4,000 +/-. A total cost to set up a content marketing system, publish two blogs a week and start capturing and nurturing new prospects is under $22,000 annually. Compare this to $54,000 for print advertising and it’s a simple decision to make. Still not convinced, do what one of our clients did. Start with one blog a week and see if it generates visitors to your website. Three years ago they started content marketing start with one blog a week, and they saw visitors increase from 120 to 1200 in six months. They doubled down on the number of weekly blogs and published twice weekly. The result three years later is 22,000 visitors per month and an increased revenue of 22% in this calendar year. The cherry on top? They just bought one of their competitors who by the way, did not use content marketing.