Landscape & Hardscape Building Product Manufacturers: You Need Tons of Content—Here’s How to Get It
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
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Building product manufacturers in the landscape and outdoor living industry face specific challenges when it comes to content marketing. You need to sell products to a new generation of landscape contractors, dealers, and ultimately homeowners. But given the fact that there are numerous, very different segments , creating content and deploying that content to persona-specific audiences is no easy initiative.
In this jam-packed field guide, we take you behind the scenes of the exact framework that empowers our clients to produce industry-specific content at scale. Enter scalable content marketing solutions that move the needle on brand—and sales.
The Challenge With Content Marketing in the Landscape and Outdoor Living Industries
Certain product categories lend themselves easier to promotion via content marketing. Think small widget manufacturers who sell via a direct-to-consumer model. They own all their end-customer data and can easily develop user-generated content campaigns. What their product looks like when it lands in the customers’ hands, well, it looks like it did when it left the factory. Easy-peasy, right?
Contrast that with the challenges you face daily in the landscape/hardscape materials industry.
A leading manufacturer of premium pavers, for instance, faces a much more complex supply chain that stands in the way of ease of content marketing. The product is commonly sold to landscape contractors exclusively through an extensive and complex dealer network. These dealers range widely in account size, maturity, and marketing sophistication. While they are critical to business process management (BPM) market share and growth potential, they stand in the way of a better understanding of—and connection to—the end user.
Add to this equation that the landscape contractor purchasing the pavers from your authorized dealer is also not the end user. It quickly becomes understandable why sourcing any regular content, not to mention the sheer volume of content needed today, seems like a daunting task. How do you tell the stories around your product, show them in an ideal light of a finished installation setting, and most of all, do it consistently with a scalable framework? It’s not easy, but the challenge is worth facing.
Here’s the thing. Content marketing works. We see the results daily, as do the other brands producing content at scale. In the words of Seth Godin, a leading marketing thought leader and New York Times best-selling author:
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
Nowhere is this more true than in the day-to-day marketing operations of manufacturers of luxury landscape and hardscape products that make up the outdoor spaces of businesses and homes everywhere.
The 3 Vital Truths of Content Marketing for Landscape & Hardscape Manufacturers
Content marketing success cannot be realized before three truths are understood. And how well you execute these truths is literally going to determine where your business lands two, five, or 10 years down the road.
Leading companies produce massive amounts of the right types of content.
The content must be distributed effectively for maximum customer engagement and public attention.
Understanding why documenting and telling the story of the products you produce is paramount to the objective of standing out among your competitors in the current and future marketplace, as well as growing loyal fans across your (B2B) and (B2C) audience channels.
Let’s dive in and learn how to execute correctly across all three areas.
The Foundational Model: Understanding the Content Pyramid
After spending time inside some of the leading landscape BPMss, it becomes clear that cracking the content code has been top of the list for quite some time. Many approaches were launched, most not successful long term. That is because the processes and team members it takes to produce adequate amounts of the right types of content consistently can be daunting.
A deep commitment to content as a strategy and understanding why the right content types matter is foundational. Equally critical is to assemble a team that understands how the different types of content work together to build a unified voice for the brand. And it all starts with what we refer to as pillar content.
Pillar Content: What Is It?
Pillar content is long-form content that serves as the crux of your overall campaign efforts. Ideally evergreen, its value is overarching and relevant for long periods of time. Pillar content sits at the top of the content pyramid, allowing additional, complementary content to be produced from this main effort. This content comes in many forms, including written, video, graphics and photography, and audio.
Some examples of pillar content landscape BPMs could include:
Videos from landscape contractor seminars, dealer events, product releases/demos, installation instruction, etc.
Podcasts, likely geared toward the B2B audience
Case studies, often composed of video and written components
Long-form written content such as guides or inspirational catalogs
Webinars
EBooks
Pillar content is powerful because it serves as the content foundation upon which you will build out many, many pieces of micro-content. But it also serves other purposes. Pillar content should:
Provide value to your customers (the dealers and landscape contractors you want to do business with for B2B efforts and the homeowners on the B2C side)
Connect with your customers on an emotional level
Increase your business’s know, like, and trust factor
Raise awareness for the products your company produces
Provide a glimpse into your company’s mission, purpose, and goals
We will dive into how to create dynamic pillar content in just a moment. But first, let’s talk about the next component of the content pyramid—micro-content.
Micro-Content: What Is It?
Micro-content is shorter-form content created using smaller pieces or segments from your pillar content. For instance, it may be optimized and produced as additional written content for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Or it may be created to fuel the social media publishing calendar. Regardless of the exact end use, micro-content is key to maintaining consistent content production every week, quarter after quarter, and year after year.
Some examples of micro-content for landscape/hardscape manufacturers could include:
Weekly blog articles
Dynamic short-form video content for top-of-funnel engagement for paid social
Images
Quote cards
Instagram and Facebook Stories
Mashups
Remixes
GIFs
Micro-content is powerful because it maximizes the return on investment (ROI) of producing your pillar content, squeezing every bit of value from the core spend. You create micro-content with the intent to share it on all of your relevant social media platforms. Serving a few vital purposes, this type of content varies in its purpose. Questions to ask yourself and your team while reviewing micro-content include:
Does this educate or entertain quickly, in small digestible portions?
Is this content piece easily shareable and accessible by dealers, contractors, and/or end users of our products in their associated target markets?
Does it consist of the short bits or snippets from our pillar content that we think will resonate the most with our audience?
Does it steer customer attention toward our pillar content, website, and ultimately, the target key performance indicators (KPIs)?
Now that we’ve covered the two most basic, vital types of content forms your business needs to create, it’s time to discuss exactly how to create this content. Let’s jump into this, starting with pillar content.
Sourcing the Content You Need: Where Does It All Come From?
This fundamental question poses many challenges for many manufacturers . Producing a video case study here and there of projects that feature your modular outdoor kitchens, for example, is not a terribly daunting effort. Most leading producers tackle this sporadically each year. But this is an outdated approach to content generation that is more aligned to the days of TV commercials than the content-hungry social media campaigns of today.
The sheer volume of content needed to fuel an effective omnichannel approach creates a challenge that few companies have overcome. So what is the answer? Let’s break it down, starting with pillar content.
How Can Landscape/Hardscape BPMs Create Effective Pillar Content Consistently?
How is pillar content produced consistently? Simply put, by documenting. Many of the things you are likely doing already as a manufacturer can be turned into content gold, while some initiatives may need to be freshly stood-up. For example, use your smartphone to take photos of your beautiful showroom or an inground pool completed using your products. No matter what, the secret to getting ahead in the content marketing game is getting started.
3 Pillar Content Examples
Sometimes the best way to remove the vagueness around the mysterious “content” word is to look at things tactically. Here are some specific examples of how you can produce compelling pillar content that will speak to your audience, help you grow your brand, and ultimately lead to greater product sales and business growth.
Example 1: A Video Product Demonstration
Let’s say you’re a paver and segmental wall manufacturer, producing products in a wide range of colors and textures. Let’s also say that you want to grow the number of landscape contractors in your certified/authorized contractor program.
You are selling your products through your authorized dealer network, which primarily sells those hardscape products to contractors who install them in many different settings (outdoor kitchens, paver patios, or driveways) and in many different design styles.
One tactical idea for a piece of pillar content would be to create a long-form video presentation (think 20 minutes or so). There should not be a set length but rather a goal of effectively communicating the story and key points to show winning product combinations of complementary texture and color finishes across wall and paver products. Highlight how the different product lines span many different landscape design aesthetics, from rustic to elegant. A contractor’s design toolbox for your products, if you will.
For this example, including the different nuances of the varying design style is a crucial content planning component because if you cover, say, three main design styles, the pillar can be organized and spit up into design style-specific micro-content that can be used to fuel hyper-geographical paid social campaigns.
For instance, if one of the styles covered is a rustic look, then when you split that two-minute clip from the pillar video, you can use it for campaigns in distribution areas that most align based on the geographical location itself. In this example, you would run that ad set in more rural areas. The homeowners in beautiful wooded and lakeside areas often desire rustic-style outdoor living spaces. See, content success is a game of not only great content but context. The more personalized the content is, the more engagement and conversions there will be. This is proven in paid social campaign analytics time and time again.
This example is an excellent illustration of how, from a pillar-feeding-micro standpoint, the more ground you can cover in the pillar, the more diverse the applications of the micro-content can become. With this one pillar video demonstration, the landscape materials manufacturer addresses both contractors and homeowners, covers a variety of different style aesthetics for greater personalization efforts in future micro-edits, and promotes numerous products without coming across as overly salesy.
Just for fun, let’s take this little example even a step further. What if this product demonstration was offered as a contractor event and hosted at a large volume distributor? Now, the manufacturer has created an in-person event (perhaps to grow their certified contractor program), rewarded one of their valued dealers with increased promotions and foot traffic, and filmed the whole thing to create this compelling content. And that is why we say the power of content is far-reaching and, when done well, can tie into a diverse collection of business KPIs.
Example 2: A Keynote at an Industry Event
Let’s say that you, the director of marketing for a pergola manufacturer, will be at an industry event and that you will give a speech about the state of the landscape design space.
Sure, you could talk about a bunch of numbers, how the economy has affected the business, the features of some of your newer products that are getting ready to hit the market, and so on.
Or you could stand up and use this as an opportunity to ask some serious questions about what people truly desire when they hire a landscape contractor and make decisions about their landscape project.
What factors are driving design decisions in the outdoor living space? Why are people choosing the types of pergolas, pavers, outdoor appliances, and water features that they are choosing---and how could the market be improved?
Maybe you share a personal story about when you built your first outdoor living space in your earlier years. You might talk about how your wife/husband really wanted aluminum fencing but that you couldn’t quite swing the extra cost back in those hungrier days and had to go with a more economical chain link fence.
So today, 20 years later, the company has rolled out a solution for this. They want people to have access to more fencing options at consistent entry-level price points that will give customers a look they truly desire without increasing the price point by a huge, inflated figure.
If you had instead stepped up to the podium and given a math-oriented speech filled with facts, figures, and features, it would have been outdated and irrelevant before the next product line drops in the spring. Sure, you can pepper some of these aspects into the talk so that it is connected to the here and now for the audience, but understand that pillar content has the potential to live forever.
Creating an evergreen and story-driven talk will significantly increase the return on your investment from a content marketing perspective. Maybe 10,000 people will watch that keynote later, after you’ve published it on YouTube, and they’ll really resonate with the personal story you told about fencing. And because it’s largely evergreen, 10 years later and long after newer offerings have replaced those particular products, 1 million additional people may find and watch that video and still connect with the stories and feel the emotional impact.
Example 3: An eBook or Guide: A Deep Dive Into a Topic
Perhaps a composite decking manufacturer has recently released a new product collection available in several new colors. Let’s put pillar content to work as part of the launch effort with a long-form content guide showcasing the materials and design principles behind the amazing outdoor spaces people see in the magazines.
In this case, the guide could be a downloadable brochure explicitly produced for the homeowner customer segment. It is jam-packed with lush, high-resolution photography and graphic components showcasing jaw-dropping backyard projects. It’s created using this new decking product line as the feature and sporting many of the other products the company produces, such as railings and cladding.
A substantial offering that feels like it has weight to it, this guide has everything a homeowner could need from inspiration on through action—information on how to find a dealer near them, tips for hiring great contractors, and even installation best practices so that the consumer is more educated about their project overall.
This is much more than an advertisement for someone getting ready to embark on a backyard makeover. It’s literally the holy grail of design ideas. It’s so useful and inspirational that even people who aren’t using your products will want to read it because of its incredible value.
Strong Pillars Equals Strong ROI
From a content marketing perspective, these ideas serve as examples of how leading companies can get the maximum return on investment with pillar content. This is how you build that know, like, and trust factor while also fueling the content pipeline. When in doubt, produce honest, story-driven, passionate content that brings value and solutions to your dealers and contractors.
Now that we’ve gone a bit deeper into how to create pillar content, let’s dig deeper into micro-content and discuss how to create it to work with your pillar content.
Producing Micro-Content: The Workhorse of the Content Framework
Pillar content is long-form, massive content offerings. It takes a ton of effort, varied team skill sets, and budget. But it is impossible to fully measure the ROI of pillar content without also understanding how it fuels its micro-content offspring.
Simply put, micro-content is the additional content that is possible because you have already produced the pillars. You can create hundreds of pieces of micro-content from one piece of awesome pillar content. Then you can distribute your day-to-day workhorse content to the homeowners, dealers, pool builders, and landscape contractors in your audience via all available social media channels.
Ultimately, you're looking for moments in your pillar content that will resonate with your potential customers. Use those moments to create micro-content for your social and other marketing channels. Let’s get more tactical by looking at examples of how you may use your pillar content to create micro-content.
Editing out short snippets (5-to-60-second videos) featuring high-impact sections from pillar videos (perhaps that industry keynote) for posting on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
Using photos and impactful copywriting points from your pillar eBooks to create quote cards or image-with-text-overlay graphics for social posting
Using sound-bites from your videos, keynotes, or podcasts to create smaller snippets that can be shared on Facebook or Instagram
Using longer (but still short) segments of video composed of different pillar video sources as 10-to-30-minute episodes for weekly YouTube channel content
Turning your YouTube video/podcast scripts into articles that you can publish on your blog or Medium account
Using the most impactful snippets from all your pillar case study videos to create a highlight reel video loop for a website banner
The list of possibilities goes on and on
The Goal of Your Micro-Content
Ultimately, the goals for your mico-content shouldn't look too different from those of your pillar content, with one significant difference. In addition to raising brand awareness, connecting socially and emotionally with your audience of dealers, contractors, and homeowners, and driving whatever other KPIs have been defined, micro-content should also be designed to drive traffic to your pillar content. Landscapers and manufacturers have the hard decision of whether to gate the pillar content offers, but if they are gated using micro-content to drive to the offer, their page can be a major source of email and lead generation.
Micro-content also provides an opportunity for landscape/hardscape manufacturers to be a bit more genuine, raw, and authentic. It’s less “serious” and less polished, which allows the brand to loosen the tie and let their hair down. Add in some humor, create a boomerang or two of some outtakes, engage on a fundamental level with contractors by showing in-progress field footage, and make one of your dealers’ days by sharing positive content about the industry. If pillar content is the parent, micro-content pieces are the crazy, fun-loving children—be sure to leverage the two framework elements to create a balanced voice.
A Super-Tactical Example of How Pillar Becomes Micro
There is really no end to how you can create micro-content for your business through the reuse of pillar content.
Let’s look at an example from earlier—the keynote speech. Here’s how you can create almost 30 dynamic pieces of content for the dealers, contractors, and homeowners in your audience using video and audio from just one 60-minute presentation at an industry or dealer event.
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STEP 1: FILM YOUR KEYNOTE
You now have an hour of audio and video, where the speaker is passionately telling stories about the pergolas your company produces and how they make any style of outdoor space look more beautiful. The stories motivate your audience (primarily contractors and dealers) to follow their dreams and pursue their passion for creating gorgeous outdoor spaces—and it’s all captured, which is a tremendous first step. This first step of documenting presentations and events is one that some businesses never get past. There is no content framework without captured CONTENT.
You then publish this keynote to YouTube and create a website landing page to drive traffic to. That is one piece of powerful pillar content.
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STEP 2: SYNDICATE THIS TO PODCAST AND BLOG FORM
Rip the audio from the video. Break it into three different podcast segments, and publish them on Anchor as three separate podcast episodes.
Then, get the audio turned into text using a tool like Otter.ai. Edit and expand a bit on this text and turn it into five blog posts.
Now you have nine pieces of content.
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STEP 3: TAKE 10 2-MINUTE CLIPS OF VIDEO FROM THAT KEYNOTE
Go through the keynote video, and select your ten favorite, hardest-hitting 2-minute clips. Can’t find that many 2-minute clips? No problem—an experienced content team can cut up and splice together as needed.
Edit these new short-form videos, flush them out with some well-written copy, and publish them to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn over the next 10 days
Now you have 19 pieces of content.
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STEP 4: TAKE 10 FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE TRANSCRIBED KEYNOTE
Pick out your 10 favorite quotes from the keynote. Next, screenshot (and post-process as necessary) impactful stills from the video keynote. Feel free to mix in some existing product photography.
Next, have the graphics team edit the images and lay the quotes over them to create professional, engaging creatives. Publish these on your social pages and stories.
You now have 29 pieces of content.
Only the Beginning...
And as your brand produces more and more content, year after year, the content catalog grows deeper and more dynamic. So the possibilities for diversified micro-content grow right along with it. With this proven content framework in place, a skilled in-house team, and an industry-specialist partner agency (or a combination of both) to execute and manage the effort, landscape/hardscape BPMs can dominate their coverage area and pull away from the competition.