5 examples of how content marketing makes the difference
Our team of content marketers are working for more than 60 garden centres and is the silent workforce behind many garden centre websites and webshops. A website with up to date content attracts a lot more customers, but what exactly are our content marketers doing for garden centres? And why does an external content marketer work better than someone in-house?
We give you five examples of how our content marketers have made a difference for your colleagues, and we also explain how content marketing works with us.
1. Webshop structure
Red, burgundy, light red, carmine red, deep red and so on: there are 50 more shades of red (or grey).
But a customer searching for a plant or other product does not know the exact difference between burgundy or deep red, so using these different shades in a search filter is confusing.
One of our content marketers came across this in a webshop of one of our customers:
Too many choices lead to confusion, and so people drop out. Fortunately, our content marketer managed to simplify the filter:
We often make and keep data consistent: this helps customers search, resulting in more sales.
2. Oops, something went wrong
On every website, sometimes things go wrong, and you will see the well-known 404 errors. It's impossible to avoid this, if only because your customers could make a typo and end up on such a page.
The average 404 page looks like this:
This page is not very inspiring: a customer gets stuck, and you are not leading them in the right direction.
One of our content marketers worked on improving this 404 page, which resulted in this excellent page:
In addition to the photo of the wilted plant, you will immediately see links to essential parts of the website and an invitation to contact the garden centre.
Doing this, you help your website visitors find the correct information and give them a good feeling, even though something went wrong.
Want to see your own 404 page? Then go to your domain and type something crazy after it: www.yourdomainname.xx/404error.
3. Sustainability
We often get the question if it is necessary to hire a professional content marketer since it is cheaper to hire a student or intern to do this.
It will undoubtedly be cheaper, but the difference is that our content marketers are working full-time in the garden industry.
An excellent example of this is the growing trend to inform customers about making their gardens more sustainable. As insiders, we know gardens can help attract wildlife, use gardens as natural water storage, and help fight climate change. Our content marketing team has even followed courses about making gardens more sustainable to understand all the ins & outs!
We can create better content than the average student or intern with this knowledge. See here the example of a garden centre that has a dedicated area within their centre informing visitors about sustainability.
We have linked information about climate change to images from the store and articles from the webshop:
Our team of content marketers is familiar with the garden industry and online marketing. They can help you by posting good, relevant content that gets ranked high on Google.
4. The 3H Model
Our content marketers work according to the 3H content model of Google.
In short, this means that you have three types of content on a website:
- Hero content: large-scale campaigns that you use a few times a year
- Hub content: changing content such as news, tips and events
- Hygiene content: you always need this type of content, such as product information on a webshop or the page with information about your garden centre.
Now a model always sounds abstract, so how do you use it?
At the beginning of January, we focused the hero content on large house plants for one of our clients. The header of the website is adapted accordingly
Next to the header, we've written several blogs about houseplants based on keywords consumers use on Google. For example, this blog about houseplants that need direct sunlight:
The message gets across by consistently posting content on the website and social media about a particular topic for several weeks.
The result? An increase in houseplant sales!
The website was changed again at the end of February, and the focus shifted to the gardening season.
We also use the 3H model to determine where priorities should lie on your website. You can set up a Hero campaign, but if the basics (hygiene) are not good, you build a campaign on quicksand.
5. Update emails
It is crucial to approach customers professionally from the beginning of the purchase process to the end. The content and form of the communication are critical.
One of our content marketers suggested improving and professionalising the confirmation emails from the webshop and website.
This was the set-up of the emails before she started improving:
And after the change, the formatting was quite different:
As you can see, the branding is applied well through the colours, photos and buttons. The moment you ask a question to a store and you receive a neat, professional email back, it creates more trust with the customer. And more trust means more online purchases or store visits!
But how does content marketing at Garden Connect work?
You now understand that content marketing is essential. You cannot be successful online without good content. But how do the content marketers at Garden Connect work?
It's good to know that every marketer works for a select number of garden centres. This way, they get to know you and your company. They work on a website for a fixed number of hours per week or month.
Our content marketers know everything about home, garden & animals through extensive research and education. Therefore, they are specialised in making content for your garden centre. In addition, they know the Garden Connect platform inside and out and can therefore apply all the tricks there are!
Do you want to learn more about content marketing? Please feel free to contact us. Email your account manager or call us on +31 20 700 8250. We will be happy to help you.
