LP Building Solutions was in the midst of a transformation. Then named LP Building Products, the company had begun to shift from a forestry and products-based company to an organization designed to provide high-performance solutions for building professionals and homeowners.
During this transformation, our teams identified the opportunity to optimize LP’s blog in accordance with their new perspective. We united from the beginning on the importance of the blog for building awareness through search and site traffic, establishing customer trust and increasing leadership in the industry, which gave us a great foundation. Now, the LP blog is doing everything it’s designed to do and more. Check out how we came together to implement a new approach and purpose for the LP blog—and the results that came with it.
Focusing Our Efforts
Originally, LP operated four disparate blog properties for separate audiences and products. For example, the LP® SmartSide® Trim & Siding brand hosted a blog series, along with LP Outdoor Building Solutions. Additionally, blogs for homeowners and building professionals further divided blog content, making it difficult for visitors to the LP site to navigate to the information they needed.
Blog posts also focused on individual products, leaning on features and benefits, similarly to the way a sales sheet would function. After analyzing the state of LP’s blog properties, we saw room for optimization to more effectively drive site traffic. We centered the new content strategy around problem-solving—answering our audience’s questions—as well as showcasing LP’s portfolio of solutions.
Determining Key Goals
Our optimized approach involved a few key touchpoints, all laddering up to two new goals for the blog: to drive traffic to the LP website and to serve as a thought leader in the building industry.
– Audience-First Alignment: We recommended culling down LP’s blog categories to only two: homeowner blogs and professional blogs. Because our teams always seek to put the audience first, we determined that these categories would be most useful in terms of helping our audiences find what they needed. Instead of categorizing by product, we put the audience front and center and began to think through the types of content that would be most helpful to each one.
– Increasing SEO Value: In order to drive traffic to the LP website, we needed to ensure our blogs could be found by Google. With that came extensive analytics work to ensure every blog was search engine optimized, incorporating relevant keywords that reflected the questions our audiences had.
– Incorporating Subject Matter Experts: Instead of serving as only informational, the LP blog offered the chance for LP to emerge as a true leader in the industry. We sought to include subject matter experts in each blog post, bringing in key stakeholders from LP as well as successful building professionals to speak not only to LP products but also to overall trending topics in the industry.
Transforming the LP Blog, One Post at a Time
With an underlying strategy in place, ultimately our work came down to transitioning the LP blog one idea at a time. As we set up a calendar of ideas, we framed each post in terms of a problem and accompanying solution. Instead of starting with a product, we considered common problems each of our audiences faces and how LP products or offerings can help solve those issues.
For example, many builders may struggle with jobsite waste affecting their bottom lines. LP SmartSide Trim & Siding offers a great solution for siding that leads to less waste due to its durability, longer lengths and more. This example topic gives our team a chance to identify with our audience and position LP as a solutions-oriented partner who understands builders’ needs.
As we implemented our new strategy, we also worked to include multiple products in each blog post. For example, the LP Structural Solutions portfolio of products work together to Defend Your Build™ against many issues on the jobsite and beyond, such as water, heat, and more. A blog post about building in humid climates may now include mentions of LP WeatherLogic® Air & Water Barrier (to address moisture concerns) primarily with an additional mention of LP® TechShield® Radiant Barrier (to address heat concerns).
Additionally, our teams work consistently to incorporate the latest blog trends and best practices, such as longer posts, more visuals and more video. All these efforts add up to a stream of consistent blog content that speaks to our audiences in relevant ways and sets LP up as a trusted partner.
In a transition like this, challenges along the way are inevitable—from honing the review and approval process to keeping up with constant idea generation, calendars and more. But this new approach has offered the unique opportunity to deliver not only great work to our clients but also efficient processes that we optimize as we learn over time. These additional efforts have led to a more rewarding and trusting ongoing relationship.
Gaining Momentum and Seeing Results
After optimization, the LP blog is exceeding expectations. We’re consistently seeing overall upward trends in sessions, session duration, organic traffic and more. Additionally, in the first quarter of 2021, visitors to the blog accounted for nearly 10% of our goals for overall site visits, which shows our efforts on the blog to be invaluable for reaching our overarching traffic goals.
With sessions and duration up and bounce rate down, we can see our content is engaging and driving visitors to other parts of the LP website. Additionally, higher organic search-driven sessions point to a successful SEO-informed approach. Our top performing posts revealed best practices we intentionally implemented, such as increased imagery and benefits-oriented titles.
Beyond the numbers, our teams continue to grow in delivering better content marketing, tying in blog topics and new information to other tactics, such as social content or earned media. We seek to use the assets we create for the LP blog in smarter, more efficient ways with the ultimate goal of building LP’s brand along the way.
Check out more from our partnership with LP Building Solutions here, and get in touch with our teams here.
