CHICAGO — In today’s digitally driven marketplace, delivering high-quality content is almost essential. For laundry businesses looking to connect meaningfully with customers and stay competitive, a strong digital presence powered by strategic content can make all the difference.
By publishing valuable, engaging material on company websites and social media platforms coupled with smart search engine optimization (SEO) practices, brands can do more than just attract attention. They can inform audiences, build trust, and even entertain, turning casual browsers into loyal customers.
American Coin-Op interviewed two digital marketing experts to ask how laundromats and laundry businesses can harness the power of content marketing to elevate their online footprint and drive measurable results. (Editor’s note: Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.)
Dennis Diaz is president of EVI Industries company Spynr, a digital marketing firm that specializes in supporting laundry businesses through its “W.A.S.H.” strategy: Website, Audience development, Strategy (search and social), and How did we do? (measuring and tracking). Spynr serves roughly 250 vended laundry clients.
Charles Measley, who owns two laundromats and a vibrant pickup-and-delivery operation, is a partner in Suds Digital, a full-service digital marketing agency for laundromats. The firm enables store owners to maximize revenue by generating or expanding their online presence; it serves some 350 clients throughout the country.
Part 1 examined how content creation attracts customers to laundry businesses, and the types of content that most resonates with them. Let’s continue the Q-and-A:
Q: Should laundromats invest time in newer platforms like TikTok or stick to traditional ones like Facebook and Google?
Measley: When you’re doing videos and photos, I think Instagram and Facebook are probably your best places to do that. When you have a lot of photos, you can also upload them to your Google My Business listing. I would stick with those three main platforms. My opinion of TikTok is while it’s great to scroll through and look at stuff, it’s not as “local” as other platforms. If I’m in New Jersey, showing my video to someone who’s in California, it’s not really helping me. I might get a lot of views on it but I want views from my local neighborhood — I haven’t gotten that FedEx package filled with dirty laundry yet.
Diaz: Different platforms call for different things, right? TikTok is certainly more (for a) general, mass audience. That content has to be more appealing and sexy. It has to have some value to it. What is it that you want customers to see, maybe how you do things? It’s an educational platform. They like to see things in action, whereas Facebook is more about the community.
When you start thinking about Facebook, it’s about engaging in conversation. Owners have the time to go out and join their local Facebook groups and engage in those. There’s a lot more value in that platform that way. Otherwise, you’re spending a lot on advertising. Instagram is a little similar to TikTok, in that people love to see a process being done, or they like to scroll endlessly to see things moving. That’s a passive audience you’re going to engage with over time, so show them something interesting or how to do something and I think you’ll have their attention.
Q: How important is user-generated content or customer testimonials for laundry businesses?
Diaz: Anything outside of you that creates authority is great. If folks are talking about you, that’s word-of-mouth marketing. That’s what everyone is hoping to achieve, that influencers pick up on your brand, pick up on your service, and they share it with their friends. It’s not you, necessarily, selling it so it’s more trustworthy. Once your brand has that trust with the customer, then you can sell them a lot faster on other things that you’re doing. It’s a matter of people trusting people.
Measley: Reviews are another aspect of taking away that fear of the unknown. That social credibility, it’s the “new word-of-mouth.” Having those reviews and being able to share them is really important. If you’re thinking about your WDF customers, a review is pretty easy to get because you’ll have their phone numbers and you can send a text asking them to share their feedback and get that review posted.
Even on the self-service side, you can make a simple sign with a QR code, asking customers to leave a positive review for you. Getting a video testimonial from a customer would be fantastic. For my stores, I recently asked a few customers if they could put together an honest testimonial of their experience using our services. We got some really good ones and they’re going to do well for us when we post them.
Just ask your customers to share their honest feedback and you’ll surprised. If people really like your services, they have no problem telling their friends that feedback. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get it.
Q: What are some content strategies that work especially well for targeting local customers?
Diaz: SEO is a great place to start. Eighty percent of what you do is off your website, 20% of what you do is on your website. So when you’re looking at developing content strategies and content for your website, you need to understand the local market in order to activate that. Make sure that local key terms (keywords) are being used on your website. In addition to that, anything you place off your website but linking back to it should be as local as possible.
Also, when developing local directory listings — we call them “naps”: name, address, phone numbers — make sure it is localized with your presence on Yelp, Foursquare, Apple Maps, Google, and pointed to your website.
Measley: When you take a picture with your cellphone and you upload it right into your Google listing with a description, it places a location tag on the photo. Now, Google knows the photo was taken in whatever town you’re in. You’re doing local SEO. When someone looks for a laundromat “near me,” Google will say the photos taken by your business are in the same town or city as this user. They’re going to serve your laundry location above a competitor who may not be posting photos.
In Tuesday’s conclusion: Effectively using video in content creation, and measuring the success of your marketing efforts
Miss Part 1? You can read it HERE.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
