Internet Marketing for Contractors
For many small business owners, they search for the Holy Grail of marketing success. That one thing that will boost their business and bank accounts into what they dreamed.
In this article, I will give you four digital marketing pillars that in combination and with consistency, are the magic bullet you are looking for.
There is no need to make your digital marketing more complicated than these four things. Together, they account for the highest percentage of new business a contractor or any small business for that matter receives.
The Four Digital Marketing Pillars for Contractors
- Website
- Social Media
A Good Contractor Website
It goes without saying that a website is a must have today for your contracting business. It’s not only a place for customers to find out more about you. It is a place to sell your services, take care of customer service issues and display how you can make your customers lives better with the use of your services.
Your website is not a build it and forget it digital marketing tool for your contracting business. You need or have some take care of optimizing it. Driving traffic to your website is very important not only to your website success, but your business as a whole.
Once you start getting traffic to your website, you need to start working on optimizing it for conversion. The art of converting more visitor into paying customers, should be a top priority for any contractor with a website. It is no good for your business to rank well, but not close the deal.
Top goals for your website:
Get Found: By doing SEO, making social media post pushing views into visitors. Using paid and organic traffic sources, you want to be seen more often. While keeping to a budget.
Converting Visitors. You want to take a good look at your numbers. How many visitors are turning into customers? You need to work on getting those numbers up. Heat maps, Google Analytics and other tools can help with conversion methods. When you get your conversion rates up, it adds more budget to the “Get Found” part of your website and increases your business.
Content: Your website needs to have content that helps a visitor. Not only your contact information, and a list of services, but questions they have BEFORE they even call you. think of the process your go through with a customer. What questions do they have? What concerns pop-up? Build your website as if it were you talking to one person, in a general way.
Your website is the best salesman you have for your contracting business. It doesn’t sleep, it shows-up on time, every time, it answers questions to objections and it goes for the sales closing. You introduce yourself, tell what you offer, you explain the benefits. Then you close with a call to action. Using a few different types of calls to action. Phone number, a contact form, possible a chat-bot. A conversion system for every type of contact a customer would want to use.
If you built your website with the set-it and forget mindset. You never will truly get the benefits out of your website, you originally thought you would get. It is not a build it and they will come, maybe, only a few will. You need to promote it and often. No matter if you use SEO, Social or PPC ads, you need to get your websites pages in front of more people.
Social Media Marketing for Contractors
There is not one way for any of us to reach as many people as quickly and as cost effective as social media. You would need an army of telemarketers, a pile of postcards 6 feet tall to do what you can in a minute on social media.
Although organic reach is down, it still is a cheap, fast way to get your message out there. If you are doing your social media marketing correctly, you are combining organic reach with paid reach. You don’t need to spend a lot of money.
The best way is to have a social media marketing plan. We like to use this method.
V.A.L.U.E. Method
The VALUE framework lets you quickly create a social media content plan. It also ensures that your followers find something worthwhile in their feed, so they click to your blog or website for more valuable content.
VALUE is an acronym for the types of content to post on your social media accounts:
- Valuable: Helpful or educational content from which your audience can learn
- Aspirational: Idealized, tangible content to help attain a vision or a goal
- Lifecycle: Content builds awareness, nurtures relationships, or encourages action
- Unique: Proprietary and branded content focused on your business
- Evergreen: Timely, relevant, and useful content for years to come
Rotating through VALUE content will keep your social audience from being bored by your feed and give them consistent opportunities to click through to your website to learn more.
With a well thought out social media marketing plan, you not only stay top of mind, but also are looked upon as the expert for your service to your audience and community.
Your social media is not a place to only do promotional posts. That is the fastest way to lose viewers. Imagine watching a movie or TV show only to have advertising every minute. CLICK next channel.
You want to think about your customers buying cycle. Make content for these cycle stages, awareness, consideration and decision.
Study your audience and viewers. Find out what they want more of and give it to them. I don’t care how boring you think, your service is, there are people interested in it.
Entertain, Educate and Engage. I text or message my clients when they first start working with me, to respond to a comment. It is called social media, because you are supposed to be social. I’m an introvert to a point, but I still communicate daily.
It not only helps your social media channel get shown to more people, it lets people get to know you. Have a conversation with them…and other people will see it. Getting more people to know you.
People do business with people they know, like and trust. Social media is the perfect place for contractors to do these three things.
Google-Google My Business-Google Maps
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Google is the first place 92% of all shopping or buying starts. We simply pull out our phone and type or talk into it, what we are looking for. We sit up late at night or early mornings on the laptop, Googling. If you are not optimizing your Google and search engine visibility you are missing out on the “Gold Rush” of business for your contracting company.
5 Google Marketing Tools for Contractors [4 are FREE]
- Google My Business
- Google Maps
- Google Ads
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
You should be making posts and adding images to your Google My Business on a weekly basis. Not when you get around to it. With every lead, call or website visit, you are saving money. By not paying for a lead, from a lead broker.
You should run Google Ads when you see gaps in your schedules. Why wouldn’t you want to invest a couple hundred dollars to fill in a days or weeks worth of work? Every workday your business isn’t making money, it costs you money. Insurance, overhead and other operating costs still come in…pay for it with Google Ads.
Your free tool, Google Search Console will help you understand what your customers are searching for and where you stand in the rankings. Giving you valuable information to get your website pages seen in the right places based off search queries.
Google Analytics at the basic level will give you the data you need to understand where visitors are coming from, how long they interact with your website and what actions they take, moving them from viewer to customer.
If you are not using Google’s marketing tools, you are not doing all you can to be successful as a contractor and there is not excuse why you can’t. Google My Business and Google Maps are free. Google Ads done right, don’t cost money, they make you money.
Get seen by more people and get your Google marketing game up to par.
Email and Newsletter Marketing
We all get it, and we all hate it.
Yet, email is still one of the best and more importantly, budget friendly digital marketing tools a contractor can use. When done right, it is a sales closing, customer referral and review getting machine.
Imagine, you just left a prospect’s house. You are armed with a feel of what they are looking for. Their concerns, things they pointed out, things they showed interest in and what motivates them. You come back to your office and upload their email into an automated email sequence and push send.
This automated email is your follow-up and salesman on autopilot. Why would you not want to make your sales easier? Your emails should focus on considerations your customers have.. They already are aware of your business and the next phase in the buying journey is consideration. From the initial meeting you are armed with what they are considering. Maybe it is price? Maybe it is quality? Maybe it is your ability to do the project.
You can cancel out any objections they have with an email sequence. You should send them a list of reviews, with before and after pictures. You should send them options for budgeting. You should send them information on the quality of the products you plan to use.
When done in an automated email sequence, you aren’t being pushy, you are being of service. You are helping them make a sound decision.
Newsletters for Contractors
Past customers should be on a monthly newsletter list. Sending out educational materials about things they want to know. Keeping them up to date with what your business is doing in the community. Involving them by inviting them to visit your social media, asking for a referral or that review that they didn’t leave you after you asked them. People are busy, they forget, a slight nudge, a friendly reminder is all most need to take an action. Stay top of mind the right way, by helping not badgering for business.
Your email marketing and newsletter marketing is not about promotions, it is about involvement, before, during and long after you did their project. The repeat business, the referrals are well worth the effort.
The wrap up.
These four digital marketing pillars when done consistently and with purpose will make your business more successful, bring in more opportunity and revenue. It takes time, money and effort, but anything of value to your business does. These digital marketing pillars are no different. You need to use them or have someone use them for you.
Contact us for more information.
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