Contractor marketing is somewhat unique because you’re marketing a service to a specific local area rather than a product that can be easily bought and sold online from anywhere in the world. Internet marketing for contractors is also different because people don’t always trust contractors – your website has to build that trust in addition to attracting traffic and generating calls.
These seven tips are designed to help you meet all of your objectives so that you can generate more visibility and leads online.
1. Good Contractor Marketing is Local
Your average Internet marketer is trying to get traffic from anywhere and everywhere he can. You need to get targeted traffic from people in your local area who need or want to purchase your services.
You can do this by paying attention to your Google+ Local and other local listings first and foremost. Then you can start building local keywords into your website.
A local keyword is as simple as adding the city name to your business keyword. “Minneapolis plumber” would be a local keyword, for example.
Working those keywords into your website can be challenging. We’ve developed some special methods for making it happen that we’ve used to great success when we help other contractors with their marketing.
2. Developing a Good Blog is Essential
Your blog is the pre-selling tool that will help your potential customers trust you. It also helps you get organic traffic by giving you a way to update your website and focus your keywords.
What should a contractor blog about? When we handle blogs for our contractors we cover a variety of topics related to that contractor’s work.
For example, a fence contractor’s blog is given content on cleaning, repairing, and maintaining fences. We also cover related landscaping topics and local community events. Customers often find that they would rather hire the fence company to repair their fence then to go through the time and expense of doing it themselves. Offering the information for free develops and builds trust.
3. You Need a Social Media Presence
Social media may not make you lots and lots of direct sales. But it will help you build relationships, increase trust, and increase your online presence.
Targeting accounts in your local area can become effective, especially when those people would make good referral partners anyway. Real estate agents and insurance agents can be excellent contacts, for example.
4. Organic Search Traffic is Essential
If you want to do your own contractor marketing then you’ll need to get the hang of keyword research. Or you’ll need to work with someone who can do that research for you.
In general, you’re going to need to focus on long-tail keywords that are popular enough to matter but not so popular that you don’t have any hope of ranking for them.
5. Simple Things Matter
Sometimes little things can make a big difference. Your contact form or your about page, for example, can each play a vital role in either securing customers or in chasing them away.
6. Photos and Videos are Excellent Tools
Start taking photos of your job sites and finished products. Take photos of happy customers. Take some video of your team at work.
You can either post these to your site yourself or save them for your SEO contractor. They make great fodder for social media sites.
Allowing customers to see you at work builds both trust and interest. It gives customers a chance to think about how they’ll feel when you’ve completed the same work at their home.
7. You Probably Don’t Have Time
Marketing for contractors isn’t hard. It isn’t complicated. You can probably understand how to do it just by reading this blog.
It is, however, time consuming, especially if you want to do it right. As a contractor you’re probably already swamped.
If you’re not sure that you have the time to pursue your own marketing goals then contact us, a trusted name in local SEO. It’s still less expensive than more traditional marketing methods and it’s drastically more effective.
