A successful local contractor needs to know how to showcase his or her expert skills in a way that will grab the right customer’s attention. A contractor’s online presence can give the competitive edge needed to draw in customers and keep them coming back and referring their friends. These digital marketing tips for contractors will help you market your contracting business on the internet, and make sure you get found by search engines and customers. Let’s jump in!
Table of Contents
Content Summary
Maintain an Optimized Website
Create Engaging Content
Use High-Quality Images & Videos
Ask Your Customers for Reviews
Implement a Social Media Strategy
Keep Your Information Consistent
Engage with Customers
Conclusion
Maintain an Optimized Website
A professionally designed website with plentiful content, metadata, and high-quality images puts your best foot forward by allowing potential customers to read about your services and business values. It will also show search engines that your site is authoritative and relevant. Regularly updating and adding to your website’s content—by writing about industry breakthroughs, added services, and offering professional tips and insights—can keep customers interested and trusting you to provide the information they need to know.
Implement an SEO Strategy. A website is one of the best places to refer customers for more information about your services and business. If you want your website to help drive more traffic and revenue for your business, implement an SEO strategy. SEO (search engine optimization) helps search engines find relevant web pages on your website and rank them on search results. It’s often thought of as more of a long-term strategy than other digital marketing strategies. With time, it can help you market your services in a cost-effective manner.
Share your Expertise. As an expert within your industry, share your expertise on your website to improve your engagement. Whether consumers search online, they could want to hire a company or gain general information. Regardless of the scenario, sharing your expertise online in a search engine-friendly format will help improve your reach. If you have specific knowledge about a topic like “drywall” or “home additions”, discuss these topics on your website to build your overall company value.
Create Engaging Content
As you work on building, updating, and optimizing your website, create engaging content tailored to potential customers. Focus on creating content that speaks to your target market directly and specifically helps them with their needs. Here are three areas to focus on as you create engaging, targeted content:
- How-to Videos: With contractor work, some individuals prefer to work on things themselves or even understand how to complete a project. Simple, informative videos on how to perform certain tasks create engaging content for individuals and potential consumers. Keep them short and to the point for the best results.
- Blog posts: On-site blogging helps you answer potential customer questions within the contractor industry. It also helps you rank for “informational” types of searches. As people find your site as a source of relevant information, it instills trust and authority for the website to both customers and search engines.
- Before and After Galleries: Before/After photos are especially effective within the contractor industry as people want to see the quality of your work. Showcase your services through this type of gallery so people can see the difference.
Use High-Quality Images & Videos
You want to give future customers a proper representation of your professional work, so don’t let quality slide just to get a photo or video shared on your social media pages. Use good lighting, and share high-resolution photos or videos of your crew, finished projects, or equipment. This concept also applies to your company logo: Investing in a quality design will reap years of benefit for your business.
Create a Visual Online Presence. With the photos and videos you share on your website or social media channels, make sure they create a quality online presence. Due to the fact that people will search and find information about your company digitally, it’s important to create a visual presence that people will enjoy. Along with publishing high-quality content, focus on your overall theme and feel of the website or social media pages. They should include elements that stand out while still creating a professional feel.
Ask Your Customers for Reviews
Reviews are crucial to your SEO and digital marketing strategy. Detailed reviews from real customers help boost your search rankings! They also allow potential new customers to read about your previous customers’ experience with your company and why they recommend you. Did you just complete a major renovation project or addition? Ask your customers to share how much they love your work! You can motivate your customers to leave you a review by sending a link directly to them via text or email, or by announcing a contest with prizes.
Publish Testimonials. Once you begin to receive positive reviews from your customers, work on building and publishing testimonials. Similar to reviews, testimonials should help convince customers why your business is the best option for their needs. You can use data and feedback from reviews to create and publish testimonials. Publish them on social media and your website to give potential customers an idea of the benefits and quality of your business. Testimonials are also effective in the sales process, as you can show interested customers what to expect through others’ experiences.
Implement a Social Media Strategy
Having a social media presence enables your company to be where your customers often spend their time. Sharing the content of value to your followers on social media fosters engagement, ongoing interest, and a personal connection between your business and your followers. Not sure what to post? There are many different topics and formats you can use to keep your posts fresh and exciting, such as an album of before and after photos from a recent job, a live video showing your crew actively tackling a project like building a new deck, or a list of DIY tips for reclaimed wood home decorations.
Here are six social media platforms that your contractor business should focus on:
- Facebook: Great for posting company information and updates.
- Instagram: Share quality photos and videos of your business and services.
- TikTok: Create short videos showcasing your work along with useful tips and tricks.
- Pinterest: Share ideas for everyday consumers on how they can improve their space.
- LinkedIn: Raise brand awareness and promote the company image to the public.
- Houzz: Provides ways for contractors to directly interact with consumers and offer advice.
Keep Your Information Consistent
Along with the other digital marketing tips for contractors discussed above, it’s beneficial to keep your business directory information consistent. From your local listings to your website, to your social media profile, and more, your business information should be identical. Your phone number, business hours, company name, and even your logo should match exactly across all different platforms. If you have a holiday or seasonal hours, make sure to update these as well! Your online audience is looking for information about your business quickly, and having consistent information in multiple places promotes confidence in customers and signals to search engines the activity of your business.
Engage with Customers
When followers respond to your content by commenting, sharing, or leaving you a good review, thank them personally and keep the conversation going! Featuring your customers (with their permission) in a blog entry or as a story for your next social media post is another way to keep things engaging. This will keep your followers feeling valued and personally recognized by you. Personal, sincere interaction from companies is a great way to instill trust with potential customers. In addition, it helps your overall brand reputation management.
Don’t Drop Off the Grid. With any social, content, and digital marketing strategy, it’s important to stay consistent. Create calendars to plan out your social content to make sure you update and keep your content updated. As your digital tools engage with customers, it creates a relationship. Nourishing that relationship through consistent communication will help continue to grow your brand. Finding it hard to maintain your social media accounts or keep your website updated? There are many helpful resources, such as Hootsuite, that your business can use to stay on top of your content and online presence by making it easy to schedule out future posts and manage your content.
Conclusion
With many aspects of digital marketing, it can present a unique challenge for your business. These digital marketing tips for contractors will help get you started. As a small business owner or manager of a contractor business, digital marketing is likely not your area of expertise. Your experience revolves around providing quality services for your clients to help them with their building and project needs. As you manage your day-to-day tasks, you should have the time to focus on your services – as they should be.