Marketing your home contractor business doesn’t have to be complex undertaking. It also doesn’t have to cost a lot. For small contractors working on a tight budget it is crucial to find ways to get the best results with minimal budget. You need to be creative. With the right approach and careful planning you can achieve desired results without spending a fortune. Follow these tips to get started marketing your home contractor business.
- Build a Healthy, Active Social Media Account
Social media marketing is actually a lot like geology: you can only use about 5% to 20% of what you extract from a natural stone outcrop, and social media works a lot like that. You post every day and until you build an active following eager for your posts, you may get no likes to only a few on each post. Every once in a while, you’ll make a post that resounds with the masses and pick up lots of likes, but consistently picking up more than 50 likes on each post requires work and marketing effort.
Posting consistently and interacting with those you follow and those who follow you by liking and writing comments on their own posts. This process encourages those who follow your account to read your posts and interact with them appropriately.
- Create an Informative, Easy to Navigate Website
Before you register with any search engine, create a snazzy website that informs customers about each service you offer. Include reviews by actual customers of your work and organize the site so they can easily find the information they want.
Hire a web developer to design the website, so it functions the same on a desktop as a mobile device. Test every aspect of the site before going live. Once you complete the basic site, add to its blog each week to keep everything fresh and enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) rank.
- Park Your Domain Alternatives
According to Fortune Magazine, the typical American vehicle stays parked 95% of the time. While your main domain, the URL of your website, should remain live, to guard against unwanted individuals or groups falsely using your business name, you should purchase similarly spelled domains.
That means if you named your business Waco Small Home Contractor and your website points to wacohomecontractor.com, you should also purchase waco-home-contractor.com, waco-contractor.com, waco-homecontractor.com, etc.
Also, purchase the .net, .info, and .org options, and park them. You can point a parked domain to your main domain, so if someone typos when entering your domain name, they still make it to your website.
This process doesn’t just market your business, it protects it from other companies purchasing a similarly named domain to misuse your business name.
- List Your Business in the Yellow Pages and Business Indexes
While people rarely thumb through the print version of the Yellow Pages any longer, the web version has become a go-to spot for information. Why? Google and Bing certainly catalog every website, but their spiders decide how to list the website. With the search engines, you must bid on keywords you use and the user must search for that term for your website to top the list.
A small home contractor typically works locally on renovation and building addition projects. These projects offer many benefits, including improved energy efficiency. Using the Yellow Pages, you can list every service you offer and benefits services. For example, a homeowner can save up to 25% on their monthly utilities by installing an energy-efficient garage door model. You’d list both energy efficiency upgrades and garage door repair and replacement.
Similarly, with business indexes, you choose the listing’s contents. You list the business under each relevant category. Add posts on a regular basis – photos of construction jobs and text posts that describe your services and educate potential customers.
- Advertise in Your Local Newspaper
Print advertising still works. Choosing display ads that let you include a photo of one of your work sites lets potential customers see your work crew in action. Most small newspapers offer affordable advertising options.
Billboards also grab attention and customers notice them. This type of ad might exceed the price range of a start-up, but if you comfortably earn a steady income from contracting, this can help you increase sales by placing you in front of many people.
- Offer a Dependable Contact Method for Quotes
Finally, set up a contact form that emails a quote request to you. Do not reveal your email address to help stop spammers. Use dropdowns and radio buttons, so individuals must request a job quote instead of sending you ads for their own businesses. That’s not what your contact form is for, so don’t let people misuse it.
These tips should help you get started marketing for your small business. If you’d like to read more small business tips, be sure to check out the rest of the articles on our site!
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