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5 Marketing Tips to Grow Your Contracting Business
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Are you maximizing your potential? Here are 5 things you can do to get your contracting business noticed and growing revenue.
By Tony Greene
As we all know, running a contracting business requires much more than a claw hammer and bucket of nails. Even the most knowledgeable and best-skilled contractors and subcontractors need a cabinet full of tools—and a great deal of patience. According to IBISWorld, there are currently 3.8 million construction businesses in the US, up 2.5% from 2022. According to the most recent Government business population estimates, the number of construction firms with fewer than 50 employees rose to 1,005,290 in 2022.
With all that competition out there, what is the key to achieving success in the construction business? Hard work, a structured marketing approach, and a commitment to growing and efficiently promoting the business. Having the right marketing strategy, tools, and techniques are critical for reaching your full potential in this business.
Your marketing plan is essential to keeping your business afloat and ensuring your brand is one that can stand the test of time. But marketing your business is as complex and as each project you undertake. You can’t just jump in without a plan, a timeline, and a budget.
If you feel confident you are doing things right in the five areas below, congratulations, you are on your way to success. If any of these foundational marketing pillars are missing or need repair, don’t panic. You can fix this. Or, you might know someone who can. Or, you might set up a free consultation with an experienced marketing consultant.
1. Find the Right Messaging
This one is all about your customer and the problem(s) you solve for them. If you are a contractor (and we know you are!) you help your customers do a number of things, from building a house to renovating one, or making repairs to adding a back deck. They can’t do this themselves, so they need your services. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
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What challenges does your service/product solve?
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How do they make people’s lives better?
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How do they benefit others? Do they add value?
And then once you have this one down, the critical piece is knowing what you bring your customers vs. your competitors. What is your specialty? What is your edge? What can you provide better than the other contractors in your area? It could be speed, pricing, quality, design, to name a few. Knowing this will help you get a clearer picture of your target audience, and really hone in on your ideal customer.
2. Dust off Your Website
Creating a website for your business can bring you a lot of new customers, but only if the website has been designed properly. Many businesses have outdated websites that look like they were born out of Bill Gates’ garage. Your website is your storefront. You want it to look fabulous and you want potential customers to walk through your virtual door. If it doesn’t, and they don’t, maybe it’s time for a facelift. According to Forbes, 71% of businesses have a website, but many of them face low website traffic, which poses a significant challenge to their online presence. It’s extremely important to have well-designed and strategically placed calls to action to increase your chances of bringing in new customers. It’s equally as important to have strong branding and messaging that reflects the problems you can solve for your customers.
3. Use Your Keywords
While we’re on the topic of your website, it’s worth mentioning that your site is only as good as the keywords it contains. Keywords are the words and phrases your customers are typing into the search box to find you on the web. Populating your web pages with the right keywords will increase your chances of getting noticed! Take for example Aspire Construction in Utah. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Putting aside sponsored websites, which are sites that pay money to appear at the top of Google search results, this Utah-based construction company appears first in organic search for kitchen renovations. That doesn’t mean Aspire is the best kitchen remodeling business in the state. It doesn’t mean they bring in the most revenue. What does mean is that they are doing something right with their website! Their site is clean with big, bright images. The site is well-structured and easy to navigate. It is also chock-full of keywords that customers might type into Google search, which means their business will come up when someone types in any one of these keyword phrases:
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Renovate your kitchen in Utah
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Utah renovate kitchen
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Utah kitchen renovation
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Utah kitchen remodel contractor
Bottom line is that customers are finding them before anyone else, which means they have a huge leg up on you. Try typing in “Utah kitchen remodel” and this is what you will find:
Note: Sponsored sites like the one above could be paying anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 per month on Google ads to get their positioning. Learn from Aspire Construction and land your business near the top of Google’s search results.
4. Create Engaging Content
Once you have a website or a refreshed website, it’s important to create content that shows homeowners and developers what you can do for them. High-resolution photos of projects, before-and-after shots, videos, customer testimonials, and blogs are some of the most common ways to attract and win potential customers.
Adding new content to your website not only keeps it current but helps it grow in Google’s all-important rankings. You are an expert in your field and you have a lot of valuable information to impart to homeowners. If your blog posts and newsletters can share free tips and easy do-it-yourself guides, you will earn trust and win them over. But just because you are an expert in building or renovating houses doesn’t mean you’re an expert in creating content, let alone the time to do it, so be sure you work with someone who can write, tell a story, shoot beautiful photos, and make professional-looking videos. Poorly written blogs and underwhelming photos will turn potential customers away.
5. Share Your Content
It goes without saying that the modern business needs a social media presence to support their website and other business interests. Social media is much more than vanity measurements “likes” and “shares.” It is something you can develop as a critical way to reach your audience and position your brand. You can repurpose all that wonderful visual and written content you created to tell your story and the stories of your happy customers. Social media can also amplify your feed directly into the content and knowledge strategy of your business, as you can share homeowner tips and tricks, checklists, and reminders to have you’re a/c filters changed, setting yourself up as an expert in your field, adding value and genuinely useful knowledge to the community and your followers.
According to Hootsuite, there are 4.74 billion active social media users worldwide, which means there is room for almost every kind of business to find its audience and engage with them. As we head into the summer months, when the contracting business heats up, there is plenty of motivation to make this year your best year yet. Making a well-thought-out and strategic approach sets you up most effectively for success. This goes for all elements of your business, but especially marketing, which can be the deciding factor as to how fast your business grows.
Tony Greene is a marketing consultant and content creator with more than 10 years of experience helping brands find their niche and grow their business.
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The way a website looks can impact the first impression and overall perception of a company.
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Does your website and/or mobile site need updating?
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Do you have a marketing expert managing your social media content and platforms?
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Are you creating new content like blog articles and videos?
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Do you have customer testimonials that praise the great work you do?
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Do you send out a newsletter offering tips and useful information to homeowners in your area?
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Mobile-optimized Websites
Blogs and Videos
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Customer Testimonials
Newsletters
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