Traditionally, the contracting and construction industries have relied very much on direct mail and email marketing to generate service or brand awareness and more importantly, to generate leads. In 2019, there are so many more channels and strategies open to help contractors to get found by their target audiences and generate more business via the Internet. Before starting marketing, you have to make sure that you have the required license and insurance for your business. You can go online and research on the cost of contractors insurance in Ontario.
This article takes a look at some of the key web marketing areas to focus on.
Website design and usability
This is such an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy because on the web, first impressions count. Your website must be beautifully designed and also extremely fast (both users and Google have little patience for sluggish websites). Make sure that your site is easy to navigate and even more importantly, make sure that your visitors find it easy to figure out how to contact you or what to do next. Make your calls to action as clear as day.
Another vitally important part of your website design is to ensure that it is mobile friendly. With around half of all website visits currently being done on a mobile device, ensuring your site is responsive across all screen sizes will ensure that your visitors don’t suffer a frustrating time on your site and abandon ship altogether.
Don’t forget: As a contractor, make sure you’re fully protected against financial or material loss and legal claims by keeping your contractor insurance up to date.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is all about ensuring that your website is both visible to Google and relevant for the search terms that your potential customers may be using. There is a wealth of information on the web that can point you in the right direction, but an ROI focused agency is a good investment. If your contracting services are focused locally, then you can gear your SEO strategy to return searches in your near geographical area.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
Platforms like Google Adwords can also allow you to target simple advertisements to a geographically relevant target audience. For example, with a carefully crafted PPC campaign, you can ensure that adverts for your San Francisco based plumbing business only show up for people searching for plumbers in the San Francisco area in Google. The more targeted your adverts, the better your return on investment (ROI).
Social media marketing
Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Instagram can be extremely useful for building a local audience who know who you are and what you do. A well managed (content driven) social media campaign will not only get you more engagements (post likes, shares, follows etc) but also allow you to leverage these platform’s ability to target specific audiences with razor sharp focus; like Google’s PPC platform but with even more targeting, you can get your message or proposition in front of your potential customers very affordably based on their interests and their whereabouts.
To really amplify your web marketing efforts as a contractor, you should be sure to deliver a fast, mobile friendly experience to your visitors and ensure that your messages (via SEO, PPC and social media) are not just targeting the most appropriate keywords and phrases, but also in the right geographical areas depending on where you’re based.
