February 2012

Call Yourself a General Contractor at Your Own Risk

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Nothing Says Jack of All Trades Like….General Contractor

So, it was a beautiful day here yesterday, so what else is there to do but go walk around an outdoor mall…by myself. I was going to spend the day working on stuff, but I needed to get a couple things so I thought, why not. While strolling down the lane, I noticed a work T-shirt.

Now, I pay attention to work vans and company shirts like most guys pay attention to sports scores or muscle cars. This particular shirt wasn’t anything special; it was blah blah blah, General Contractor.

And I thought what the hell does this guy do?

I am kind of in the business, on as much of the fringe as possible, but I hang out with guys and girls like you every day, and I have to tell you, this designation is driving me friggin’ crazy! Here’s why.

If I DON’T know what you do…how the hell does Mrs. Jones know what you do? [click to continue…]

Small Things Do Matter: An Example in Action

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If you have spent any time on this site at all, you know I am a firm believer in the “devil is in the details” approach to marketing and web design. In fact, Chris Spoerl calls me the King of the Tweaks.

Maybe it’s because I am an uptight Virgo, or the fact that I get it from my follow up crazed Mother (love you Mom), but I look for/at things that most people ignore. And today, I have a story for you that has nothing to do with marketing or website design, but about just being a good person, and God forbid, capitalizing on it.

Goodwill in your local market

Everyone wants to know how to be on top of people’s minds when it comes time to fix their homes. Some want to be the biggest ad in the phonebook, some want their site to rank number one, while others want to work the referral side of the house until it bleeds leads. [click to continue…]

Guest Post Update to Video Review of Traditional Painters

Hey guys and girls, this is a guest post or follow up to a video review I did for Andy Crichton of Traditional Painter last year. Andy has a pretty unique business in the U.K. where he, well…check out his site then come back and read the guest post update. Now, I want to say, while I appreciate Andy doing this, he actually reached out to me to tell me how well things are going for him and his associates, so I asked him to guest post and show some of his findings. Now, I don’t say this to brag (although, [...]

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What’s So Good About You?

What’s The Best Thing About You? That is question #6 in my website design phone interview, and I ask it for one reason. I have to take the good, warm fuzzy stuff that people who meet you know, and translate that into content that does the same thing without all the happy social interaction. Does your site’s content convey what is best about you? If you did your own site, or had one of these shops that slap boiler-plate content up on each page without really getting to know who you are as a contractor or how you perform your [...]

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Position Yourself and Your Competition

Yeah, I have made the leap to straight online marketing and website dev for contractors, but I still listen to the radio and I still watch TV. While the world was fixed to their TV’s this past week for over-priced, useless pabulum dressed up as advertising, I heard a fantastic radio spot by IBM. Yeah, I know, IBM They were promoting their cloud-based storage solutions when the basically bitch-slapped the two 800 pound gorillas in that space…Amazon and Google.

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Email Reduces Work Load and Selling Time

I spoke to a friend of mine the other day about how to better promote his business. Now, he is not a contractor, he is in the financial services sector and he has a lot of rules and regulations as to how he can promote his name, his products and his business. Part of his job, in fact a big part of his job, is going door to door (yes, door to door people) and asking people what they are doing with their money and why they should invest with him. Think your job is hard? Imagine waking up in [...]

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Motivational Monday Courtesy of Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t normally just drop someone else’s video into my blog and count it as content, but if you need a bit of a life today getting motivated in your business, this should do it. If you don’t know who this cat is, he wrote a book a while back called “Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion(aff link)” and his latest is called “The Thank You Economy(aff link)”. Both great reads from a kid from North Jersey who took a little wine store and turned it into a $60 million dollar business from [...]

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Extend Your Offline Marketing to Your Website

A lot of my posts these days come from ideas I get by looking at what the general public is consuming in the form of websites and advertising, and how I can better merge those two together to help you. Today’s contractor website design tip starts off the page and inside your offline advertising. Here’s the story My local Clipper hit the mailbox yesterday and as I flipped through it I noticed that most if not all sites had website addresses. But that was the problem I know what you are saying, ‘what do you mean having your website on [...]

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Newsletters and Email Are in Fact Not Dead…

Think email marketing is dead? Think there is no reason to worry about building a mailing list of prospects in a stand in front of the microwave and say hurry up world? Here is a very simple and easy reason to rationalize having a newsletter, an opt-in form on your website for your newsletter and an aggressive email/newsletter marketing campaign for your contracting company. Ready, let’s try this little exercise…How many social networks can you name in 10 seconds…GO! Twitter Facebook Google+ MySpace LinkedIn There are more, but you get the point Now, ask yourself this question, how many email [...]

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Google + For Contractors

I have been playing around with Google+ For a couple of months now and I really think there is an opportunity for contractors to improve their marketing and website presence both online and off. You see, unlike Facebook, which is a destination, Google is everywhere, especially when it comes to running your business.   Gmail Calender Checkout Picasa Images search YouTube News Docs The list goes on and on and Facebook is…just Facebook Google said they have 90 million users on the Google+ network, a far cry from the 800 million on Facebook. But the difference here is that Google [...]

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