How Much Should You Spend on Advertising?

I get this question a lot from contractors large and small, and while there are guidelines to follow, the only person able to answer this question is the one writing the check since it is their money. But a great place to start when trying to figure out just how much to spend, is by figuring out how much you want to make. If you want to just get by, then a minimal marketing budget with a solid referral business will do. If you have bigger ambitions, like being the industry leader in your market, then you’re going to need [...]

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Marketing or Teaching – Which Do You Think Works?

If you had to buy something, would you buy from someone who taught you something first, or from some snake oil salesman who just wanted to sell you something? Well…if the answer is easy, the video should make it even clearer.

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Bounce Rate Equals Sucky Content

Last week I wrote about time on site being a key metric to website design usability. Well, today I want to talk about a metric that speaks entirely to your content…bounce rate. Bounce rate equals not answering this important question…what’s in it for me?

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Learn From The Ant

It’s the dog days of summer, and while the days are long, now is the time to prepare for what needs to get done during the fall and winter. Remember Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper? One slacked off and nearly froze his ass off, and the other was well stocked and taken care of. Well, I want you to be the ant and take the time now to think about the business from a big picture view. Take notes, make a list of things you want to get accomplished when you aren’t so hectic. Then, once the [...]

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Google About to Bitch Slap Your Site…Again!

So, it appears as if Google is about to smack around the web again with another algo change. This one is meant to address the over-optimization some so-called experts use to get their client’s sites on the mythical first page of Google. If you are happy with your current placement, you have just as much to fear as the guy or girl reading this who is trying to get YOUR spot on the web. As anyone who has tried to optimize their site to get the free love Google extols on those they shine upon, serving that master can be [...]

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Simple is as Simple Does or How to Build a Business

So I get this email from a reader the other day, guy named Theo. Theo runs a painting company in Canada called Different Strokes Painting, cool name by the way Theo! Theo wrote to tell me to he appreciated my work and that he was getting a lot out of the content and videos and that one day soon he wanted to have me work on his website. Then I read this…

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Contractor Website Help: Time on Site is THE Metric to Watch

As I have posted in the past, many contractors get hung up on how many visitors they get each day/week/month to their site. They get on the forums and they talk about how much traffic they are getting but no one can really answer this basic website metric question: How much traffic is converting into new leads? That’s where good content comes in… Visitors or hits don’t really matter if the content you offer doesn’t engage them enough to hang around and find out more. S0 what metric DO you want to track? Time on site!

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Autoresponders or How to Screw Up a Brand New Lead

When you subscribe to my posts via RSS feed over there in the right box under my ugly mug, you get each post here at Darren’s delivered to you in your email. Some of you have taken the time to setup what is called an auto responder. For the uninitiated, and auto responder is a simple email BACK to a prospect, client or customer telling them that you got THEIR message and that you will be back to them soon. And that’s where the wheels come off the wagon… Of the thousand or so people who are subscribed to posts [...]

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Blog Post Writing for Contractors

So, congratulations…you finally have a website. You have a website don’t you? Now, you are probably sitting there saying, OK, what’s next? Maybe I’ll give this blogging thing a shot. Seems to work for that Slaughter guy. Blogging for Contractors…Writing If you want to start blogging on your site to develop new leads or prospects, I ask you to do the following first. Sit down and write 30 posts that are 250-500 words each. If you get stuck there, don’t bother blogging. If you think you have the chops, keep reading.

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Referrals Are Like Diapers

A few weeks ago I posted about tampons and marketing, and it stirred a bit of a conversation. In fact, I received and email from one of my long-time readers with an observation he made while cruising the aisles at CVS. I won’t name him, but he is a pretty high-end builder who does great work and caters to the female buyer. The topic: Pregnancy Tests In the email, my reader mentioned that he noticed an end-cap in his CVS offering pregnancy tests on sale. His point…why discount pregnancy tests? You either need one or you don’t right? Brilliant observation [...]

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