When you spend your days hustling, it is easy to forget the things you need to do to make sure your contracting business is not only successful today but tomorrow and next week too. You don’t have time to feed yourself properly much less take the time needed to develop a solid marketing program.
So, I came up with a quick list of 10 things to keep in mind the next time you sit down to check your advertising program. Even if the next time is your first time, there are some solid foundation building ideas listed below, but I want to know some of yours too, so leave a comment or two below!
Here goes, your contractor marketing top 10!
1. Think in terms of a campaigns, not single pieces — everything that you do should reinforce the premise and the goals of your overall marketing program. You get the best results when every technique you use when coordinated to complement all the others.
2. Aim your message directly at the people who could benefit the most — in other words, don’t try to please everybody. Tailor your message directly to those who are shopping for your product or service now.
3. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospect — present ad copy from the client’s point of view. Your customers don’t care about you, and your marketing should reflect that. The sooner you realize that the only thing prospects care about is how YOU can help THEM, the sooner you will be booking jobs everyday!
4. The amount of money spent has no relation to the ability of an ad to carry out its goal — in other words, having a small budget becomes an advantage. It’s an advantage because there is no money to waste on ego stroking brand marketing that doesn’t produce sales.
5. The goal is to create ads that make people act — an ad may become a hot topic of conversation, but if it doesn’t sell then it hasn’t done the job. In other words, make your message the thing to remember, not how cleverly written it was.
6. Don’t be clever just for the sake of being clever — writing cute or witty ad copy doesn’t mean that everyone else is in on the joke. I’m not saying don’t use humor, just use it sparingly and in such a way that there is no chance of either offending or making the person consuming it feel stupid.
7. Your advertising must have an immediate impact — whatever you are using to promote your services as a contractor needs to produce results now. Your ads have to arrest the attention away from other items on the page and make your reader pay attention to you. This is what having an immediate impact is all about.
8. Less is more — if any part of your ad copy doesn’t reinforce your message then get rid of it.
9. Each ad has one goal — the more points you try to make with any one ad, the more you dilute the effectiveness of all of your points.
10. Always include a call for action — while appealing to the interest of your reader, your ad should get them to move to action, this becomes easier by clearly stating in the ad itself what you want them to do; call, write, e-mail, whatever it is you want, make sure you ask for it.