This post is a bit of a rant, a rant meant to get you back to focusing on why you have a website…and it’s not to attract search engines. Your website is meant to sell, it’s meant to educate and it is meant to position and present you as the best source possible for your prospects. Construction marketing and website design shouldn’t be about serving two masters, you should focus on the reader and the rest will come!
When starting out on new ideas or concepts, you want to think big, Thinking big means starting at 10,000 then working down to a granular level. Wanna know how before watching the video? More
The Internet is a labyrinth of sites so big it boggles the mind. In fact, how someone manages to find your site is a miracle of modern technology right?
But all traffic is not created equal
Most of the time, we don’t pay enough attention to how people find our sites, we just assume it is someone typing something in the Google address bar and POOF, they wind up on our sites, and for the most part that’s true. Except, the searcher’s intent is even more important now than ever before.
Why, because we all know all search traffic is not created equal. Let’s take a look at where two search terms and how one could mean anything, and the other could mean cold, hard cash to your contracting company.More
Here is a short one today to make up for yesterday’s long post…
Read – read the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. Read as much as you can to stay on top of the news, and then read some more. Specifically, I want you to read your local yocal paper from front to back every time it is published. This will keep you up to speed on everything going on locally that you sometimes miss while running your business.
The benefits are:
1. You stay informed on a personal and professional level about what is going on in your backyard.
2. There are plenty of business opportunities in those pages, you just have to pay attention.
3. You may discover a marketing opportunity that others miss, therefore gaining 1st mover advantage.
4. It makes sense to know as much as possible in the market you do most of your business in.
5. You get to know who the local movers and shakers are in business, politics and civic activities associations.
So get reading today…
Contractors ask me all the time how much they should spend on marketing, and I have answered the question in a couple of posts here at Darren’s. But this time I am going to make it simple – just pick a friggin’ number and start!
If you haven’t decided to set aside any amount of your gross sales to apply towards building your business, then what the hell are you waiting for? Pick something; $100 a job, 5% of gross a month, something. Just start doing something to assure your business is around not just next week or next year, but 5 years from now.
This is a guest post by Chris Spoerl, owner of Magic Pool Services in Orlando Florida. DISCLAIMER: As it will become obvious in a paragraph or two, Chris is a client of mine. Why I don’t know, since Chris has some pretty serious marketing chops himself. But none the less, I am happy to say he is a client and now a friend. While I appreciate his comments, I think the takeaway here is that once you actively engage in social media, many doors open that were once closed. Enjoy his post!
My kids ask me all the time what I do for a living. I tell them that I clean pools. This is a very simple answer to a complex question, What I do, is market my business Magic Pool Services so that I can get more jobs, so I can keep growing my business. A lot of small business owners get tied up in “working in their business” as opposed to “working on their business”.More
Starting a blog is easy, maintaining one is hard, growing your blog to a point where it generates leads for you on a regular basis is even harder. If you are a contractor thinking about blogging, watch this video first!
Can’t see video, click here.
Today’s marketing tip isn’t so much a marketing tip as it is a suggestion, in story format. As you may know, part of what I do is make follow-up phone calls for some of my bigger contractors on the sits they go out on that don’t close. I do this to ask consumers for their feedback as to why they opted not to choose my client.
And you will be amazed at the answers
Everything from “the guy smelled like smoke” to “the price was too high” are answers I hear all the time. But on this one particular call, Mr. Jones really set me back on my heels.
My client is a kitchen and bath remodeler who does great work at fair prices. But his take-rate has been pretty low for the last couple of months so I suggested we find out right from the horse’s mouth why people were opting to go somewhere else.
After about 40 minutes of phone calls I got a hold of Mr. Jones. After going through a series of questions with Mr. Jones, I finally got down to the estimate and price. I asked Mr. Jones if he thought the price was fair and reasonable.
He said he had no idea
I asked him to qualify what he meant. He proceeded to tell me that he was an accountant by training, and works with numbers all day. He also told me that statistically speaking, it was almost impossible for his estimate to be submitted to him in round numbers.
$22,000
That’s what Mr. Jones’ estimate was for a new kitchen, so I asked him what his problem was. Again he reiterated that it was highly unlikely that his estimate would come out to $22,000 even. So he wasn’t sure if my client added the bill upwards or downwards, and if so, by how much. $500, $1000, $5000?
You see, round numbers are always fake
I forget where I read that, but as soon as I had this conversation with Mr. Jones it was like a flashing sign in the back of my head.
Now, this may seem like a minor detail to you, and maybe it is, but it wasn’t to Mr. Jones. And as you know, people will come up with hundreds of different reasons not to do business with you. It may even seem silly, but I know contractors who issued their first invoice with invoice #367 to give the impression that they didn’t just start their businesses.
I went back to my client and mentioned to him the issue that Mr. Jones had. I asked him to pull the last three months worth of estimates so we can review them together. Lo and behold almost 2/3 of these estimates ended in round numbers. When I asked my client about the statistical anomaly, he claims that he did it to make it easier for the homeowner. He said he only rounded up to the nearest hundred dollars and made mention of it to most of his prospects.
Now, I don’t know if this is the cause for slowing sales or not. But if it affected one person, there’s a good chance it had some kind of an impact on others as well. Or maybe Mr. Jones was hypersensitive to the round numbers because of his occupation? I will tell you this, as I look at the number of 22,000 in the middle of page it does strike me as odd to look at. There is something not right about it. What do you think?