Are you curious about how you can use marketing to improve your business? Let’s dive into what the experts are saying. We recently came across an article by the marketing group Blue Corona that lays out some helpful advice for contractors.
In the article, “Contractor Marketing Ideas, Strategies, and Tips to Increase Leads and Sales in 2019,” author Sophia Ege maps out simple ways to use marketing to up your ROI.
Here are our key takeaways from the article, which you can use to get the most out of your service management software and marketing plans.
The Future Calls for Better Design
According to Blue Corona, if you want to draw in more leads, you’ll want to focus on your website design. It suggests you start by focusing on two key areas: speed and mobility.
Why?
As the article points out, the average customer expects a webpage to load in three seconds or less. That means sites that lag risk putting off customers.
At the same time, the article also suggests focusing on a mobile-friendly web design. That means designing your website to adjust to small screens, such as those on phones or tablets.
We couldn’t agree with this concept more. After all, according to Statista, the global mobile population is up to 4 billion unique users. That’s a lot of potential customers who could access information on your site, frustration-free, without having to squint and pinch their screens to get the info they want.
Improving SEO Is a Must
The article wisely points out that improving your search engine optimization (SEO) is a must if you want to connect with customers. SEO is the strategy of matching up keywords, phrases, and concepts on your site with the content customers are looking for online. When done right, SEO makes your site more visible, which makes it a key to getting the most bang for your marketing buck.
We think this is a critical point that’s worth emphasizing for business owners. After all, 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine.
However, what the article doesn’t mention is how SEO has changed from years past. There was a time when SEO meant stuffing as many clunky keywords into a post as possible. Back then, the more times you used the exact words customers were typing in searches, the more visible your page became. Those days are long gone.
Today, Google searches are more conversational, and search engines have adapted to include context. That means it’s more important to give customers helpful content that’s driven by keywords. With this in mind, we have some SEO suggestions:
- Create content that’s valuable: Find out what keywords your customers use and create online content that answers the questions surrounding those words.
- Don’t keyword-stuff: These days, using a keyword too often will actually hurt your site. That means it’s better to use keywords naturally.
- Be a human: Use keywords as a jumping-off point. When you’re writing content, read phrases out loud to make sure you aren’t forcing keywords into places they don’t fit.
You Can Improve Your Local Online Presence
As the article points out, SEO isn’t always about competing globally; local search results are crucial, especially for small businesses. The article lists three useful ways to up your local search rankings:
- Set up a Google My Business page.
- Focus on getting reviews on online forums.
- Make sure your website appears in local directories.
Still, as helpful as those tips are, you might be new to the game. That’s why we found the article’s resources list to be a helpful place to start. Here are some sites that you should make sure your business is featured on:
Email and Social Media Can Drive Marketing
We’ve mentioned how social media can drive marketing before, and the Blue Corona article reinforces this crucial point.
For contractors, frequent positive customer interactions are important because the industry is rooted in relationships. Here’s how the article suggests using email marketing and social media to drive sales:
- Use email to maintain relationships with customers and send them exclusive offers.
- Use social media to engage with customers on all of your platforms.
- Use social media to tie all of your marketing efforts together. That means highlighting your social media profiles on brochures, on business cards, and in email signatures.
Video Marketing Is Taking Off
The article makes a profound point about video marketing. If your site has good video content, you’re set up to have a 2.1 percent higher conversion rate than competitors who don’t use video.
Video is an especially exciting advantage in the service contractor industry because it can drive engagement and explain complex ideas in a simple way.
Think about giving customers video content that they can really use. For instance, what if you were to record a simple how-to video showing customers how to replace an air filter and post it on your site? Customers who find the instructions helpful will be coming to your site to solve a problem and get content they want.
You don’t need fancy equipment to record valuable content. Just pick up your phone, walk customers through the process, and post it on your site. You’ll be rewarding customers for coming to your website. At the same time, they’ll trust your expertise more and come to you for other issues they can’t solve on their own.
Tracking and Measuring Leads Is a Must
The article talks a great deal about the importance of tracking and measuring leads. What’s a lead? It’s someone who visits your site and shows interest by filling out a form or asking for more info.
Tracking and measuring leads is important because it shows you how much traffic is coming to your site from people who are interested in your business. It also can show you what’s attracting leads and what’s turning them off.
Wondering where to focus your energy?
The article suggests digging into web traffic by measuring conversion rates; comparing advertising, sales, and revenue; and taking advantage of call tracking.
Tie It All Together with Service Management Software
As a whole, following these tips from Blue Corona should help you reach more customers and increase your ROI. With that, service management software goes hand in hand with a solid marketing strategy.
With service management software, you can give leads and customers the ability to make appointments where you’re interacting with them: online. That process makes it easy to schedule jobs directly in your system, which means you’re avoiding double entries and keeping jobs organized.
Interested in learning more about how to integrate technology into your business? Contact us today to talk about software solutions.
