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Contractor Marketing Ideas, Strategies, and Tips for 2020
The Best Marketing Strategies for Contractors Proven to Increase Leads and Sales in 2020
Are you getting enough leads? How about sales—are your current sales contributing to significant year-over-year business growth? Is your phone ringing as much as you want it to?
There’s a hundred reasons why your answers to these questions may be “no.” The impact of COVID-19 has certainly caused a drop in consumer demand for contractors as homeowners adjust to their new “normal.” On the flip side, it may not be an economic issue. Your contractor digital marketing company may be struggling to keep your website current with Google’s best practices, causing your site to drop in rankings. The company managing your PPC account might not be optimizing your campaigns to meet your leads goal, resulting in inflated costs for very little ROI. Whatever the case, you’re not alone. According to a study by ServiceTitan, only 45% of businesses in the contracting and construction industries are growing.
By now you should understand that your target audience is looking for your services online—consumers currently perform more than 1.6 million online searches for contractor services EVERY MONTH.
The good news is that there is a way for you to turn the tides and connect with these online consumers: digital marketing. With the right approach, your digital marketing strategy can give you the edge you need over your competitors and transform your website into a 24/7 sales rep for your company.
If you’re looking for marketing ideas to grow your construction or contracting business in 2020, look no further. Below you’ll find our top ideas—including construction marketing strategies and tips—proven to increase leads and sales.
Digital Marketing Ideas for Contractors & Construction Companies…Where to Start?
In 2020, contractors have more digital marketing options than ever. While email marketing has been a go-to method for the past decade, new methods such as website chat services and voice optimization are taking the industry by a storm.
Technology isn’t the only thing that’s changed—so have your customers. About 40% of people only consider one local contractor before making a decision and 40% of people look at online directories to do research beforehand. When searching for a local contractor, 56% are looking for info on prices, but 70% of U.S. consumers say they’ll spend more money to do business with a company that delivers great service.
Our top marketing ideas for contractors focus on the online components of contractor advertising, including:
- Website Design
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay Per Click (PPC or “paid advertising”)
- Social Media Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Email Marketing
Getting your online marketing strategy off the ground can look overwhelming at first. We recommend starting with the basics—and that means starting with a website.
Our Top Online Marketing and Advertising Ideas for Construction and Contracting Companies
1. Make Your Website Fast, Effective & Mobile-Friendly
Are you prepared to win over new customers with your 2019 online marketing strategy? If you don’t have a website, building a website is step one to reach your customers online, anytime, anywhere. At least 75% of consumers admit to judging a company’s credibility based on its website design alone. Considering 92% of consumers look at websites when deciding which local contractor to use, you can’t afford to have an out-of-date design.
A few things to keep in mind when you build your website:
- It needs to be fast: The average customer expects a web page to load in three seconds or less.
- It needs to be functional: Websites should be properly coded for SEO, which means adding structure to the site with metadata such as schema, optimized images, and title and meta tags.
- It needs to be mobile-friendly: 57% of all U.S. online traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets. Having a site that is optimized to be mobile-friendly is a must.
- It needs to be secure: 94% of the sites on the first page of Google are HTTPS, which is not a surprise since Google has confirmed that they favor HTTPS sites.
Another factor that can make a huge impact on your digital marketing strategy out of the gates is to optimize for user-friendliness. It can be a huge benefit to include items on your site such as click-to-call or instant chat features, a page for testimonials and photos of past work, and anything else that keeps your customer—and their experience as they navigate your website—in mind.
Your website will also have to be optimized so that search engines can find and rank it online. This is commonly referred to as search engine optimization (SEO), and it is essential in getting your website ranked on Google.
2. Invest in SEO for Contractors
So you have a website, but you’re still wondering “Why don’t I have more leads?” or worse, the leads you’re getting are from people outside of your service area, or they are requesting services you don’t offer! To avoid a digital marketing disaster like this, your first priority after creating a website should be to perform search engine optimization (SEO) and local SEO.
Each month, consumers in the U.S. perform more than 1.6 million monthly searches for contractors and general contractors:
Over 93% of their online experiences begin with a search engine and 47% of individuals click on one of the first three listings in the search results page. Optimizing your website and local listings can make the difference between a customer in need calling you—or calling your competitor.
Optimizing your site and local listings for SEO will help you to:
- Define your target services and service area
- Reach a larger audience of potential customers
- Drive leads for specific services using a targeted keywords strategy
- Improve the quality of leads you get from individuals who find your company online
Google’s algorithms and the strategy your competitors are using are constantly changing, so it’s crucial to engage in digital marketing efforts on an ongoing basis. It will take time to see results: you are up against competitors who already have an established SEO strategy in a highly competitive market.
To increase the likelihood your company’s website will rank well in search results, get started working on your contractor or construction marketing strategy now and keep tending to it.
SEO strategy works by leveraging Google’s ranking factors so that your website is at the top of the list of websites a person sees when they search for a particular service online. With proper optimization, your contracting company can be a top-ranked business on Google’s search engine.
3. Use Pay Per Click Advertising for Immediate Results
Do you need ideas to get leads NOW? Pay per click advertising (PPC) allows contractors anywhere to be found on the first page of Google right away. For high commercial intent searches (where a person is looking to buy a product), paid ads receive 65% of all clicks. If you want fast results, PPC advertising is the way to go to control your company’s visibility and relevance online.
Pay per click advertising works by placing your message or ad in front of people who are actively searching for your services. Below is an example of what PPC looks like when you enter a search online:
The top of search results page with PPC ads will typically look like this: In this image, at the top of the page, are PPC ads, where the “ad” symbol is so small, you might miss it! Advertisements like these often show up either above or to the right of the organic search listings.
These ads are displayed because businesses bid on certain keywords (for you, it might be something like “Electrician in Washington, DC” that they want their advertisements to show up for. Factors such as the quality of the landing page your ad links to and the relevance of the advertisement to the searcher’s query will help determine where your ad will rank.
4. Get Your Contracting Company to Rank in Google’s Local Pack
When you search for a service online (one with “local intent”, such as “construction companies in Kansas City”), an image of a map may appear below the PPC ads showing a few company listings. This is what’s referred to as Google’s local pack:
To rank in the local pack, you will need to optimize your website to maximize your search visibility.
3 Quick Ways to Improve Your Contractor Local SEO Results
- Claim and optimize your Google My Business page
- Optimize your website content for your local service area
- Get reviews on Google My Business and other online platforms
You can also support your digital marketing efforts by optimizing heading tags on every web page, optimizing meta data such as title tag and meta descriptions for local search, adding business Schema markup to your website, and claiming and optimizing your company’s online directory profiles.
Have you built a listing for the following local directories? You may want to start!
When you create or optimize a listing, make sure the NAP (name, address, and phone number) information is consistent. Google needs this information to verify that your listings and your website match and present credible information.
5. Leverage Email Marketing for New & Recurring Clients
Email marketing allows you to nurture unclosed prospects and keep in touch with previous customers. If your business relies on repeat sales from customers (and whose doesn’t?!), an email marketing campaign is an excellent way to stay in front of prospects and existing customers.
Email marketing can help you generate more sales by allowing you to:
- Keep in touch with customers
- Advertise specials, coupons, and exclusive rebates
- Improve brand awareness
Stay connected to your entire customer base with one click! Email marketing is valuable—44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. If you want to generate and close leads with minimal investment, include email marketing in your online marketing strategy.
6. Support Your Website with Social Media
Social media profiles such as Google My Business (GMB) and Facebook help spread the word about your construction company and its services online, even before customers reach your website.
You can engage with customers using the following social media profiles:
- YouTube
- Google My Business
Don’t forget to incorporate social media into your business operations, such as:
- Website footer
- Marketing materials
- Brochures
- Business cards
- Email signatures
Social media will not produce overnight results, but can build up a following and engage with consumers in your local market. If you are going to engage in social media, remember that updating it routinely is the best way to stay engaged with potential customers—you have to stay consistent with it.
Social media continues to be a major factor for Google and other search engines to determine how your website will rank online. Facebook advertising campaigns, for example, are easy to use and effective if done correctly. Be sure to analyze your Facebook marketing during and after each campaign to maximize your results and budget.
7. Incorporate Video Marketing into Contractor Digital Marketing
Nothing builds authority for websites quite like video. If you have a website with good video content, you stand to have a 2.1% higher conversion rate than competitors without video.
Investing in a video marketing campaign can help you to:
- Increase online engagement
- Establish your brand and its personality
- Convey your competitive differentiators
How effective is video for sales? Research has shown that including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%. As a contractor trying to break into digital marketing strategy, one of the most effective ways you can reach consumers through advertising is through spotlighting videos on your website.
Videos and voice search continue to grab increased attention from consumers and, thankfully, it doesn’t take a big budget to produce quality videos. Some of the best live videos are completely unscripted and shot with a common camera phone.
Video Marketing Tips for Contractors and Construction Companies
Before you hit record, here are a few things to consider in your video marketing strategy:
- Limit videos to two minutes or less to increase the likelihood of viewership
- Place videos on popular service pages
- Incorporate videos on blogs
Having a video on a landing page increases the likelihood that the page will show up on page one of Google’s search rankings, by 53%! Video marketing is a magnet for user engagement and helps get your value propositions out into the world without bogging consumers down in text.
8. Implement Accurate Measurement, Tracking & Analytics on Every Remodeling Advertising Campaign
The best remodeling advertising strategy isn’t complete without tracking. How does your website measure up against competitors? You wouldn’t know unless you are tracking analytics.
Rankings and web traffic, while they are helpful signals, are not an accurate measurement of success. To make sure your website and digital marketing performance are the best it can be, you will want to monitor the following analytics:
Measuring Advertising, Sales & Revenue
You can’t pay your employees with web traffic or rankings, but you can with revenue. Sales and revenue are far better indicators of SEO success than any other factor because they directly reflect the money coming into your business based on your daily efforts.
How do we measure sales and revenue in digital marketing? We look to measuring leads, and how they convert into sales.
Measuring Leads
Leads refer to visitors on your site that complete a defined action, such as contacting you, making a purchase, etc. Measuring how many leads you have and what their journey is like on your website is important—you can generate ten times the traffic to your site than a competitor, but if you don’t convert visitors into leads, you’re not going to reach your goals.
A good SEO strategy will take the following steps to measure lead analytics:
- Measure qualified traffic (such as by segmenting data to reflect your service area)
- Divide the total number of conversions by the total number of visits to get your conversion rate
- Engage in conversion rate optimization to maximize the value of the traffic you already have. More information on this below.
Measuring Conversion Rate
Measuring your conversion rate can help you determine pretty quickly if what you’re doing to attract potential leads is getting them through the door. If you master your conversion funnel, you’ll eliminate strategies that aren’t working, identify areas to improve and increase your bottom line.
Utilizing conversion rate optimization will help you to maximize the value of the traffic you already have by improving the quality of the content already on your site, testing different calls-to-action, implementing landing pages with contact forms, or tweaking your site design.
Call Tracking
If you want to understand how your business is growing, call tracking can help you to:
- Identify new customers to measure business growth
- Identify existing customers to measure repeat customers
- Determine the quality of leads you receive
- Discover the lead source (website, mailer, ad, etc.)
The Bottom Line of Analytics Basics for Contractors
If you want to convert more visitors into leads and sales, implement a good system for tracking analytics. Over time, you can leverage what you find to inform your digital marketing strategy and maximize your ROI.
Need More Advertising Ideas for Contractors or Construction Companies? We’ve Got Plenty.
If you’re looking for more advertising ideas, we can help! Blue Corona can cover your questions and needs for SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, and any other factors of digital marketing you may be interested in.
Contact us today to learn more about how to increase leads and sales with our contractor marketing services.
RESOURCES ON Marketing for Contractors:
- Nextdoor Local Deals Explained
- How to Get More Commercial Contracting Leads Online
- 50+ Contractor Marketing Statistics
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Plumbing Company in 2019
- Website Design for Contractors
- Are Pay-Per-Lead Sites Worth It for Contractors?
- Best Way to Get HVAC Leads
- 17 Website Tips and Internet Marketing Strategies for Contractors
- How to Advertise Your Business on Nextdoor
- 10 Ways Contractors Can Improve Google Rankings
RESOURCES ON REMODELING MARKETING
- 6 Foolproof Ways to Get More Remodeling Leads
- Content Marketing for Remodelers
- 5 Changes to Your Home Remodeling Website That Will Increase Leads
- Remodeler Video Marketing
- Best Facebook Ads for Remodelers
- Remodeling Contractor’s Guide to Pinterest Ads
- Complete Remodeler’s SEO Guide
- Why Your Remodeling Company Should Be On Nextdoor
RESOURCES ON CONSTRUCTION MARKETING
About The Author: Blue Corona's Editorial Staff is determined to help you increase your leads and sales, optimize your marketing costs, and differentiate your brand by passing on our tribal knowledge. The team vigilantly stays on top of the latest in digital marketing, bringing you the top insights with expert commentary. Want to see something on our blog you haven't seen yet? Shoot us an email and our marketing team will get to work.
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The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. It does not constitute professional advice. All information is subject to change at any time without notice. Contact us for complete details.
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