If you’re a home service contractor (painters, electricians, plumbers, roofing, HVAC, etc…), you’ve probably heard of digital marketing. Digital marketing is a broad term however used to describe the use of the Internet to promote products and services leveraging search engines, social media, email and more to connect with prospects and customers. It goes beyond just putting up a website and hoping that prospects find it in search engines. So, how do you use this to promote your electrical business? Read on for more info!
Digital Marketing for home service contractors is based on using the Internet to promote products and services leveraging digital channels such as websites, search engines, social media, online ads, email, and other digital tools to connect with current and prospective customers.
Digital Marketing for home service contractors is a hot topic these days. The pandemic and the Internet have changed the way people find services and businesses. With the Internet, home service contractors can reach prospects and customers in ways that were never possible before. Today the internet is an important part of business operations for all home service industries. Digital marketing is the use of different types of online marketing to promote your products, services and business online.
Digital Marketing is an effective way to reach out to your target audience regardless of location or your trade. Businesses of all kinds have implemented social media, email marketing, SEO, and other digital marketing strategies to reach more people than ever before.
What is digital marketing?
There are several different types of digital marketing. The most common are:
- Content marketing focuses on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.
- Search engine marketing focuses on the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages primarily through paid advertising.
- Display Advertising is graphic advertising on Internet websites, apps or social media through banners or other advertising formats made of text, images, video, and audio. The main purpose of display advertising is to deliver general advertisements and brand messages to site visitors.
- Mobile Marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, E-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications.
- Social Media Marketing is the use of social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc…) platforms and websites to promote a product or service.
- Email Marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.
- Video Marketing is a component of an integrated marketing communications plan designed to increase audience engagement through social activity around a given video.
- Reputation management is the practice of influencing stakeholder perceptions and public conversations about an organization and its brands. It includes monitoring perceptions and conversations, responding to reputation threats and proactively seizing opportunities to boost reputation.
The use of these and other digital tools to market your products and services is digital marketing. Digital marketing is used to reach potential customers to develop a “know, like and trust” online relationship with them that your business is the one they should do business with!
You already know your prospects and customers are using the Internet more than ever before to research products and services, and to make purchases. And because “Success Leaves Clues”, that means you need to keep up and in order to do that, you need a digital marketing strategy.
Your digital marketing strategy should include how you plan to reach your customers and how you will make sure they are happy with their service and purchase. Digital marketing is the best (in our opinion) and one of the most economical ways to get your business in front of your customers and to make sure they see you as the business they should buy from.
Importance of Digital Marketing for Home Service Contractors
It is rare today that any business can survive long term without a strong online presence in today’s digital age. Just the fact that you’re reading this article online means that you’re searching for information online (just like your prospects), which also means that you’ve probably bought things online too (just like your prospects).
Businesses have always had to adapt to changes and the Internet has made that much more urgent and necessary. Making sure you’re up-to-date with the latest digital marketing trends is crucial for every business if you are serious about growing and scaling. Whether you’re an electrician, plumber, insurance agent or Realtor, you need to do digital marketing to keep up with the competition and be relevant. As a business, you can gain a competitive advantage by using digital marketing to reach your target market directly.
How Can Home Service Contractors Use Digital Marketing
Digital marketing for home service contractors uses the Internet to market your business, your products and your services. As pointed out previously, digital marketing includes email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing, and more.
Home service contractors can use digital marketing to market their services to a wider audience that is not limited to their local area. Digital marketing can also help increase your online reputation and online presence. And trust us when we say, the “RIGHT” reviews and testimonials are absolutely ONE OF THE BEST marketing assets your business can attain and implement to attract even more business!
The Internet has changed how people search for products and services. People often start with a search engine and then either choose a local business or a business they’ve heard of. The Internet allows home service contractors to connect with the people who are searching for services in their area.
⛤⛤⛤BONUS TIP: We don’t know how long this will be effective but right now, we are experiencing great results implementing Google Business Profiles into our and our clients marketing strategies. But beware, Google has a habit of changing and even deprecating some of their tools without warning or reason.
Digital Marketing for Home Service Contractors: Having a Long-term Strategy is Key
Everyone uses their smartphones to look for services and products that they need. I mean, how did we get along without them before? It seems so barbaric (lol). That’s why it can be very beneficial if you’re a contractor to have a strong digital marketing strategy to reach more people. Don’t think it’s too late to get started either because digital marketing is still a fairly fresh concept in the world of marketing, and it’s something that many business owners are still trying to figure out. Even though it’s not as old as traditional marketing, digital marketing is still a very important tool to use for your business. Online marketing is a great way for you to reach a very wide audience in a short amount of time.
How to Market your Contractor Business with the Power of Digital Marketing
Marketing, especially digital marketing, can be overwhelming for a lot of small businesses. How do you know what to do? Where do you start? How do you know you’re doing it right? We’ve been helping small businesses with marketing their business online since 2009 and we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. We’ve also seen what works for a lot of home service contractors. We’ve done the research, compiled the data and created proven custom digital marketing strategies for different types of home service contractors.
When it comes to digital marketing, one of the main benefits is having the ability to deliberately and intentionally publish content (web pages, blogs, articles, videos, etc..) for your prospects and customers to find. You MUST be deliberate and intentional with what you want your prospects and customers to find online. Don’t leave this up to chance because someone searching for you may ultimately end up doing business with your competitor if they can’t find you.
In our book the 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing for Home Service Contractors, we cover:
These are the tools (in varying configurations) needed to appropriately market your business online today. Click here to see how you can get a complimentary copy of our book!
How to Leverage Digital Marketing to Get More Customers
Digital marketing is not just a buzzword but it has always been a part of a successful business model. It’s a fact, digital marketing is here to stay at least in our lifetimes (lol). As long as people are using the Internet, businesses will continue to use digital marketing to get the word out and get customers. So how do you leverage digital marketing? You need to look at how to get the right message out to the right people at the right time. You need to be able to see who is visiting your site and what they are interested in. You need to be able to measure the results of your marketing to see how it is working and what modifications you need to make on a CONTINUAL basis!
Digital Marketing Tips That Are Actually Working for Home Service Contractors
Build a findable web presence
If you are trying to sell anything online, you are going to need a website. This is your online storefront, your virtual brick and mortar. Your online shop. Whatever you want to call it, it is your way of reaching the public. Nobody is going to come to your physical store and buy your products or services unless they are able to find you, and that is where the need to make your website findable comes in.
At the very best, 3 out of the next 100 prospects may be ready to do business with you today. The rest (97), if they are going to business at all could take up to 6 months or longer to decide. During this time, they are going to complete their research and due diligence (whatever that looks like), including searching for your virtual presence, your website and/or social media. Remember, you want to be deliberate and intentional with what you want them to find and what better (currently) than your own business website where you control the content and the narrative.
Engaging and efficient methods for prospects and customer to contact you (forms and email automation)
There are three main purposes for your website:
- To establish brand presence
- To attract customers
- To generate leads and sales
If you are not getting the results you want from your website or you are building a new website, you need to consider using a new approach for some of your site’s features. There are three main types of contact methods:
- Forms
- Phone
These are the main methods that will be used by your prospects and customers. If you have a phone number on your website, that number should be working and easy to find. If you have an email address on your website, that email should be working.
You can use a contact form to collect information from your visitors. This is a very easy way to get data from your visitors. You can create a simple, one-page form that goes to a specified email address and can be sent to you immediately. The information that you get from this form can be used to connect with your visitor and provide them with more information or services.
In addition, you can (should) implement automation to follow up automatically on form submissions, email receipts and phone calls. This automation ensures all your prospects and contacts are responded to 24/7/365 nights, weekends and holidays! You can also be notified automatically when someone contacts you allowing you to stay focused on the job at hand until you are able to respond to their inquiry.
Increase and improve your prospect and customer reach
Social media has become an extremely important part of marketing and it has become a big part of the way people interact with each other. However, many businesses have not yet caught up with the way people use social media, which is why they might be failing to market to their audience. The way to improve your social media marketing is to understand how your customers use social media and to create content that is tailored to them. This is why you want to create a social media strategy — because it will help you to understand your customers and how they use social media.
Social Media Marketing is a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. It is a great way to connect with your customers and prospects, and a great way to build your reputation and brand. Social media is a way for businesses to increase their customer reach and influence, and to harness the power of social proof. But, you need to be strategic, thoughtful and consistent if you want to see results from your efforts. In other words, we don’t advocate the posting of what you ate for lunch or the obligatory cat videos (unless you’re a vet maybe).
A former business coach of ours was fond of saying, “if you want to reach 100% of the people, you MUST use 100% of the ways” and while we don’t disagree, due to diminishing returns you want to start your social media marketing efforts on whatever platform your prospects and customer are in concentration.
Social media has become such an important part of the relationship between businesses and customers that it’s now a necessity for a business to maintain an online presence in order to stay competitive. Social media shouldn’t be treated as a one-time deal because this is one of the ways you are going to communicate with your customers in the future. You can’t just get the ball rolling with it and then forget about it. Social media has to be a continuous process. It takes time, effort and commitment.
Video for Contractors
Video marketing is one of the best ways to build and maintain relationships with your prospect and customers. Due to its modality It is the best way to build credibility and in-depth information about your product and service. Video marketing has the potential to increase views and traffic to your website.
Video marketing is all about bringing your brand to life. Social media is a great way to get your message across, and as you know there are various types of social media. The main idea for video marketing is to be creative and unique. Create “Before and After” videos to showcase your talents. Publish review and testimonial videos to share your customers’ praises.
Videos are a great way to engage with your social media audience in a way that is creative and informative. We believe video marketing is a component in the future of marketing.
Local SEO (Google Business Profile)
Google Business Profile is an online Google tool that you can use to create business listings. These listings are found in Google search results. The listings are also found in other Google services. These services include Google Maps, Google Business Profile and more.
With a business profile, you can add your business information and respond to reviews that people leave about your business. The information you add includes:
Google has recently updated its local search algorithm to help local businesses rank higher in search results. Google Business Profile offers companies a fantastic opportunity to appear in Google search results. Your business can be found on Google and attract new customers, if you submit your business information to Google and it’s a free way to get your business information in front of local prospects who are searching for local products and services.
And there you have it, even though we’ve covered a lot we’ve really just scratched the surface of what goes into a successful marketing strategy for home service contractors.
If you are just getting started or want to freshen up your marketing, it is a good idea to talk to a professional digital marketer that specializes in your industry. One that has been around for a while, one that has reviews and testimonials from happy customers and clients, one that has a proven track record of success.
The team here at Musselwhite Marketing would love to review and discuss your unique marketing scenario and offer a no obligation “Discovery Call”. This call is meant simply to learn about your goals and marketing challenges. If it makes sense, our next step in the process is to schedule a “Findings and Suggestions”. This meeting is designed for our team to experience your current digital profile as if we were a prospect. We provide you with powerful marketing reports like SEMrush. Semrush for instance is the gold standard SEO tool providing all the key data needed for successful SEO. We provide you with these reports alongside our custom suggestions for your unique virtual footprint.
Conclusion:
You’re not going to be successful in digital marketing if you are not set up for success, and you’re not going to be set up for success if you don’t understand digital marketing. If you are in the home service contractor business, you need to have a well-planned digital marketing strategy to achieve your business goals.
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Charles Musselwhite
Charles Musselwhite is an author, speaker and co-owner of Musselwhite Marketing (est 2009) along with his wife Linda Musselwhite. Together they are “CaLM” (Charles and Linda M). Charles is an Ontraport Certified Expert and a previous DigitalMarketer Certified Partner holding several DM certifications.
