We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: if your tradie business isn’t online, it should be!

In today’s marketplace, tradie businesses that aren’t online are at a significant disadvantage. Specifically, they’re giving up a lot of potential calls and jobs.

While we strongly recommend touching base with a tradie marketing agency to ensure that your tradie digital marketing strategy goes off without a hitch, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get started on your own.

In fact, we strongly recommend you take these first steps to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.

So grab a cup of coffee and read on.

 

First thing’s first: read up on the basics

For you to have an idea what digital marketing is all about, start first with the basics.

Now, we aren’t asking that you take a statistics course, read up on analytics or start studying web design.

However, you can start by doing some light reading into the fundamentals of:

Starting with these basics give you enough of an understanding of how your digital marketing strategy might work. Say your tradie marketing agency recommends PPC advertising while your SEO strategy gets up and running – now you’ll know what they’re talking about at least!

Not only that, but it means that you’ll be able to make a more informed decision about your tradie marketing strategy.

marketing for tradies

Next up: create a Google Business Listing

If you ask us, a Google Business Listing is an essential first step.

And not just for tradies either – all businesses should have one!

Just Google one of your competitors by name. Chances are, you’ll see a box on the right side of the page with:

  • Contact details
  • Address
  • Rough service area
  • Opening hours
  • Location on a map
  • Images
  • Reviews (from Google and other sources)

It’s a small thing, but this adds a huge amount of credibility and trustworthiness to your site. And when people Google tradies, that’s exactly what they want!

In addition to building credibility, a Google Business listing can help you in other ways.

For starters, it plays a role in tradie SEO. Google considers review scores and location when serving results – both of which impact how well your site performs on Google.

Additionally, it also helps with local SEO. Armed with your address or service area, Google can better tailor its results so that your site is presented for local callers. No more long hours travelling across the city for jobs!

The reason we bring this up now is because it’s dead easy to set up a Business Listing on your own.

Not to mention, it’s completely free – the only thing you’ll be paying with is about 20 minutes of your time.

If you don’t have a CRM, get one!

CRM (customer relationship management) systems are crucial for tradie businesses. Even if you aren’t planning on investing in a digital marketing strategy (a bad idea if you ask us), you’ll still want to invest in a robust CRM.

A good CRM is about more than digital marketing – it also allows you to:

  • Record customer details
  • Leave notes about unique requirements
  • Track job history
  • Process invoices and record overdue payments
  • Store quotes and inspection reports

Think of a CRM as the ultimate tool for managing clients. Instead of having to record everything on paper or between multiple programs and Excel sheets, you can have everything recorded in a single easy-to-use program.

Not only does this make it easier to look up relevant info, but it can also save you minutes of your time!

What does this have to do with digital marketing? It’s simple: the information from your CRM helps you target your digital marketing strategy. For example, many email campaigns are carried out using these details.

Not only that, but CRM helps you provide better customer service. Say you’re a mechanic – a CRM system helps you keep up with customers’ maintenance schedules, and send out reminders that their annual service is due.

Finally, ask help from a digital marketing agency

Okay, so you’ve gone through each of these steps and laid the groundwork for your tradie digital marketing.

There’s just one problem: you either don’t know what comes next, or don’t have the time to pull it off yourself!

If you see yourself as a newbie in this thing called digital marketing, we have good news for you: you don’t have to do it alone.

Digital marketing agencies like iformat help you set up effective tradie marketing strategies. Using techniques tailored for the needs of tradies like yourself, we’ll help tradies like you:

  • Rank higher on Google
  • Improve your online presence
  • Get found for the jobs you want
  • Make you the go-to tradie for your area
  • Get you more phone calls and jobs!

Contact iformat today at 1300 88 6450, or click here to contact us. We’ll help you create the right solution for your business – don’t believe us? Just see what your fellow tradies have to say about us!