You’ve got your toolbelt with all the essential tools of the trade clipped to it.
But what about your toolbelt for all the other essential business functions any good tradie needs to survive? Specifically, what about tools that are designed to help you with marketing for tradies?
There are hundreds, if not thousands of tradesmen marketing their services in Melbourne. That’s a lot of competition – if you want to get more jobs, you’ll need to stand out.
That’s why tradie marketing is such a crucial part of your business, and can play a huge role in making you stand out in a competitive industry. Any advantage needs to be seized upon, especially if it’s one that many of your competing tradies are under-utilising.
And just like physical jobs you attend, good tradie marketing requires good tradie marketing tools. If you want to stand out from other tradies marketing their services, you need to get digital!
How can I promote my tradie business?
1) Start by identifying your target market
Step 1 in tradie digital marketing is the same as regular old marketing: you need to start by understanding your customer, and designing your offer around them.
Effective marketing can only begin once you identify your target market.
You may think that your services are for everyone – there are a couple of problems with that way of thinking however:
- Competing for more services means more competition
- Different customers are interested in different things
- You can’t tailor your offer to your unique customer base
For example, if you’re a tradie that works mostly on construction projects as a subcontractor, your marketing is going to look very different from somebody who deals with fixing issues around the house.
Not only that, but it’s also worth thinking about yourself for a moment.
Not all jobs are the same – some might not make enough money, be too much time relative to what you earn, you might be better at certain jobs or there might be some types of jobs you simply don’t want to do anymore!
For example, at one point we had a tradie client who had a young family to look after. He wanted to be nearby in case one of the kids was sick, or needed to be picked up from school.
In his case, we focused on marketing towards his local area.
Your market depends not just on the types of calls you usually get, but also on the types of jobs you want to get. After all, the only way to get the jobs you want is to actively pursue them, and that’s something tradie marketing can help with.
Whether you’re interested in marketing for plumbers or digital marketing for electricians, marketing for tradie businesses needs to start by defining your target.
2) Make sure your website is up-to-date
When it comes to tradie marketing, digital is a key part of the equation.
And upping your digital marketing game starts by upping your website.
Just having a website is a strong start – many tradies don’t really pay attention to their digital marketing efforts and don’t have a website at all, so you’ll have an automatic advantage here.
Of course, just having a site won’t cut it!
Having an existing tradie website and social media profile does not guarantee that people near your target location can immediately find you. You need to go a step further by ensuring that your site is optimised.
Specifically, you need to ensure that it’s optimised for two things:
- Search engines
- Mobile devices
The first one ensures that the content and structure of your site can be easily understood and categorised by search engines such as Google, making it more likely to pop up in search results.
On the other hand, optimising your website for mobile devices means taking measures to ensure that the experience of browsing your site with a phone is smooth and effortless (remember, over half of all web traffic worldwide is on mobiles now).
Fail to do either of these, and you might find that your site isn’t making conversions and generating calls.
Online visibility and mobile-friendliness are key to making your tradie marketing more effective and helping you reach more potential clients than ever before. Make no mistake, tradie SEO and web design that accounts for mobile devices are key.
3) Level-up your customer service (both online and off)
People have higher expectations of tradies when it comes to the customer service front. As such, you’ll need to make efforts to level up your customer service accordingly.
This goes beyond taking extra measures to clean up after yourself, or offering more flexible invoicing options for customers.
You may not realise it, but it also pays to upgrade your digital customer service too.
That doesn’t just mean checking your email inbox every once in a while – digital customer service goes a lot further:
- Automatic replies
- Making it easy to lodge jobs
- Online quote calculators
- Online maintenance and repair records
- Discounts and offers
- Instant messaging apps to answer questions
In particular, it’s important that you make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch online. Simply listing an email address at the top of your site won’t do it anymore – who has time to open up their email app, copy the address over and type out an email?
A better way of doing it would be to implement a form with a button that simply says “contact us”. Upon clicking, it should open a pop-up box with areas to type a message, as well as a name and phone number or email address.
Not only does this make the experience more seamless for your customers, but it also helps cut down on the number of people who might drop out.
And this is just one way you can improve your customer service on your website!
4) Bolster your site with feedback/testimonials
Customer-related reviews aren’t just there for a show – reliable feedbacks and testimonials from your previous clients say a lot about:
- Their work experience with you
- The quality of your workmanship
- Which types of service you offer
- Your work ethics/professionalism
While you can talk a big game, nothing comes quite as close as hearing about – or better yet, seeing – the results of your work.
Using these case studies, testimonials and reviews in your digital marketing can make you seem credible in a way that few other methods and techniques can!
What marketing tools are available to a business? Essential marketing tools and techniques for tradies
Like one of the many jobs you get called out to, digital marketing doesn’t just happen overnight – takes a lot of work, as well as specialised tools.
And that brings us to today’s topic: the essential digital marketing tools you’ll need to succeed in your tradie digital marketing efforts.
No matter what trade you work in, it’s essential that you equip yourself with the following tools…
Google Analytics
How many people are coming to your website? Which pages are they looking at? What services are they most interested in?
These are all important questions that you’ll need to keep track of with your website. And that’s what Google Analytics is designed to help with.
Analytics can be synced up with virtually any website, including tradie websites. Using this, you’ll be able to see exactly how your website and tradie digital marketing strategy are performing, and make changes and decisions accordingly.
For example, say you’re a plumber and you notice that your page about hot water repairs has the most conversions and visits – this can be a sign to start pushing these services.
Best of all, it’s 100% free to use!
Social media
While you may not think of it as such, social media like Facebook and Instagram can actually be powerful tools in your mission to generate more leads with your tradie digital marketing.
Make no mistake, this should be a part of your digital marketing toolbox!
Whether it’s to answer FAQs, make yourself reachable by potential callers or just show off successful jobs, social media is an easy way of upping your digital marketing efforts.
Mailing lists
Just to be clear, email marketing won’t be for every tradie. For some however, it can be a great way of keeping in touch with customers, and can play a key role in your customer relationship management (CRM).
Do you work mainly with other tradies? Is a large part of your business ongoing repairs or service contracts? Are you partnered with builders and renovators?
If you fit into any of these categories, ongoing email marketing campaigns help maintain awareness, build ongoing relationships and ensure you stay at the tops of their minds.
Certain email systems even let you automate this process entirely, taking the work off your hands!
Remarketing
Do you ever feel like a certain website is following you, no matter where you go on the web?
It isn’t just a sneaking suspicion – it’s 100% what’s happening!
Remarketing is all about targeting ads towards people who’ve been to your website, but who’ve dropped off and left.
Essentially, users who’ve let your site without calling in or leaving a written message can be targeted with ads for your tradie business on other websites they visit.
In many cases, these people are shopping around – by targeting them with remarketing, you can stay at the front of their minds and gently nudge them back towards choosing your tradie business over competitors.
What are the four types of marketing?
Digital marketing is a key part of your marketing – of course, even then it’s still crucial that you remember the fundamentals of marketing, or as they’re officially known, the marketing mix or the 4 P’s of marketing.
What are they?
- Product: not just your trade, but your specific services
- Price: how much you charge for your tradie services
- Place: everything involved in executing your tradie services
- Promotion: how you “sell” your tradie business
Whether it’s digital or otherwise, no marketing strategy is complete without a strong understanding of these four, as well as what marketing efforts fall under each category and how they relate to your trade or tradie business.
So, what is the most powerful marketing tool?
The answer: it depends!
Each tradie offers different services, works in different areas and targets different customers. As such, it comes down to your unique circumstances when deciding what marketing tool is best for you.
Whatever your situation however, it’s important to remember that digital marketing can be extremely potent.
Furthermore, it’s also becoming more and more important – while it may not replace your most important marketing tool, it shouldn’t be ignored.
Of course, it’s also extremely time-consuming. What tradie has time for all of this between all the different jobs and callouts you receive on a daily basis?
That’s where we come in.
Just like a plumber calls a gas-fitter when they realise that a plumbing job also has a gas element to it, tradies should call upon digital marketing specialists to look after this side of their marketing efforts.
What are the tools used in marketing? Our tradie marketing service can help
Give your tradie business more opportunities to grow by upping your digital marketing game.
Of course, this takes a lot of specialised tools in your digital marketing tool belt. Just where do you begin?
Our team in digital marketing has access to a broad range of different digital marketing tools that we can bring into your business to help you gain more leads and sales for your tradie business.
We have a range of proven SEO and tradie tool trackers which when combined with our marketing packages allow us to give you better results than even the best word-of-mouth can provide.
We ensure that your website is easily found, allowing potential customers to contact you immediately and provide the best advertising for tradesmen like you.
Take your business to the next level of your business using effective online marketing strategies. We’ll work together and make it happen. For enquiries, you contact us at 1300 88 64 50 or at this link.
