The trades are a competitive marketplace. A quick Google search or flip through the Yellow Pages (yes, those still exist) reveals there are hundreds of tradies throughout Melbourne, each vying for the same jobs you want.
Whether you’re a sparkie, chippie or plumber, you’ve got a tough fight ahead of you.
Getting ahead of that much competition is hard. You’ll have to take any and all opportunities that you can leverage into a competitive advantage over competing tradies.
So, how can you get ahead of your competitors?
Find something that you can use to set yourself apart
Let’s face it: a blocked pipe is a blocked pipe. If you’re a plumber, there really isn’t much to separate you from your fellow plumbers.
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of tradies. As such, you’ll need something else to set yourself apart.
It can be anything really, as long as it’s unique:
- Workmanship and experience
- Warranties, insurance and guarantees
- Customer service
- Brands you work with
- Niche services
Once you have your point of differentiation, we suggest working that into your marketing. For example, let’s look at one of our clients, H2-Pro Plumbing.
Tony and his team pitch themselves as north-east Melbourne’s local plumber. Instead of trying to service all of Melbourne, they work exclusively on the north-east suburbs.
As such, we make sure to emphasise their local credentials.
When crafting their digital marketing strategy, we focus on getting them found specifically for the suburbs in north-east Melbourne. We also emphasise their connections to the local community, and how callers can expect faster response times.
Focus on a specific area
One of the first questions we ask our tradie clients is which area they want to work in. We ask which suburbs they’re based in, and how far they’re willing to travel.
The reason we do this is two-fold.
While there may be a lot of tradies in Melbourne to compete with, the same might not apply to Brighton, Preston, or Noble Park. This can dramatically reduce the level of competition right off the bat.
And secondly, when people call a tradie to fix problems around the house like a burst pipe, they want someone who can be there ASAP – this necessitates a local tradie who can get to you quickly.
Finally, by focusing on a specific area, you can save yourself from having to criss-cross Melbourne to get to different jobs!
Simply put, focusing on specific suburbs or regions can make it easier to set yourself apart from other tradies.
For example, let’s say you’re an electrician who’s also qualified to design and install solar PV systems. While there are many such sparkies all over Melbourne, you might be the only one in your particular neck of the woods!
Get online: why tradie SEO holds the secret to success
If you aren’t online yet, you should be!
More and more people are turning to Google in order to find tradies. Honestly, we don’t blame them: it’s more up-to-date, faster and offers way better results than the Yellow Pages or local paper ever did.
And if you don’t want to miss out on those calls, you need to be online.
Making yourself stand out online is about more than simply having a website or a Facebook profile. In addition to being online, it’s just as important that your site is as high as possible on Google searches!
That’s because not many people go past the first page.
Here’s a statistic: did you know that the top result on a Google search page receives 33% of all traffic for that specific search. By contrast, second-place usually gets about 18%, with the share dropping off the further down you go.
Naturally, you want your site to be as high as possible!
At iformat, SEO for tradies is our specialty. We create custom SEO strategies that get you found on Google for your services and know-how. Using a steady stream of well-optimised, high-quality content, we nudge your site past your competitors, getting you a bigger slice of that pie.
And finally…
…be good at what you do!
Tradie SEO that puts you ahead of your competitors
So you want to get ahead of your competitors. We’re not going to beat around the bush – with the number of plumbers, sparkies, mechanics and more sprinkled throughout Melbourne, it can be hard to make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Luckily, iformat can help.
We help countless tradies to stand out in their respective trades. Our tradie SEO strategies are designed to increase your visibility by pushing you higher up in Google search, and for more searches to boot.
Additionally, we also offer extras such as pay-per-click advertising and remarketing campaigns to make you stand out even more.
Find out how we tradie SEO can make your business stand out from the crowd – talk to our tradie marketing specialists on 1300 88 64 50, or click here to arrange a callback.
