Jan 20, 2017
Joseph Hughes was interviewed for the Contractors Success M.A.P. Podcast and was very generous with his time and provided some extremely valuable insights for how you can market your Contracting Company. The article below is a recap of some of the precious gems he shared on the podcast.
As a construction company owner or manager, you’ve undoubtedly faced some frustration with marketing your business effectively. Maybe you’ve invested in marketing and web services, but haven’t gotten the results that you expected or were promised. Or perhaps you are so overwhelmed with the amount of information out there, often conflicting, that you haven’t decided what you want to do yet.
Trust me, feel the pain. I spent over a decade in the
construction industry prior to starting Contractor Dynamics. Word
of mouth is great, personal referrals can be the best source of new
business, but we all know that there is a huge opportunity to
leverage the web to grow, or even sustain, our businesses.
But you’re a contractor, not a marketing guru. You’re already
wearing too many hats and working too many hours. How are you
supposed to make sense of all the options available to you, know
whom to trust, and develop a marketing plan that’s actually going
to get you results?
I’m going to walk through a very simple outline that will help you
better understand the different types of online marketing available
to you as a construction business owner.
But first, a quick background…
Why Should I Listen To You?
After growing up in the construction industry, I founded
Contractor Dynamics in 2013 to
help builders, contractors, and related professionals grow their
businesses strategically by leveraging the web.
Our team has a passion for helping contractors navigate the tricky
world of online marketing and use the web as a tool to transform
their businesses.
Contractor Dynamics understands that best-in-class construction
companies lack the time, expertise, or interest to stay on top of
trends in the fast-changing world of online marketing and market
their business in ways that ensure long term growth.
Because we have been working exclusively with contractors for
years, we have developed powerful and proven solutions to deliver
more leads and more customers to our clients.
We work with clients worldwide who understand the importance of
investing in their businesses to differentiate, generate more
inquiries, and to win more quality business.
Contractor Dynamics stands out from other web and marketing solutions because:
Although we offer a full range of marketing options, our core services include website design & development and organic online marketing (SEO).
Contractor Dynamics publishes weekly guides on the best
practices for marketing a construction company, and we have been
featured on Houzz, Yahoo Finance, Huffington Post, Small Business
Trends, and Equipment World, among other construction industry
publications.
3 Online Marketing Strategies for Contractors
Explained
If you’re like most builders and contractors I know, you’re always looking for ways of generating more business – more projects, more customers, more sales, more growth.
We all know there is not shortage of options to help you market and sell better. There’s online marketing, offline marketing, in-person marketing and sales, automated marketing, and dozens of other avenues for you to pursue.
But, lacking reliable information about your options, you get overwhelmed and either don’t do anything or try a couple random things to see if anything sticks, right?
In most cases where contractors are trying to grow their businesses, there’s not much of a cohesive strategy. It’s more of a spray-and-pray scenario or the shotgun approach to marketing. And in most cases, marketing without a foundation of knowledge and a strategy just doesn’t work. Sure there are exceptions, but generally the companies who dedicate themselves and their resources to developing a strategy and sticking to it are the ones who are able to get the next level.
By the end of this guide, you should have a good idea of whether online marketing is appropriate for your business and whether it’s something you want to invest your time, energy, and money into.
To start, I want to provide some context to marketing and
include some recommendations that will help you gain an
understanding of not only marketing, but your business as a
whole.
Lead Gen Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum
Any type of marketing or lead gen should be a part of your overall business plan and strategy. Too many construction companies try random marketing tactics and strategies in an attempt to quickly generate leads. But that seldom works. Lead gen works best when it’s one part of your strategy, not the entire strategy. More on that below.
You Can’t Completely Outsource the Growth of Your Business
Look, I get it. I know you’re busy running your business – managing projects, managing employees and crews, ordering materials, compiling bids, and dozens of other things. You wish you could hire someone to just grow your business while you focus on the day-to-day. But that’s not possible. Well it is if you hire a full-time employee who knows what they’re doing, or you hire an contractor marketing agency for $10,000 a month. But, even then, you’re going to need to be involved at least somewhat in marketing and growing your business, if it’s something that’s important to you.
Marketing Is an Investment
I don’t just say this because I run a construction marketing agency. It’s true in any area of business and life. If you want to be fit and healthy, you go to the gym. If you want to make dramatic changes in your business, you’re going to have to invest time, energy, and money, and more likely a blend of all three. If you‘re smart and you have time, you can do this yourself. Most contractors I know are pretty darn smart, but they lack the time or interest to do it themselves.
I like to use the analogy of a homeowner trying to sell her own home (For Sale By Owner). Sure, it’s possible, and if you do it well, you can save the 4-6% broker commission. But when you hire a broker to sell your home, you’re hiring them to market it well and ideally get a higher price for it than you would have gotten yourself. You hire them because that’s what they do for a living and, at the end of the day, your net gain will probably be higher selling with a broker than selling by owner.
Know Your Numbers
This is crucial if you are looking to grow your business. Knowing your numbers helps you make long term decisions, not short term decisions. Where is your business now? Where do you want it to be? How many projects per month or quarter do you do now? What is the target number? How much is each one of those projects worth to you? At what rate do you convert leads into clients? How many leads do you actually need? This is one of the first things we go over on our initial phone consultations with prospective clients and we recommend the exercise to anyone.
Attract, Convert, Deliver
These are the three pillars of any service based business. You need to ATTRACT qualified prospects to your business, you need to be able to CONVERT a percentage of those prospects into clients or customers, and have to DELIVER a quality service consistently.
Lead generation only covers the Attract part. You still need to have systems in place for Converting and Delivering. If you don’t have these systems sorted, all the leads in the world aren’t going to help you. You can’t dump leads into a business that isn’t set up to handle them properly.
This is also why quite a few contractors I speak with don’t really need help with lead gen. They need more help with Converting and Delivering on the leads they’re already getting. Again, lead gen doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s one piece of the pie.
Three Online Marketing Strategies for Contractors
Now that we’ve established those smart business tenets, let’s
get into some nuts and bolts. These are not the only three avenues
available to you – there are dozens more things you can do online
and offline to generate new business. These are the three most
popular online marketing strategies for construction companies and
related professionals.
We’re going to lay out what you need to do these things properly so
you can make more educated decisions.
Social Media Marketing for Contractors
Pay Per Click (PPC) / AdWords for Builders and Contractors
A widely popular one, mostly because the big national agencies pitch it like Kool-Aid to small business owners. But it’s seldom done right. Here’s why.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Construction Companies
Yes, I know – you’ve been burned in the past. Maybe even more than once. That leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you read those three letters – SEO. I even try to avoid using that term because it immediately raises peoples’ defenses. Here’s the scoop – it does work, but it’s not for everyone. Doing it right takes a LOT of work and is expensive. And again, I’m not just saying this because my team and I make a living from it. Do your homework. Ask any reputable SEO agency that is willing to show you current and past client results and they’ll tell you – SEO is a grind.
Three Construction Marketing Strategies – Wrapping It Up
While skeptics may think I wrote this article to try to get you to spend more on marketing, my only goal is to educate you about the options available to you when it comes to generating new business. I’m being sincere when I say that it frustrates me to no end when I talk with contractors who spend their hard-earned time and money on marketing tactics and agencies that just don’t know what they’re doing. I’m not saying Contractor Dynamics has all the answers – because we don’t. As of the writing of this article, we only specialize in two things – Custom Websites and SEO – because we want to do what we do really well, rather than try to do many things halfway good.
Online marketing is not as easy as it once was. Even as recently
as three years ago, it was relatively easy to game the system – put
up a simple website with a phone number on it, build a bunch of
low-quality links to it, and you’re golden. Google has been
tightening their screws and raising the bar every quarter for the
past few years – that’s what you do with $40 Billion in cash. Thus,
getting exposure online takes more time and effort than ever. And
that’s one reason it’s not for everyone.
There are dozens of ways to generate new business. If social media,
PPC, and SEO aren’t for you, perhaps there are other avenues that
can help you get to the next level.
But if you do want to make an honest effort at generating new
business online, my top two recommendations are: have a strategy
and have a budget (of time, money, and commitment). Once you have
those two foundational pieces in place, the sky’s the limit.
How Can We Help?
If you’re looking for help with this stuff – whether this makes
sense to you and you think you’re ready to get started, or if I
just confused the heck out of you – HERE are the ways we may be
able to help you.
Thank You, Joseph Hughes.
It was a pleasure having you on The Contractors Success M.A.P. Podcast.
Perhaps we can convince you to join us again in the future for another one.
Warm Regards,
Randal DeHart
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I trust this podcast helps you understand that outsourcing your contractor's bookkeeping services to us is about more than just “doing the bookkeeping”; it is about taking a holistic approach to your entire construction company and helping support you as a contractor and as a person.
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Need Help Now?
Call Sharie 206-361-3950
Thank you very much, and I hope you understand we do care about
you and all contractors regardless of whether or not you ever hire
our services.
Bye for now until our next episode here on the Contractors Success
MAP Podcast.
Warm Regards,
Randal DeHart | The Contractors Accountant
#1 EZ Step Interview inside QuickBooks Setup
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