Posts By: Geoff Braught
10 Marketing Tips for Home Contractors
As a home contractor, you provide a wide range of services to your clients. Marketing a business can be challenging, but learning to advertise services online can help home contractors like you find a long-term customer base. Here are ten marketing tips that you can implement for business success.
1. Understand the Intended Audience
Before beginning the process, it’s important for you to understand your target audience to maximize a marketing campaign’s impact. Some strategies include identifying customer demographics and determining the business’ specialization in the industry, like carpentry or painting.
2. Optimize the Website
You can also generate a larger audience by optimizing the business’ website. It’s important to have a website that’s easy to navigate with accessible language, so you can communicate key information to users. Websites are also a great way to begin your online presence, which supplements other marketing efforts.
3. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines like Google use an algorithm to rank websites on search engine results pages (SERPs). When a website has a high ranking, more users find it when searching for local contractors. Different SEO strategies include adding keywords to your website, producing content consistently, and creating a website that functions on mobile devices.
4. Implement Paid Google Ads
Paid Google Ads are another helpful marketing method for you to use. They provide a way to advertise services to your new customers on different websites through Google searches. By determining a budget for these advertisements, you can ensure they’re worth the effort and cost.
5. Use Social Media
You can also increase your business’s social media presence to engage with customers and promote your services. There are several social media sites, so it’s important to have a presence on each platform. This can increase audience size and generate new leads.
6. Connect With Previous Customers
Your business can benefit from connecting with previous customers to build a long-term clientele. Past customers may have new home service needs or might know someone who could benefit from the same services. So, building these relationships can allow your company to preserve the current audience and gain new referrals.
7. Create Videos
Creating videos can increase your website’s SERP rankings and generate interest, increasing website traffic. Making high-quality videos that demonstrate your services and personality can help you better connect with viewers.
8. Highlight Employees
Highlighting employees is a way to gain the trust of the audience. By showcasing individuals, users can understand your business’ value system. Appealing to users’ emotions can increase trust in your services.
9. Include Feedback
Adding customers’ feedback to your website or account is another way to boost your marketing efforts. Feedback can provide new customers with more information about contracting services and address any hesitations or concerns. Including feedback also demonstrates how a contractor maintains professional relationships with previous clients.
10. Use Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing campaigns allow you to share information with a specific audience. You can use this method to stay in contact with previous customers or provide relevant information to interested parties. These emails can also contain advertisements for deals or special offers. Implementing these ten tips can improve your company’s marketing efforts, no matter your trade. Electricians, plumbers, and landscapers alike can benefit from increasing their marketing efforts. Check out our blog today to find more helpful marketing tips.
9 Lead Gen Ideas for Electricians and Contractors
Electricians and contractors can both benefit from using digital marketing techniques to promote their goods and services. Using tools like SEO and paid Google advertisements can increase your company’s scope of influence, making it possible for you to generate more success from these worthwhile leads. Here’s a list of nine ideas you can use as an electrician or contractor to generate more leads for your business.
1. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing technique that involves using specific keywords and phrases to generate higher rankings on the search engine results page (SERP). The higher content ranks, the more people are likely to engage with it. As a result, you can increase your websites’ click-through rates, improving your chances of finding worthy leads.
2. Paid Google Ads
You can use paid Google advertisements to generate more leads by purchasing ads for keywords your clientele is likely to search. For example, an electrician working out of Tuscon, Arizona, can purchase a Google Ad with the title tag “affordable electrician near Tuscon” that leads to a webpage detailing their business’ services and contact information.
3. Social Media
You can market your business directly to consumers by posting on a social media account. You can also collaborate with influencers, create sweepstakes, or engage with followers through comment replies, stories, and live streams. By posting frequently on social media accounts, you can reach a much larger audience.
4. Optimize Website
Optimizing a website involves making adjustments to its style, navigation capabilities, and content to better suit the needs of the consumer. You can use optimization techniques like adding drop-down menus, links, and customer feedback sections to make your website more accessible.
5. Blogging
Many businesses have turned to blogging as a way of engaging with clients and leads online, and electricians and contractors can do the same. By adding a blog section to your website, you can expand on topics relevant to your business and customer demographics to drive more user traffic.
6. Door-to-Door Marketing
Door-to-door marketing can help you make in-person connections with prospective clientele. This allows customers to ask questions directly about your services, which can produce a more long-lasting impact than other marketing techniques.
7. Printed Ads
You can use traditional marketing techniques to generate leads, like printed flyers, pamphlets, and business cards. Clients may feel more encouraged to seek your services if they receive a physical reminder of your business and the services you offer.
8. Collaboration
Collaborating with other contractors is a great way to generate leads for your business. For example, an electrician can join forces with a plumber to offer packaged services at discounted prices. This makes home improvement easier for the customer, as they don’t have to hire individual companies to perform services.
9. Google Business Page
Every business can claim their Google Business Page, which details a business’s website, hours, contact info, and reviews on the first results page. Registering for the page takes less than an hour and is completely free. You can use this feature to make your services more accessible online. With these nine ideas, you can maximize your influence and generate legitimate leads that benefit the livelihood of your business. Contact us today at Lokal Media for more lead generation ideas or check out our blog for more helpful tips.
8 Absolutely Hilarious Plumbing Memes
Between the tough physical labor and irregular work hours, plumbing can be a challenging job. Just like with other professions, it’s important that plumbers take time every day to rest, relax, and have a laugh. Here are eight of the most hilarious plumbing memes you and fellow plumbers everywhere can find relatable.
1. When Customers Disagree About What “Clean” Means
Image via Speed Clean
Unlike other jobs where people get to work in peace, plumbers repeatedly subject themselves to entering strangers’ homes. A cluttered house (and everything inside it) can make for uncomfortable scenarios, especially if you’re tasked with moving people’s personal items out of the way.
2. A Plumber’s Plea
Image via Pinterest by Morris-Jenkins
It’s an age-old rule of home-plumbing care: never throw oil down the drain. And yet, time and time again, plumbers near and far must make their way over to the homes of disgruntled customers. Pouring oil down the sink can have an environmental impact and leave residue in pipes, causing clogs. In short: it’s not worth it.
3. Not It!
Image via funnyjunk by xxelmarcocfcxx
If an issue is complex enough, a customer might wonder whether they require the expertise of an electrician or a plumber. If everyone’s puzzled, it’s safe to say the situation is pretty dire—like the one in this meme. While you certainly see a lot as a plumber, an electrician’s advice is often the missing project component.
4. When “Cutting The Water” Has a Double Meaning
Image via 9gag by Awesome
The phrase “cut the water” takes on two meanings in this meme. As a plumber, you know that “cutting the water” is just an expression for shutting off the water flow in a building, usually a client’s home. However, there’s no arguing this person isn’t cutting the water, right? It’s one of those plumbing memes that hits just right—equal parts pun and plumbing reality.
5. A Pain in the Drain
Image via Shamrock Plumbing
The term “backseat driver” can take on an entirely different meaning for plumbers like you. It’s not uncommon for customers to provide their two cents on how plumbers should do their job, along with constant claims of how they “could have fixed it” on their own.
6. “It’s Ah-me! A Bad Plumber.”
Image via imgflip by ozman123
Okay, it’s clear that Mario may not be the foremost authority on plumbing skills and procedures. After all, he mostly saves Princess Peach from peril. That being said, could you name a plumber with more name recognition?
7. When the Customer Wants an Impromptu Therapy Session
Image via FieldPulse
As a plumber, you wear a variety of hats, and sometimes that hat translates into “this person is a trusted confidant” for customers. It can be a little distracting to absorb a person’s personal baggage, but you already know socializing is part of the job.
8. A Plumber’s Best Friend
Image via PictureQuotes
Being a plumber can have a lot of benefits, and by far one of the best ones is the ability to meet and interact with customers’ pets. What person wouldn’t want a cuddle puppy snuggled on their lap while they work? Even though a career in plumbing can be stressful, it’s safe to say that these memes help bring out the lighter side of the profession. Check out our blog today for more hilarious content about the work world from Lokal Media House.
7 Proven SEO Tips for Your Home Services Website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that your home service business can implement to increase your audience and develop your online presence. This is a great way to highlight your business website to increase clicks when users search for specific or related services. Here are seven SEO tips you can implement for a home services website:
1. Increase Website Speed
One way to improve the SEO for your home services website is to remove anything extra that slows down the site. This may require slimming down the content that’s included on the website to increase the speed. Google now factors in the speed of a website when ranking it for the search engine results pages (SERPs), so it’s important to have a quick, efficient site.
2. Link to Other Websites
To increase traffic to your home services website, consider adding relevant links to other sites. This process is known as “link-building,” and it can enhance the experience of people who visit your company’s site. Adding links is synonymous with adding value to a website, which can increase its success on SERPs.
3. Add Engaging Content
Try to remember the target audience when you add new content to the home services website. While it’s important to maximize SEO, it’s also necessary to connect to the intended audience. Remember, the search engines aren’t the ones who become clients: The people are!
4. Develop an App
One way to boost your website’s SEO is by developing an app. Apps can be created and published online. An application may include much of the same content as a website but be more convenient for the user. For example, apps may include a digital scheduling feature that allows users to schedule services directly from the app.
5. Use Keywords
Keywords are a foundational aspect of SEO. It’s good practice to add multiple keywords to increase SERP rankings. Consider using natural-sounding keywords that people may type into the search bar. This can increase the likelihood of potential customers seeing the website in search results, boosting the number of clicks the website receives.
6. Make a Site Map
Many small details comprise a website, including a site map. This is the process of indexing your website, allowing search engines like Google to assess it. A site map can also benefit users by simplifying site navigation. This may require external assistance since it’s more technical than other SEO strategies in this list.
7. Use Google Ads
Another way to maximize your home services website’s SEO rankings is by using Google Ads. Google Ads can help you increase traffic to your website. It’s best to link these ads to a landing page that includes a direct call to action (CTA) to guide users. Ultimately, your home services website can benefit from implementing these seven SEO tips. By increasing traffic to your website, your business can boost its revenue by gaining new clients. Contact us at Lokal Media House to learn more about search engine optimization for the ideal professional home services website.
Local Businesses: 6 Social Media Posts You Can Use This Week
Social media is a great way for your local businesses to connect with your community and reach wider audiences. However, it’s often challenging to come up with new ideas for content. There are a few types of social posts that businesses in multiple industries can adapt to their own products, services, and target audiences. Here are six different examples of ready-made social media posts.
1. Customer Testimonials
One great idea for your local business is to add customer testimonials to your social media pages. These testimonials can build trust with your audience and generate new leads. Adding a customer’s first name, a photo, and a summary of their review can make these types of posts even more impactful (please note: before posting a customer’s testimonials to social media, it’s important to gain their consent.)
2. Live Videos
Many social media platforms allow you to broadcast live videos. Live videos can help your company connect with your audience and display the human side of your business. They allow customers to engage directly with your business, increasing rapport and trust. Some ideas for live videos include live selling, question-and-answer videos with staff members, or an informational video answering customers’ frequently asked questions.
3. User-generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content includes social media content that customers or clients post on a behalf of your business. For example, a customer might post a photo of their newly landscaped front yard, then tag the local business responsible for the job. That company can repost this photo as promotional content. This can increase trust with the business’s current audience. Using branded hashtags and an easily identifiable social media profile can increase the likelihood of UGC for your company.
4. Go Behind the Scenes
You can post a “day in the life” content, showing all your social media followers what daily work is like at your company’s facilities or offices. Another example is to demonstrate how your business completes a task. For example, a plumbing company can post a behind-the-scenes video of how they load their equipment into a truck. These posts can increase the connection between a company and its target audience.
5. Provide Tips or Tricks
Providing tips or tricks to the audience is another easy way to produce social media content. The best method for this involves posting techniques that directly relate to the services your business provides. For example, a law firm might create a post with a few tips on how to handle a minor legal issue. These posts can show the audience that your business wants to provide relevant, useful content.
6. Use Funny Images
Memes are funny images widely circulated on the internet. Your company can create memes about your services to contextualize them for your target audience. For example, a local tattoo parlor might change a meme’s caption to make a joke that encourages users to schedule an appointment. Using funny images can help your business create a fun, inviting social media presence that helps a local audience feel understood and connected. These are just a few simple ideas that you can incorporate into your social media accounts. Contact us at Lokal Media House to learn more ideas about how to maximize your business’s marketing efforts.
Creative Ways to Get More Roofing Leads
Like most business owners, you can benefit from using digital marketing techniques to promote your roofing business’s goods and services. Using tools like paid advertisements and social media marketing can increase your company’s scope of influence, allowing you to generate more leads and subsequently achieve more financial success.
Here’s a list of four creative ways you can get more leads for your roofing business.
1. SEO
Use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to fine-tune the keywords and phrases you use in your advertisements and website content. The goal of SEO is for your website or blog to rank high on a search engine results page (SERP). The higher your content ranks, the more people are likely to engage online and make purchases. SEO techniques like localization, keyword phrasing, and link-building can all contribute to a higher SERP ranking and substantially increase the number of users who follow the SERP hypertext to the webpage.
2. Paid Google Ads
Paid Google advertisements are another creative way to generate more roofing leads. Google Ads are especially beneficial if you strategically choose keywords your clients are more likely to search, like shingle prices. Google’s advertising policies make it possible to purchase advertisements that will appear at the top of the first results page, with the content itself closely matching the searched phrase. For example, a roofing business in Tampa, Florida, may benefit from purchasing a Google Ad with the title tag “Affordable Roofing Near Tampa”. This ad leads to a page on their website with service options, pricing tiers, and contact information.
3. Social Media
Social media has become one of the most popular places to advertise products and services directly to target demographics. Brands have increasingly used social media to reach a wide audience of potential customers. This is often achieved by promoting their goods and services with posts, sponsorships, giveaways, or collaborations with other companies. As a roofer, you can certainly create social media pages for your business where you detail the services you provide and your prices, plus keep up consistent engagement with your clientele. By posting frequently on social media accounts, you can grow your online influence and increase your business and financial success.
4. Optimize Website
Taking the time to optimize your business website can make a significant difference in its ability to generate worthwhile leads. There are many ways you can optimize your website for customer convenience and comfort. Including adding a directory or using a table of contents for long blog posts and articles. You can also add a customer review section showing feedback from previous clients. This, further encourages prospective leads to use your services. You can also include easy navigation from one webpage to another and a clearly defined contact page with phone numbers, emails, and addresses. With these four techniques, you can maximize your digital footprint and considerably grow the number of legitimate leads you can generate. Whether that involves using SEO, paid advertisements, social media, or website optimization methods, your roofing businesses can only benefit from dedicating time and effort to generating new leads online.
11 Automotive Marketing Strategies for Success
Creating an effective automotive marketing strategy is an important way for dealerships to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Here’s a list of some strategies to consider when marketing in the automotive industry.
1. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
According to a recent Perficient study, in 2020, 68.1% of all website visits globally came from mobile devices, but only 28.9% of website visits globally came from desktop devices. It’s crucial to optimize your website for mobile users to ensure people can find it and navigate it easily.
2. Create SEO-Friendly Content
Write original content for your website that follows SEO best practices. For example, ensure each webpage targets a specific keyword, use that keyword naturally throughout the content, and use headers to break up the content and guide the reader.
3. Run Google Ads Campaigns
Google Ads campaigns target the results of a particular search and appear and the top of the results page. These paid campaigns typically charge per click each link receives, and they can be an effective way to position your business against its competitors.
4. Follow Car-Buying Trends
Research the best times to buy a car and model any marketing strategies around these trends. For example, research shows the best days of the week to buy a car are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so consider focusing some of your budget on targeting customers on those days.
5. Post On Social Media Regularly
Create consistent posts on your business’s social media accounts, and consider using scheduling tools to help with posting regularly. Provide audiences with meaningful content and engage with them, encouraging conversations and fostering relationships.
6. Use Call Tracking
Call tracking involves setting up specific phone numbers that redirect to your dealership’s main line to monitor the origins of the calls. Use this to understand what’s working well with your marketing strategy, where most of the leads find your business, and how to improve marketing efforts.
7. Try Video Marketing
With YouTube consistently ranking as one of the top search engines, consider incorporating video marketing into your strategy. Creating videos that discuss different cars or maintenance best practices may attract users and redirect them to a business’s website to learn more.
8. Manage Your Keyword List
Review your business’s keyword list often to see what performs well. Be particularly mindful of negative keywords that are irrelevant to your strategy and may damage the website’s credibility.
9. Bid on Competitor Keywords
Consider using Google Ads to bid on keywords that your competitors rank for, such as their dealership names. This may attract the attention of a user searching for the competitor and entice them to visit your website, too.
10. Maintain a Google Business Profile
Create a Google Business Profile to provide users with basic information about your business when they perform searches, and update it often to ensure accuracy. This is an especially important tool for local SEO.
11. Optimize for Local SEO
Optimize your website for local SEO to ping for searches like “dealerships near me.” For example, include your locations throughout the website. These are just a few ways to develop and implement a successful automotive marketing strategy. For more questions about what may work best for your specific dealership, contact Lokal Media House today.
Lawn & Landscape Marketing: The Best 15 Ideas for Your Business
Effective lawn and landscape marketing strategies are one of the best ways for your business to increase its visibility and raise revenue.
Learning how to use a variety of digital marketing tools is one of the most powerful ways you can reach potential clients and book out for the reason. To help you on your way, here are 15 different ideas for growing your lawn and landscaping business.
1. Create SEO Content
If you improve your company’s ranking on the search engine results page, you can generate more traffic to your website.. For your lawn and landscaping business to improve its ranking, it can be helpful to create SEO content on the website. SEO content such as blogs or guides helps drive traffic towards your website and can be an effective way to market the business.
2. Design an Optimized Website
Nearly everyone uses the internet on their mobile device. Companies that design websites that run efficiently on these devices can benefit from increased user retention. Before designing your website, it’s helpful for you to understand how their users access the site. Knowing what types of devices your clients use can be helpful when creating an optimized web experience.
3. Use Google Ads
Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools for small business owners. This program allows you to place advertisements on relevant websites that direct potential customers to your site. The ads use a pay-per-click system, so you only need to pay for users who actually interact with the advertisements. Because of this, Google Ads is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business online.
4. Make Stunning Visuals
People are more likely to stay on websites that have a lot of visual content. To increase user retention, it can be a good idea for you to create a series of videos or images that promote your business. Designing visual content helps users understand what your company is offering, and makes websites more pleasing to look at. To create visual content, it can be useful to test out a variety of different design software.
5. Leverage Social Media
Social media is one of the most powerful online marketing tools. Businesses that have active accounts on popular social media platforms benefit from increased visibility and recognition. If your company wants to maintain accounts on all of these platforms, it can be a good idea to hire a social media manager that handles all of these online interactions.
Here are ten more marketing strategies that you might want to try out:
- Direct Mail
- Update Online Listings
- Partner With Local Businesses
- Design and Distribute Flyers
- Wrap the Work Trucks
- Design an Eye-Catching Logo
- Promote a Referral Program
- Partner With Influencers
- Create a Blog
- Make Instructional Videos
- Distribute Surveys
- Offer Incentives
- Personalize Marketing Content
- Run Email Campaigns
These are just a few ideas for promoting your lawn and landscaping business. For businesses that want to grow quickly, combining multiple approaches can be effective.
Understanding how to use your online resources allows you to work with more customers and enjoy greater profits. Get in touch with us to learn more.
PPC For Plumbers: What No One Is Talking About
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an online advertising model in which a customer purchases ads on a platform and pays the publisher each time a user clicks on the ad. Plumbers can purchase highly targeted ads that only show up in their local area, making this an extremely efficient and affordable advertising strategy. But PPC ads are complex, and businesses can spend the whole advertising budget only to get disappointing results. To create effective ads, here’s what plumbers need to know about PPC that no one is talking about.
Geo-Optimized Ads
One of the key factors for effective PPC advertising is correctly using geotargeting tactics. Since plumbers work within a certain radius, it doesn’t make sense to advertise to consumers living hundreds of miles away. Advertising in locations beyond the business’s range actually harms the performance of the ad campaign because Google will rank it poorly and not show the ad in search results.
Keyword Research and Analysis
Most consumers know what a keyword is, but not many people understand just how important proper keywords are to an ad campaign. For example, using terms like “best plumbing tools” targets DIY consumers instead of those seeking a plumbing service provider. Google Keyword Planner helps identify proper keywords for all types of businesses and shows the popularity of each term. Researching and analyzing keywords is necessary to create successful pay-per-click ads.
Keyword Optimization
Keyword optimization is one of the more challenging skills of online marketing. Optimizing keywords includes researching keywords, analyzing the best keywords for the ad, and monitoring its performance over time. Keyword optimization is extremely important in PPC marketing because Google analyzes ad quality and won’t show ads if keywords aren’t properly optimized.
While finding optimal keywords is necessary, it’s equally important not to overuse words and word sets. Using too many related keywords dilutes the page’s content and negatively impacts Google’s quality rating of the ad, resulting in less ad visibility.
Negative Keywords
Another tricky aspect of keywords is learning how to correctly use negative keywords. Using DIY as a negative keyword will prevent a business’s ads from showing on results including the term DIY. Advertisers benefit by using negative keywords because consumers searching for DIY tips aren’t looking to hire a plumber, and ads won’t show on searches containing negative keywords, preventing wasted PPC advertising fees.
Landing Pages
PPC ads that send leads to a home page aren’t as effective as sending leads to a landing page. Landing pages generate more leads and convert more prospects. A clear call to action (CTA) on the landing page builds the company’s prospect database.
Plumbers can get great results from well-targeted PPC advertising. Understanding some of these lesser-known facts can improve pay-per-click ad campaigns and result in far greater returns for PPC advertising. While knowing these tactics can improve ad results, pay-per-click marketing is complex. PPC ads require consistent monitoring, analysis, testing, and tweaking. Contact an expert digital marketing company like Lokal Media House to create effective PPC advertising campaigns, boost SEO, increase website traffic, and greatly improve ROI on advertising dollars.
