When you started your home services business, chances are you were more concerned with purchasing equipment and hiring your crew than marketing tactics. Not to worry. We built The Ultimate Marketing Guide, specifically to help businesses in the trades build their brand and find new customers.
In this blog, we’ll highlight our top tips and tactics, but if you can’t wait to get started, click the image below to download the guide now!
Building Your Brand
Word of mouth is great, but when your potential clients are searching for a local plumber or a landscaper on their phones, the best-built brand will win. That’s just the way it works today.
Creating a brand is more than getting a logo and plopping it on a Facebook profile. It has more to do with knowing who your target customers are and how you want them to feel about you.
That’s why we suggest getting really clear on the answers to these questions before sending any sort of marketing to your target audience.
- How do we want customers to feel about our services?
- What do we want people to say about our business?
- What are our top three values?
- Who is our target customer? What are their needs?
Check out the Building Your Brand checklist in the marketing guide for a step-by-step approach to understanding your customers and competitors, and find free tools to further fine-tune your brand.
Attracting New Customers
Of course, the primary goal of marketing is to find new customers and build revenue. As mentioned above, the customer search starts online, so ensuring your business has a top-notch online presence is key. You can achieve that through:
- A modern, well-functioning website that connects you to the customer
- Search engine optimization (SEO) to help your business appear at the top of search results
- Consistent social media posting and presence
- Pay-per-click advertising
81% of shoppers conduct research online prior to making purchases.
—GE Capital
Retaining Current Customers
Now that you’ve got your customers, how do you keep them loyal? We’ve got that covered in our marketing guide, too.
A big part of maintaining repeat customers is understanding what worked to win them in the first place. To understand what’s working, you need to measure it.
When you conduct any type of marketing campaign, analyze its impact so you can determine if it’s worth continuing or not. Did people open your latest email? Did they click on a link? How many asked for a quote or made a purchase?
The more you look at the numbers to see how your customers respond to your marketing efforts, the better you can cater to their needs.
And while your work is mostly hands-on, don’t forget the importance of your business’s digital existence. That’s where your customers will leave reviews that other potential new customers can see, as well.
Foster the existing relationships by responding quickly to reviews and resolving issues that get introduced through online forums or social media.
Maintaining your brand and nurturing new and returning customers is an ongoing process. Download The Ultimate Marketing Guide for the Trades for tips, tactics and checklists to help you master your marketing today.