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Digital Advertising 101

Marketing, Sales

As a business owner in today’s fast-paced online landscape, you can’t afford to ignore the power of digital marketing. Google and Meta (Facebook, Messenger and Instagram) are the two giants in the digital advertising world, offering a range of advertising options to help you reach your target audience quickly and effectively. Before diving headfirst into these platforms however, it’s essential to understand the basic strategies that can help you make the most of your digital advertising budget. You can waste a lot of money on digital advertising so it’s important to understand the key strategies that every small business owner should know before investing your hard-earned money and time.

3 legged stool

How to build a strong value proposition

Marketing, Sales

If you want to want a strong value proposition that makes people want to do business with you, you need to do much more than write a short fancy sentence…or even a long sentence. While you can sum it up, the summary itself doesn’t carry much weight. Your actual value proposition needs to be woven into the DNA of your business and your relationships with customers. Only then can you start to communicate it to the market through your advertising/marketing.

Read about what make a powerful Value Proposition here.

Spock mind meld

Marketing Lesson from Mr Spock

Marketing, Sales

For those of you old enough (like me) to remember Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock on Star Trek may also remember the Vulcan Mind Meld trick he used to perform.  In order to understand a subject person better or uncover hidden memories, Spock would place his hands on a person’s head and mentally become one with them.  He would then be able to think as that person thinks and of course help save the day in some way.

What does Star Trek got to do with marketing for builders and trades?

In terms of marketing for builders, quite a bit it turns out. When developing your marketing and sales strategies, I want you to think, “Vulcan Mind Meld” as the first thing you do BEFORE you think about spending any time or money on implementing tactics.

Why? Learn more…..

Blog picture

What to write on your blog page

Marketing, Sales

A good way to naturally rank higher on Google (everyone’s goal) is to ensure that your construction website blog has a good amount of useful information on it that Google recognises as helpful to potential customers. The problem is not many tradespeople are natural writers, or even know where to start. That blinking cursor in the top left hand corner of a blank screen can be a frustrating and scary thing.

As a residential construction company, there are several blog topics that you can write about to showcase your expertise and provide value to your readers. To help get those creative juices flowing here are some ideas:

missing jigsaw piece

How to develop a competitive advantage

Marketing, Profitability

A lot of people (including me) talk about competitive advantage and how it is vital to have one for the ongoing success of your business.  This is very true, but what is the BEST sort of competitive advantage to have?

In a highly competitive industry like construction, it can be challenging for small businesses to stand out and establish a competitive advantage. However, with the right strategies and mindset, a small construction company can gain a foothold in the market and develop a competitive edge that can help them thrive and grow. In this article, we will discuss some effective ways to develop a competitive advantage for a small construction company. Click on the article to read more

trust chain link

How to increase trust from your customers

Marketing, Sales

Who has put hours of effort into pricing a job only to loose it to someone else that the client says “is a better fit”?  Everyone, right?  This can be even more frustrating if the other company has put in a higher bid!  Why didn’t you get the job?  Your price was competitive. You do quality work. You have the capacity to do it.  What it may come down to is that the prospective client didn’t TRUST you enough.

But you’re a trustworthy person!  Can’t they see that?  Well, possibly they can’t, or at least you didn’t do enough to build up that level of trust more than the other company did.  In the residential market in particular, building up the level of trust at the early stages of the sales process is vital to increasing your chances of securing a sale, without having to slash your price. With the country going into a period of economic and political uncertainty, consumers are going to be looking even harder for companies that give them a feeling of comfort and certainty.

Google logo

Google to reward good content

Marketing

If you rely on your website content (either via a blog or the core web page content) to help you rank on Google, you need to take notice of this major change in Google’s algorithm. The helpful content update will target websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content, where the content has been written for search engines rather than humans. This could mean those sites will rank lower in the Google search results that are served up to consumers using the Google search engine (which is most people on the planet!)

Google’s new helpful content update specifically targets “content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.” 

The purpose of this algorithm update is to help searchers find “high-quality content,” Google said. Google wants to reward better and more useful content that was written for humans and to help users.

thirsty man in desert

Time to dust off the marketing playbook

Marketing, Sales

While most construction businesses are still pretty busy and the runway of work ahead should see you into 2023 without too many issues, the longer term picture is looking a bit more fuzzy. It’s time to start reviewing what you are doing in the marketing and sales space and look to make some improvements.

There is a habit of many business owners in the trades to just take what the market dishes up and not put some proactive systems in place to generate work.  “I get all my work from word-of-mouth” is what I hear a lot.  That’s great when WoM is working, but what if it isn’t? What’s the back-up plan?  Usually there is none.  This is particularly true when the market is stronger and the perceived need to generate leads is less. With building consents running at record levels over the past year, you can understand why marketing has not been high on the priority list of most people. Inflation, Covid, supply lines and labour shortages have naturally dominated the headlines. A downturn in building activity however will naturally make some of those issues die away. The need to generate more leads and improve your conversion rate will start to sneak up on you if you don’t take proactive steps.

Jump in puddles

Jump In Puddles

Marketing, Owner

With a recession typically comes a reduction in consumer confidence and a trend to delay or cancel big-ticket spend items. Building projects are the biggest ticket of them all. To combat this you should be looking at increasing your marketing. If you have been using “word-of-mouth” as your only marketing strategy over recent years, it’s time to review your activities in this space and put together a more comprehensive plan.

The first place I suggest you start in putting a marketing plan together is picking a market segment or two in which to focus your energies. Segmentation is the most fundamental of marketing concepts. To quote marketing guru Theodore Levitt, “If you’re not talking segments, you’re not talking marketing”. Furthermore, there has never been a greater need for effective segmentation, due to several factors:

Someone will always do it cheaper

Selling against cheaper competitors

Marketing, Sales

Bumping up against a cheaper competitor, especially in tighter economic times, is a fact of life. Hoping it won’t happen isn’t a good strategy to deal with the problem. What you need to do is take proactive steps to differentiate your business in the minds of the customer, because if you can’t express logical reasons why your offer is better, the customer only has one point of differentiation to guide them…..the price.

The key to doing that is making certain that the customer — not your service or company — is the core of all your sales messages and make sure that there are financial proof-points. Here’s what you do: