Marketing For Construction, Contractors & Builders – Inside Secrets That Can Generate 150+ Monthly Leads For You
Watch & Read As I Reveal A Proven Way For Contractor & Construction To Generate 150 Leads Per Month
If you’re looking for a way to increase the number of leads to your construction or contracting website, then this is the post for you.
I am not going to leave anything out. In fact, I am doing the complete opposite. I have made a number of videos you can watch that are embedded in this post. These videos go into deeper details, showing you every click of the mouse and an explanation along with every click.
In 10 Secs Why Should You Read This Post?
I am a firm believer that you should know who your learning from so you may understand whether or not you should pay attention to what they are saying.
So the quick 10-second snapshot of me is:
My name is Bren Hammel I am Australian and have been in the digital marketing world for 14 years. I have been consulting for 9 of those years.
I mostly work with construction companies, builders and contractors.
Unlike other digital marketing consultants, I have used my skills to build my own business outside of my consulting, both do 7 figures per year.
Specifically for you, I have helped businesses like yours generate more than 150+ per month using the strategies, tactics and ideas I am revealing to you in this post.
Where The Majority Of Contractors & Construction Companies Go Wrong
I think it is crazy that the majority of people I have consulted with or interacted have failed to have a legitimate strategy that guides their marketing.
They tend to jump around from tactic to tactic, idea to idea hoping that something works. Then when something doesn’t work they jump onto the next gimmick or idea that is better than the last, or they hope it will be.
Next, I see so many people say “XYZ competitor is doing this so we are going to do it.” My question is always “how do you know if it working for them?”
I ask the question because it is very hard to tell what is working from the outside. And to make matters worse most companies around the world are NOT even tracking their marketing properly in order to correctly evaluate if something is working or not. They are flying as blind as bat.
The only reference for comparison is yourself. You need to make sure you have tracking and accountability measures in place in order to know what is working, what isn’t working and needs to be killed, what needs tweaking.
What is Strategy & Why It Is Important?
To me, the strategy sets the guidelines, objectives and processes that will allow you to advance everything you do, it will drastically enhance your outcomes and KPI’s, it gives you a game plan that will predictably allow you to outperform your competition by constantly improving incrementally every day, week and year.
The importance of a good strategy is always neglected. You as a construction business, builder, contractor are busy with day to day work operations and I understand that. Unfortunately, that is not an excuse for not having a strategy.
Your competitors who are growing like crazy have a strategy that is defining everything they do with their marketing. You need to schedule some time each week to work on your marketing strategy in order to successfully grow your business in a stress-free manner that will get you where you want to be.
I think this great quote by Sun Tsu sums up strategy perfectly and how it applies to almost every business:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Here Is The Outline Of The Strategy For You
I have put together a video (above) going through the strategy I use for my new home builder, construction and contracting clients.
In the video, I go through each aspect of the strategy with a detailed explanation of how and why you need to implement each step of the strategy.
I go through everything from traffic sources SEO, Google AdWords and Facebook.
I then move onto how you easily improve your website in order to increase the conversion rate of visitors to leads for your business. Imagine being able to double the number of leads your website generates without spending any more time or money on traffic? I show you how to do it.
What about visitors that do not become a lead are they lost forever?
No. This strategy goes through how you can capture visitors who didn’t become a lead right away and nurture them to both become a lead at a later date and educate them to become a better-qualified lead too. We do this through remarketing and email sequences. Both of which are easy to set-up.
Traffic Sources
How To Set Up Google Ads Getting You A Quality Lead For A Low Cost.
Google Ads is a lot like chess. Easy to learn, but takes a lifetime to master.
With that said most campaigns I see and I see a lot of them are poorly set-up and optimised. Which is fantastic for you. Because by arming yourself with some knowledge you’ll be able to achieve better results than your competitors and beat down even the biggest players in your industry.
A Start To Finish Google Ads For Builders, Contractor Etc Tutorial
I have put together a complete tutorial video on how to set-up a successful and extremely profitable Google Ads campaign for yourself. I go through everything click by click, explaining what to do and why you should be doing it.
I recommend you watch the video while setting up your campaign and pausing to do the keyword research etc. This way you’ll set everything up perfectly getting you the best results.
Proven Facebook Ad Funnels and Campaigns To Generate You Leads
Facebook ads are an amazing opportunity for you in the construction industry because your competition has next to no idea how to use them. And when they do use them are using boosted posts which doesn’t get you the results you want.
In fact, Facebook Ads allow you to target highly qualified people with ads related to your business with amazing precision. Depending on how long you have been in business and customer data you have on hand you have the ability to generate leads for incredibly low costs.
In the tutorial below I show you how to set up a profitable Facebook ads campaign for your business. You’ll be able to use this tutorial to generate cheap yet highly qualified leads for your home building service, contracting services etc.
I go through the different campaign types, the best form of targeting to make sure you’re getting your ads in front of the best possible prospects, how to set-up custom and lookalike audiences and how to create ad images in minutes for free.
Remarketing/Retargeting – Most People Aren’t Ready To Make A Decision. This Is How You Get Them To Come Back To You When They Are Ready
Remarketing is those ads that follow you around on Facebook and various website. You visited a website about a product or services and now you’re seeing ads from that business as you browse the internet.
Some people find them annoying.
But, boy does remarketing work.
Remarketing is one of the most profitable activities you can implement into your digital marketing. Especially with you being in the construction or contracting world. You’re selling a high ticket service that requires some thought.
I like to think of it a lot like dating. No sane person would ask someone to marry them on a first date. And no one would accept the marriage proposal on a first date, mainly because it would be madness.
Purchasing high ticket services like yours can be the same.
Imagine getting someone to your website and they don’t become lead, but they are in the market for your services. You have the ability to show them ads detailing your work with before and after pictures, testimonials from previous customers and showing them other marketing communication helping you prove your the best at what you do.
What do you think will happen next?
The chances of them becoming a lead skyrocket because you have taken them on 2nd, 3rd and 4th date. And this marketing strategy is easy to set up.
The other benefit is people who see this style of marketing are easier to close. So not only are you getting more leads, but you’re closing more deals.
Who wouldn’t want that?
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
I would have to say this is the favourite traffic source of the majority of clients. It’s hard to know why exactly because I feel it might be a little bit of ego.
There is nothing like seeing your name up in lights at the top of the search engines.
It could also be the fact that many people perceive the traffic as being free. But that isn’t the case.
When you factor in time and monetary resources you may still break it down to a cost per visitor basis just like Google Ads or Facebook etc.
But, what should you be focusing on in 2019 with your search engine optimisation efforts?
Technical SEO:
With capabilities of AI growing daily and with Google embracing the technology technical SEO will become more important.
The importance of SEO probably hasn’t been this critical since the days of keyword stuffing.
Key factors I think will become more important as time goes by and are already playing a role in the rankings are:
The importance of quality content and overall user experience. Google’s job is to find the best answer to search inputted therefore it makes perfect sense that these factors become a larger part of the ranking algorithm as time moves forward.
We already know that “time on site”, “bounce rate”, “pages per session” and other key user experience metrics are measured and used by Google.
Mobile user experience is becoming more important as the continuing rise of mobile traffic doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
Site structure will always play an important role along with internal linking and the optimisation of the major SEO elements will still remain part of your SEO process for the foreseeable future.
Off-Page SEO Factors (Backlinks)
Link building is still the biggest factor when it comes to ranking well in Google.
Linking building itself isn’t a complicated minefield as it can be made out to be. In plain English, link building is the process of getting links from other websites to your own website.
The search engines use links like roads. These links allow the search engines to travel through the internet using links to travel from one page to another.
The two major reasons why search engines use links as one of the major factors when it comes to their ranking algorithms is because: Firstly, it allows the search engines to discover new pages on the internet from already established web pages.
Secondly, links tell the search engines just how well a page should rank within their search engine listings. SEO when it comes to link building is a little bit like a popularity contest. The person with the most votes (or in this case links) WINS.
Though not all links are created equal. You being in the construction industry would do much better getting a link back to your website from Zillow.com, opposed to a small blog about cupcakes. This is because not only is Zillow.com relevant to you with it being in the real estate industry it has millions of links, linking to it from other websites. All these links build up the authority of Zillow.com in the eyes of search and this flows on to your website a little bit.
The cupcake blog, on the other hand, is not relevant to you, it only has a couple of links pointing to it. And because of these factors, a link from Zillow is exponentially better for your SEO efforts.
Quality of your link building is king in 2019.
Some of my favourite ways to build links for my construction clients is to guest post on other relevant websites.
I create a piece of valuable information for free for the website I want a link from. I outreach to them and offer this piece of free content in exchange for a link back to my client’s website.
This can be a timely process through the links are highly relevant which the search engine like and the quality of the links is very good because I can be selective to whom I go after.
Unique Mechanism / Unique Value Proposition
This is one of the most important pieces of the marketing puzzle for you.
If you want to stop competing on price and have prospects evaluate you and compare you to your competitors based upon the value, your unique mechanism or unique value proposition carries a lot of the freight.
In short, the unique mechanism explains to your ideal prospect exactly how you can solve their problem by using your product or service and achieve a better desired and result in any of your competitors.
It should deliver clear and specific benefits. And it should tell your ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from your competition.
It should be easy to understand and communicates crystal-clear results that a customer will get from working with you.
You should avoid any hype or overuse of adjectives. It says how your different and/or better than your competitors. And you should be able to read it within about 5 to 10 seconds
A unique mechanism is not a tagline. A tagline has more to do with branding that it has to do about converting visitors into paying customers for you
What your unique mechanism or unique value proposition might be, is completely up to you and more importantly up to what your ideal customers want. You need to talk to your customers to understand their emotions, frustrations, hardships and desires.
You then need to come up with a way to communicate how your service achieves this desired end outcome for your ideal customer. This
How To Prove Beyond Any Doubt You’re The Best Person Your Prospect Should Be Working With
The two main reasons why people do not purchase a product or service is first, they simply don’t want or can’t afford the product or service. Secondly, they don’t believe the claims around the product or service and that the product or service will fulfil their needs or desires.
There is a multitude of different proof elements that can be added to enhance the credibility and believability of the claims product and/or service.
Here we’ll go through some of the best performing proof elements I have found my time working with builders, contractors and construction companies:
People Buy From People (Your About Us Page)
When it comes to the majority of purchases the majority of people do not have the skills or knowledge to evaluate the particular product or service accurately.
Therefore,they turn to the things they know. They know if they feel if they can trust someone or believe someone. And they certainly know if they like someone.
So with knowing this information you want to make sure that you have a clear and concise about us page detailing the story, values and personality of the key people that interact at least initially with prospects and customers.
Time and time again I’ve heard from my clients where we have rewritten the about us page that new prospects feel that they already know my client. They have already started the rapport building process with the prospect. This not only increases the number of leads that they get but also improve the ratio of leads to paying customers.
Testimonials
The use of testimonials can be absolutely fantastic when used correctly. A large portion of people do read testimonials and reviews but a lot of people are sceptical about them.
The way to get around this is adding greater details to your testimonials and adding some proof elements, such as:
If possible you want to structure your testimonials in a way where you have the written text along with a photo of the completed job and if it suits featuring yourself and the customer in the photo. You also want to add the name of the client and the location if possible. Even though these factors seem obvious the impact that they have is powerful.
Also, it goes without being said that video testimonials are absolutely fantastic. This can be a little bit more difficult as customers are generally not comfortable getting in front of the camera. But you can take away much of the anxiety around this by structuring the testimonial in a way that makes it easy for them.
I recommend that you have a list of questions that you send to the customer before shooting the testimonial. Then when shooting remind them that they can answer the question multiple different ways and in multiple different takes until they are comfortable and happy with their own answer.
Also, you want them to restate the question so it gives context to the viewer. He is an example; so you wanted the client to communicate why they chose to work with you opposed your competitors. Simply asked the client to say at the start of their answer “we chose ABC building company because…
This simple format makes it easier for the customer to answer the question and also gives context to the viewer who is watching the video.
Before & After Pictures & Progress Shots
Thanks to social media and reality TV we don’t need to prove the fact that people love transformations. Be it a weight loss transformation, renovation or building transformation it doesn’t matter people love the stories that before and after pictures portray.
To briefly touch upon testimonials above again, combining before and after pictures with your testimonials does work particularly well.
The reason why before and after pictures work so well is, they tell a story, it allows the viewer of the images to imagine their project in the before and after state.
It also shows proof that not only someone was happy enough with your work to allow you to post pictures, but also shows them the quality finish product that you produced.
I’ve had many clients use this little but powerful tactic with fantastic success in both their website and social media. Some have gone to the lengths of using a go pro to record the project being completed and in speeding up the video to show the actual work being done.
Brag About Your Track Record
There is money in self-aggrandizement, but thankfully you don’t have to come across as arrogant to showcase your track record.
He you want to showcase all the awards that you have won, pictures of completed projects, significant project you have completed, featured media placements in any publications, show case studies if they are applicable to you, feature any endorsements that you may have. I’m sure you get the picture by now.
People want to know that you can do what you say you can do. And showing people your track record will help substantiate the people that you are very good at what you do, and that’s what you want.
Guarantee
In some regions around the world, it’s mandatory for businesses offering services in construction, building and contracting to have a guarantee. Though most businesses do not illustrate this on their websites or any communication to the prospect. If you are not doing this, it is to your own detriment.
If you have the ability to offer a strong guarantee it will substantially help your conversion from traffic to leads and also improve your conversion from leads to paying customers.
Licenses And Qualifications
This is probably obvious to you and people in your industry, but ordinary civilians that aren’t in your industry want to know that you are licensed and qualified. So show them.
Have on your website any licenses or qualifications that you have, mention any associations that you a member of.
Also, if you have done some form of extra-curricular work, learning or had a special mentoring story don’t forget to tell this on your website it helps differentiate you to your competitors and add some personality to both you and your business.
Call To Action
The purpose of your call to action is for you to get the desired response from all the prospects that are coming to your website.
You have spent many resources on getting traffic to your website. What you want to do now is to ensure that you are getting the desired action completed on your landing page.
The way I like to look at a call to action is like a transaction. Not a monetary transaction. But a transaction where the prospect is giving you either access to their time and or contact details. In order to get these details what is the incentive that you are going to offer them?
You want to tell people exactly what they get when they contact your business. People might be assuming that you’re a sleazy snake oil salesperson and that is your process.
But if you’re reading this post you’re probably offering a value orientated consultation to your prospects. In your call to action show them and tell them the value that they will receive by contacting you.
Please, do not just write “get your free consultation” or “get your free quote”. As mentioned above tell people what they get in your consultation. Are you offering them a free 3D design? Are you doing a measuring quote? Will you help them with their design offering your expertise and experience? Will you show them how to plan their project and how to save money?